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with the latter in the constant confrontation, then subcultural formations do not
pretend to replace a dominant culture, to supplant it as a given one.
In the Ukrainian culture of the XV-XVIIth centuries, cossack subculture was
a special subculture. Because of its inaccessibility to the official authorities, the
Cossacks occupied the free lands and acquired the status that the Lithuanian
statutes gave to gentry and knight. On the other hand, the Cossacks revived
somewhat forgotten from the early Middle Ages democratic forms of
"strangulation" of lands and the phenomenon first ancient Rus communities. It is
not by accident that the Cossacks in everything, including the appearance,
resembled the ancient Rus, as described by the Arab and Byzantine sources. In
addition, Zaporizhya was a space of direct contact with a "strange", nomadic-
Muslim world, which was considered "unclean", since it was located on the verge
of a hostile world of the Christian culture of wild chaos. Therefore, in terms of
socio-cultural content of Zaporizhya, there was a window to the "world of
outward", which determined the paradoxical nature of its existence – ascetic-
militaristic and carnival-laughter. From there, such unconnected, at first glance,
elements of the Cossack culture as harsh customs and funny rituals, chivalry and
loitering, discipline and anarchy, interaction of eastern and western influences in
life and methods of warfare emanate.
4. Modern subcultural formations
In the modern world, an example of subculture, in addition to those listed, is
religious sects. These cult associations are often called authoritarian ones. In the
charge sects, as a rule, there are charismatic (literally, extraordinary, endowed with
divine grace) leaders who consider themselves to be prophets or even deities. In
many sects, the authoritarian opinion of a leader dominates an extremely strict
discipline. The spirit of free society here, of course, is lost. However, despite the
rigorous measures applied to adherents (adherents) of "new religions", prosecution
and threats, many years of work with cult associations did not produce tangible
results. On the contrary, it often causes the effect of a boomerang. The adherents of
eccentric beliefs are victims, martyrs, sufferers.
Nowadays, stylistic boundaries that separate one subculture from another
have collapsed. The present period can be characterized as a postsubcultural phase
in which people are the creative mixture of postmodern consumer society, which
entails collecting and selecting various styles and mixing them together in a
process of blending and comparison.
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