THE TRANSFORMATION OF SOCIETIES IN THE CONTEXT OF MODERN THEORIES OF MODERNIZATION
This article is devoted to the study of the modernization theories evolution. The understanding of modernization as a process that differs from the cultural westernization is a very common approach. In the framework of this approach modernization theory is often criticized for eurocentrism. Modern social theory, especially its postmodern and postcolonial directions, criticizes functionalist approach to the modernization, suggesting more complex picture of modernity and its forms. The experience of the socialist bloc, as well as the experience of the Eastern countries and countries liberated from colonial dependence, demonstrated that modernization policy can be carried out in the framework of different models of development, often far from the western one and opposed to it. On the basis of considered stages in the modernization theories evolution the author of the article concludes, that the establishment of authoritarian regimes in Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America over time has ceased to be seen as a failure of modernization. The modern concept of modernization implies the multiplicity of its forms and its nonconvergence to the obligatory political liberalization based on the Western model