Crowd types. The phenomenon of the crowd using the example of the riots at the Manezhnaya Insurrectionary crowd examples

On Saturday, December 11, 2010, in the very center of the capital on Manezhnaya Square, according to law enforcement agencies, about 5 thousand young people representing various communities gathered - from football fans to supporters of nationalist organizations. A massive brawl occurred in which more than 30 people were injured. The reason for the unrest was the murder of Spartak fan Yegor Sviridov in a fight on December 6. On Wednesday, December 15, the police prevented new riots in Moscow. The largest number of people - according to preliminary estimates, about 1.5 thousand people - came to the square near the Evropeisky shopping center next to the Kievsky railway station. According to various sources, from 800 to 1.2 thousand people were detained. Among those detained were minors.

On December 20, RIA Novosti held a round table on the topic: “Phenomena of the crowd: “Among people close to me... and strangers.” During the live broadcast, experts examined the events on Manezhnaya Square from the point of view of crowd psychology. The conversation was about the controllability of the crowd, about the danger that it poses to society and even to those people who are in it. A number of issues were raised. What happened on Manezhnaya Square from the point of view of psychologists? What unites people in a crowd - a collective mind or a common emotional state? Does anonymity imply irresponsibility and impunity? Is it possible to control a crowd? What dangers threaten society when the “collective unconscious” is in the service of manipulators? What is the psychological portrait of protest? What to fight when dealing with a crowd: manipulators or the collective unconscious? A report on the event is offered to your attention.

A textbook picture “A textbook picture,” said Hakob Nazaretyan, editor-in-chief of the journal “Historical Psychology and Sociology of History” and leading employee of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, pointing to a photograph of protesters at Manezhnaya. From his point of view, all these people are a typical manifestation of an “aggressive crowd.” “This is not just an aggressive crowd,” Alexander Tkhostov, Doctor of Psychological Sciences, head of the Department of Neuro- and Pathopsychology at Moscow State University, continued the topic. “There are different organizations there. There were different organizers there. This is not quite a pure crowd,” he explained. “When it is already like this, some of its qualitative features change.” Commenting on photographs from Manezhnaya Square, Alexander Tkhostov drew attention to people wearing masks. “It would be appropriate to recall F. Zimbardo’s experiments on aggressiveness, when he noticed that those people wearing a mask showed a much higher level of aggressiveness. At this moment, people are deprived of responsibility for what they do,” the specialist emphasized. In his opinion, in a certain sense, the crowd itself becomes a mask, in which a person dissolves. At this time, hidden desires and suppressed needs are released. Most often these are destructive manifestations - dissatisfaction, dissatisfaction, hatred, aggression. The collective mind is guided by one or two simple ideas. “The crowd is, in a sense, a mask. Anonymous people at this point are deprived of responsibility for what they do. They are like everyone else, doing the same thing as everyone else. At the same time, they regress. But it would be wrong to assume that the crowd organized itself at that very moment. At this moment, things appear that existed previously, but did not find a way out: hatred, aggressiveness, dissatisfaction, the feeling that no one is listening to you, the desire to do something. There weren’t many ideas, one or two, and it wasn’t that they were ideas, more like chants or slogans. In a situation where social responsibility is being eased, such destructive things will certainly manifest themselves.” In turn, the director of the Center for the Sociology of Education of the Russian Academy of Education, Doctor of Psychology Vladimir Sobkin noted that along with trying to hide in the crowd, today, in the age of new technologies, young people come to take pictures of yourself, show off under the camera lenses, and then share these photos with your friends. Many participants have a camera or phone with them, with which they film the events in which they participate. This way of recording oneself in the author’s action, when you are in the crowd, belong to it and you record it, remember it for yourself - this is a new moment of mass behavior of the crowd in the situation of the information society, which appeared relatively recently. This was also observed during the shooting of the White House, when people recorded the assault “live”, and the behavior of teenagers in fights, when violence is filmed and then broadcast online and through the media. A protest scenario in the form of an aggressive crowd and an aggressive behavior within young Russians learned it through the media. The form of organization, the way of behavior, the symbolism of behavior are the language of mass protest, which was not invented today, but was broadcast by the media in dozens and hundreds of options that participants saw on television screens. Nevertheless, according to Vladimir Sobkin, at Manezhnaya there was “an audience that already had the experience of a mass experience, for many of them this was not the first time - an experience in a crowd, in a mass with the removal of authorship.” “In terms of language and methods of co-organization, there are things that are learned in the chants of football fans, etc., i.e. This is an audience that already has experience of mass experiences in a crowd. And with the removal of authorship, a paradox occurs: on the one hand, the desire to be in a mask, the desire to relieve oneself of individual responsibility, and on the other hand, to record this as “where I participated, where I was.” He also noted that those young people who came to Manezhnaya Square belong to the generation that grew up in the difficult times of the 1990s. Many of them came from dysfunctional families and do not see serious prospects for themselves. General Director of the Agency for Political and Economic Communications Dmitry Orlov expressed the opinion that the crowd at Manezhnaya had its own emotional organizers - “ringleaders”. The screams at Manezhnaya were “provided by only a few people.” He noticed that the crowd was not only aggressive, but also acquisitive: there were demands that were not related to aggressive behavior. The crowd was heterogeneous, there was a unifying group - the organizers and people who came from the action on Kronstadt Boulevard, as well as those who came at the call on the Internet and social networks, there were passers-by who accidentally saw the action and joined it. Orlov also noted one feature: “The crowd was devoid of an obvious public leader or leaders. I have not seen people or organizations that publicly led the masses and were ready to take public responsibility. And it's strange. No, of course there were organizers. But no one said: “I did it, and I take responsibility for it.” Hakob Nazaretyan suggested not looking for the devil-organizer. He did not deny that there are always individual instigators of unrest, but he emphasized: “The most favorite and most elementary technique among journalists, as a rule, is to search for the devil. The devil did it, someone did it on purpose. But serious analytics is based on the presumption of spontaneity of what is happening. The devil appears in the analysis only at the last stage, when too much information indicates that there is someone’s intentions behind everything.” “Most often such things are the result of the stupidity of the organizers and the inept actions of the authorities,” he said.A. Nazaretyan wondered why law enforcement agencies cannot control the crowd, but provocateurs can. “The crowd is diverse. The main property of a crowd is transformability. It easily transforms from one type to another. The art of crowd control is the ability to transform it. This needs to be learned. Riot police, of course, are good, they are also needed. But there is modern psychology, proven technologies that can reduce the level of violence. The crowd is a very primitive system. It is much easier to manage a crowd than, say, an organization. It is easier to manage a herd of cows than a ministry or a university. Another thing is that all this is non-linear: a good minister cannot become a good shepherd if he has never learned this. You have to learn this. In Moscow, for 20 years, they trained politicians from all over the world to work with the crowd, to work with rumors. And now it turns out that no one in Moscow knows how to do this. Reducing everything to riot police is not a solution; irrational psychological methods must be used against the crowd,” he said, recalling that “we are not trying to drive Napoleon’s army out of Moscow, but these are our children.” Professor Nazaretyan also believes that if in fact At the beginning of all these incidents there would have been psychologically prepared people, then subsequent violent events could have been avoided. “If trained people who knew the psychology of mass behavior had gotten involved, then it would have been entirely possible to prevent extreme forms of behavior, and it would have been possible to conduct a dialogue in a civil manner.” The crowd can and should be controlled, says the expert. Director of the Moscow Research Institute of Psychiatry, Professor Valery Krasnov: “An assessment of the events on Manezhnaya Square shows that the crowd was not controllable - a spontaneous element prevailed. But we must take into account that the crowd was teenagers. She is most capable of imitative actions and is not completely independent. Imitability is a characteristic of adolescence. Children imitate adults, teenagers imitate themselves. If there is some kind of aggressive core in a crowd of teenagers, they will imitate and express aggression. If they are distracted by something unusual and extraordinary, then they can switch to this extraordinary moment and distract themselves from aggression. Aggression manifests itself in adolescents due to their impulsiveness and tendency to imitate and group. Teenagers have not yet matured as independent individuals, therefore, as a group, as a crowd, they are identified with a certain common principle. I don't think teenagers are that controllable. They also have resistance. There is always a negativistic component in the behavior of teenagers; it is not so easy to force them to do something. But by imitating someone, they can commit aggressive actions, relying on a model in the crowd. In addition, there are examples for them in the media.” “It would be wrong not to touch upon the content side of the protest,” added V. Sobkin. - What is the basis for identification of protest in this case? People were brought to the square by a feeling of injustice: They were brought out by the injustice, from their point of view, that happened. In this sense, people felt that they were absolutely right. Good moral and moral goals are another way of absolving oneself of responsibility for one’s behavior.” “But this is not an excuse for such actions,” Sobkin assures. - Here the emphasis was on youthful maximalism. There is a phrase “a thief should be in prison.” And they are guided by this. This is a clear manifestation of conformism (changing behavior and attitudes in accordance with the position of the majority). These are controlled youth, controlled by slogans, a simple ideology that allows themselves to be manipulated.” “You forget one more feeling - they have no other ways to achieve justice,” Alexander Tkhostov stood up for the youth. - All that remains is to go out to the square. I was amazed by the data from polls on the Internet - a large number of people supported those who came to Manezhnaya Square. Regarding controllability, this is also a controversial point. In the beginning the crowd may be manageable, but when there is already a herd of buffalo rushing towards you, I don't know how to control it. There are situations when even experienced people cannot do anything.” Xenophobia, nationalism, aggression are normal Hakob Nazaretyan recalled that on December 11, the protesters began to act according to the laws of primitive thinking, collective responsibility - they beat up Caucasians who came to hand, those who simply looked a little like the murderers of Yegor Sviridov. “The crowd is spontaneously transformed and the management here turns out to be spontaneous. Changeable moods, heterogeneity, when it arises... when this happens, horror stories begin - aggression, xenophobia and so on,” he said. - For me, as a psychologist, these are specific concepts and phenomena that can and should be worked with. Without aggression there is no life. Without nationalism there is no nation. Without xenophobia there is no immunity to foreign influences, there is no integral culture. Because culture is not only Mozart, Pushkin and Shakespeare. Culture is very heterogeneous and always includes many aspects. Cannibalism is also an element of culture, and war is an element of culture, and public floggings, and family violence.” “The question of what “xeno” refers to is alien. Is it the shape of the eyes, the color of the hair, or is it a behavior that is unacceptable for my culture?” If a woman is beaten, this is unacceptable, no matter what nationality those who beat her are. Even if it is accepted in their culture. This kind of xenophobia is normal. Her question is to destroy xenophobia. Without xenophobia, any culture will collapse. There can be no absolute tolerance. Absolute diversity is destruction. Therefore, in systems theory there are laws that limit this diversity. The question is how to channel this nationalism, xenophobia, and aggression into a constructive direction. It is impossible in Russia and Europe to counteract the dominance of foreign people unless the birth rate is increased. If Russians give birth to one child each, and Caucasians, for example, six or seven children, then after some time the Russians will cease to be the main nation. The question is how to refocus xenophobia so that young people do not shave their heads and wave brass knuckles, but on the birth rate. This is a question of information, economic, cultural policy." "The crowd is civilizational and evolutionary degradation, regression. There were teenagers and immature people there. It would be bad if they were dealt with only by force. This will encourage more teenagers to become aggressive because they imitate each other. We need to think about improving culture, stimulating, and forming cultural models among young people. When a person has formed, he is self-sufficient - he will not enter an aggressive crowd on his own. He may find himself in this crowd by chance, but he will try to leave because it disgusts him. It is abhorrent for a self-sufficient person to join the crowd,” added Prof. KrasnovA. Nazaretyan objected: “Can’t a self-sufficient person allow himself some kind of joint dances and celebrations to express himself - this is also a crowd. We are talking about crowd forms. The more self-sufficient people there are, the more difficult the transformation begins. Therefore, one of the techniques is to introduce special people into the crowd.” V. Krasnov: I don’t want to object so much as to add something. This is another aspect of social psychology - a society of people needs what Bakhtin and Turner defined as carnivalization, when the lower moments must somehow appear. Although man is not only and not so much an aggressor, he is also a creator, but sometimes he needs a release.”V. Sobkin: “I would not confuse this crowd with a carnival ritual and carnival action, where there is a clear social vertical, where there is a king and a jester, etc. This is a completely different structure. And when we call everything a crowd, it means we don’t see what is in front of our eyes. But before us is a completely different social manifestation, which has nothing to do with the carnival. It can only be finalized in carnival rituals. But if this turns into some kind of expression of protest, then the action of removing symbols begins, turning over those symbols that were previously at the top. But I wouldn’t call this a carnival.” D. Orlov: “I would like to make the remark that, firstly, the current carnival in Venice and the carnival in Brazil are qualitatively different, and secondly, carnival, by its origin, is a rather archaic form of self-expression. Of course, 300 years ago this was an uncontrollable crowd. Those institutions and forms of behavior that developed there were over time sanctified by tradition and the carnival underwent significant changes. And once upon a time, the carnival stood in the same row as the Dance of St. Vitus, and the search for the country of Kakania, and mass flagellation.”V. Sobkin: “But note that carnival is a laughter culture, hysterically laughing. There is nothing funny here.” A. Nazaretyan: “Let us remember in what circumstances this happened then, during famine, etc.. A crowd is a specific concept, there is a classification of crowds and the mechanisms of their transformation are described: how the Dance of St. Vitus or the same aggressive crowd can arise from a carnival, or a money-grubbing mob, or mass panic. This is all described in detail. Therefore, it is wrong to say that this is a different phenomenon. It’s a crowd, we just have to see different varieties and variations of the crowd.” Psychology is not the crowd When, during a multimedia press conference, specialists were shown the second story and photographs from the square near the Kievsky railway station, their assessments changed. Alexander Tkhostov doubted whether it was a crowd at all. In his opinion, it was more likely that these were people who had calculated and thought about everything, since they prepared weapons, planned the place of the fight in advance and gathered there. On December 15, at the Kievsky station there was not a spontaneous crowd, but organized groups, experts say. There were no spontaneous actions, as in the case of a crowd. There was obviously illegal activity. Caucasians and nationalist-minded youth went there with weapons, they were waiting for certain events and were ready to commit illegal actions. There was also a third group - onlookers. “This has always been the case,” stated Alexander Tkhostov. - “Bread and circuses” is a need known since the times of ancient Rome. Look at blood, violence, murder - this is also in a person, no matter how disgusting it looks.” “There are not three sides here,” academician Vladimir Sobkin is sure. - There was a fourth party here - riot police and police. She was tested for strength. The measure of admissibility and possibility was tested, where this fourth side would go. This is the main test of conflict. This is a very important point." This means that there were real organizers behind these events, the experts concluded. Valery Krasnov expressed doubt about the effective control of the crowd: “Some kind of call, a spark of motivation, a push can be given from the outside, but then the crowd is no longer predictable.” He was surprised by the words of one of the Dagestan government officials, who called on Caucasian youth to “act with mountain methods” in response to aggressive actions. “This shows that society has degraded,” said the psychologist. - Mountain customs require a high level of culture. People have always lived in the Caucasus, observing laws and moral principles. And such words are a simple appeal to the lower strata that ignites the crowd. To the animal instincts of the crowd. It amazes me that people in authority call for action, choosing not the best in culture, but the worst. This is a call to the base layers of the human psyche. What did he want to say? Lynching, that’s what he called for.” Krasnov also believes that society is not entirely healthy, but at the same time “everyone is silent about the ills of society.” “We live in an era of change, change in Europe. Many omissions are associated with the policies of many states associated with political correctness inflated to the limit - when everyone is silent about the ills of society, about the difficulties of adaptation of immigrants, trying not to notice clearly ugly phenomena. , if they are somehow ethnically colored.” Hakob Nazaretyan emphasized the need to clearly distinguish between where the crowd is and where it is not. In the first case (at Manezhnaya) there was a crowd and there it was possible and necessary to use specific irrational psychological techniques. In the second case (at the Kievsky station), when the group specially gathered, guys from the Caucasus arrived - we are no longer talking about a crowd. When a pogrom in a market is called a crowd, this is already an incorrect use of the term. If we treat a group like a crowd, we will get dysfunction. If we work with the crowd as a group, we will again get dysfunction. He referred to three principles of behavior in a crowd in order to avoid becoming a victim, which were developed by American instructors: 1) do not get into the crowd for free, 2) when getting into the crowd, predict how to get out of it, 3) if you get into the crowd by accident, imagine that you are at work.D. Orlov: “I wanted to add that we probably won’t see a pure “classical” crowd anymore, because we live in the era of multimedia communications. In both the case of December 11 and December 15, we see both the actions of the organizers and very large-scale campaigns on the Internet that encourage people to go there. Why did people come with weapons to the rally on December 15th, which was prevented by law enforcement agencies? Because they were motivated to do this on a number of websites and social networks. A very important task is to prevent aggression and fascistization of the crowd through preliminary work. Including the closure of radical sites. The actions of authorities and law enforcement agencies must move from the sphere of reaction to the sphere of prevention.” The Slavic element will suffice for now All experts agreed on one thing - events similar to those that occurred on December 11 and 15 will be repeated more than once. Alexander Tkhostov: “There are always and will be conflicts. They must be tracked and marked as normal. Everyone knew what they were talking about. Everyone was silent for a long time, no one accepted responsibility. If people in power had accepted responsibility, all of this could have been avoided.” “Here,” he said, “things appear that were not born at this moment, but existed and did not find manifestation - this is hatred, this is aggressiveness. You cannot treat the symptom. What we see is a symptom of the manifestation of a systemic disease of government and society, the absence of a social contract - what we are building, who has what responsibilities. Until this happens, there will be a war of all against all.” The main lesson to be learned from the December events is the awareness of a systemic error, Alexander Tkhostov is sure. There is growing dissonance in the relations between government and society, people are gnawing at the feeling of injustice, people are oppressed by the inability to express their opinion and receive a response to it.Prof. Krasnov: “When we talk about troubles in society, we are not talking about material troubles. Children in very wealthy families can also be disadvantaged. Because they were abandoned. Fathers and mothers spent all these 20 years devoting themselves to earning a living and saving. They forgot that the most valuable thing is family and loved ones. It is known from school studies among adolescents that in privileged institutions children are very disadvantaged and very vulnerable. They can also form a crowd. To do this, simple ideas are enough for them: nationalist, football and others, which they are guided by. They don’t have a broad horizon, so that they have curiosity about foreign cultures, so that they have France, Russia and China.” What happened was a political confrontation, noted academician Vladimir Sobkin. This is already an expression of political protest. It is necessary to determine who these people are, what social groups and political forces participated in it. “These young people are a very difficult generation,” he said. “Their parents lived through a difficult period associated with the collapse of the country and raised their children. These are children of disadvantaged families. Due to growing social differentiation, they do not see any prospects, social elevators or opportunities for themselves. This is a very serious matter. It is necessary to work with groups that feel and experience themselves as socially unsuccessful groups. In this grasping for an axe, a club, a bat, I see a way out of social failure and the hopelessness of social prospects." "The Manezhnaya Square scenario will be repeated as long as the Slavic element is enough. And then the territory of Russia will not be given to the Slavs,” predicts Professor Hakob Nazaretyan. To avoid such a scenario and the accompanying bloody scenes, according to the expert, information, demographic and other government programs are needed. “Xenophobia, which will certainly develop, aggression, nationalism, normal, natural nationalism, must be directed like atomic energy - from a bomb to a power plant.” Based on materials from RIA Novosti, 21.12.2010

In terms of controllability:

1. spontaneous - a crowd, the appearance and formation of which occurs independently, without the participation of specific individuals;
2. driven - a crowd that, from the very beginning, is formed under the influence of a certain individual, her.

By activity level:

• a passive (calm) crowd is characterized by a lack of emotional excitement;
• an active crowd is characterized by the presence of varying degrees of emotional arousal.

According to the nature of people's behavior:
1) a simple (occasional) crowd - a gathering of people formed on the basis of the desire to obtain information about an unexpected incident that they witnessed (a road accident, a fire, a fight, etc.). Such a crowd is usually formed from people who feel the need for thrills and impressions and unites up to several hundred people. It is not dangerous, but may cause interference and inconvenience. However, in special situations, such a crowd can turn into active, aggressive and even commit lynching;
2) expressive crowd - formed from people who jointly express strong feelings (joy, grief, anger, indignation, protest, etc.). Such a crowd may consist of fans of rock musicians, pop stars at their concerts, from among the spectators present at sports competitions, from lovers of thrills arising under the influence of gambling, drugs, participants in festive and funeral processions at the funerals of people who died as a result of accidents, disasters, etc. An extreme type of expressive crowd is an ecstatic crowd, characterized by a state of general ecstasy based on the effect of infection or under the influence of drugs (discos, mass religious processions, etc.);
3) conventional crowd - formed on the basis of interest in some pre-announced mass entertainment or spectacle. A conventional crowd usually consists of fans in a stadium who are not just fans of sports, but individuals who have feelings of affection for one of the teams. Such a crowd is only able to temporarily follow norms of behavior;
4) acting crowd - carries out actions regarding a specific object. Divided into:

• a) acquisitive crowd - characterized by the unleashing of the disordered immediate for the possession of any values. Such a crowd formed at a time of total shortage at trading enterprises when selling goods that were in great demand; at ticket offices selling tickets to stadiums, sports competitions, entertainment performances and means of transport. It can be provoked by authorities who ignore the vital interests of citizens or encroach on them. An extreme version of the acquisitive crowd are looters who will destroy food warehouses, apartments, rob the living and the dead in places of major disasters, natural disasters, and military operations;
• fleeing crowd - occurs in a state of panic when fleeing from a real or imaginary source of danger;
• rebel crowd - formed under the influence of unjust actions of the authorities on the basis of general indignation;
• aggressive crowd - characterized by the highest degree of emotional arousal, united by blind hatred of a specific object (statesman, religious or political movement, administrative structure). causes the greatest harm in cases where its actions acquire the character of mass riots (group excesses). It is characterized by the presence of illegal actions: beatings, pogroms, arson, etc.

The crowd is a very specific and extremely multifaceted phenomenon. At the same time, summarizing the ideas available today, we can say that it usually includes:

• - public, which refers to large groups of people formed on the basis of common interests, often without any organization, but always focused on situations that affect common interests and involve the joint participation of those gathered;
• – contact, outwardly unorganized groups of people acting extremely emotionally and unanimously;
• - associations of people that make up numerous amorphous groups and for the most part do not have a clear organization and direct interaction with each other, but are connected by some common more or less constant interest or mood (common hobbies, mass migrations, mass patriotic or pseudo-patriotic frenzy, etc.) d.) (Moscovici S., 2007).

Based on the type of dominant emotion and behavioral characteristics, several types of crowds are usually distinguished.

The simplest and most common type of crowd is random (occasional) crowd. It occurs in connection with some unexpected event, for example, a traffic accident, fire, fight, etc. Usually a random crowd is formed by so-called “onlookers”, i.e. persons who experience a certain need for new experiences and thrills. The main emotion in such cases is people's curiosity. A random crowd can gather quickly and disperse just as quickly. Usually it is small and can unite from several tens to hundreds of people, although there are also isolated cases when a random crowd consisted of several thousand people.

Another common type of crowd is conventional crowd(a crowd whose behavior is based on explicit or implied norms and rules of behavior - conventions). Such a crowd gathers on the occasion of a pre-announced event, for example, a rally, political demonstration, sports competition, concert, etc. In such cases, people are usually motivated by a well-directed interest and must follow norms of behavior appropriate to the nature of the event. Naturally, the behavior of spectators at a symphony orchestra concert will not coincide with the behavior of admirers of a rock star during her performance and will differ radically from the behavior of fans at a football or hockey match.

As social practice shows, a conventional crowd can unite many thousands of people. For example, at one of the concerts of the famous American singer Tina Turner, 147 thousand spectators gathered, which gave reason to include this mass show business event in the Guinness Book of Records. Another example of the large size of a conventional crowd is the political demonstration on the Garden Ring in the spring of 1991 in Moscow, in which, according to Moscow police, about 450 thousand people took part. However, the absolute record in this regard, apparently, should be considered the Catholic mass celebrated by Pope John Paul II in 1995 in the suburbs of Manila, where more than 6 million Filipino believers gathered.

The third type of crowd is expressive crowd, characterized by the special power of mass manifestation of emotions and feelings (love, joy, sadness, sadness, grief, indignation, anger, hatred, etc.). An expressive crowd is usually the result of a transformation of a casual or conventional crowd, when people, in connection with certain events they have witnessed and under the influence of their development, are seized by a general emotional mood, expressed collectively, often rhythmically. The most typical examples of an expressive crowd are football or hockey fans chanting slogans in support of “their” teams, participants in political rallies and demonstrations expressing their support for the policies of the ruling regime or protest.

Public holiday demonstrations (for example, carnival processions in Rio de Janeiro) or funeral processions can be expressive in nature. The most striking and impressive examples of the mass manifestation of grief and sorrow were the funerals of I. Stalin, the religious leader of Iran Ayatollah Khomeini, and the leader of the Workers' Party of Korea Kim Il Sung, in which many hundreds of thousands of people took part.

In some situations, an expressive crowd can transform into its extreme form - ecstatic crowd that type of crowd when the people who form it work themselves into a frenzy in joint prayer, ritual or other actions. Most often this happens to young people during rock concerts, to believers, and representatives of certain religious movements or religious sects. For example, Shia Muslims, during the annual mourning ceremonies “Shahsey-Wahsey” in memory of their imam al-Hussein and his brother al-Hasan, organize mass processions and performances, accompanied by collective rhythmic blows of chains on the back or blows with fists to the chest. During joint prayers, “Pentecostals”—representatives of one of the Protestant movements, who are not accidentally called “shakers”—bring themselves to a state of mass religious exaltation during joint prayers.

All three types of crowds we considered (random, conventional and expressive with their subspecies - ecstatic) belong to passive types. In this regard, it should be noted that for the first time the concepts of passivity and activity were introduced into the description of the crowd by the Russian scientist D. D. Bessonov, who proposed in his dissertation research “Mass crimes in general and military criminal law” to consider the crowd as expectant (passive) and active (active ). Active (or active) crowd, having a pronounced emotional charge of various directions (depending on the circumstances), most researchers consider it as the most important type of crowd, taking into account the social danger of some of its subtypes.

Considered the most dangerous aggressive crowd representing a collection of people seeking destruction, destruction and even murder. At the same time, the people who make up the aggressive crowd do not have a rational basis for their actions and, being in a state of frustration, often direct their blind anger or hatred towards completely random objects that have nothing to do with what is happening or with the rioters themselves.

An aggressive crowd relatively rarely arises on its own. Most often it is the result of the transformation of a casual, conventional or expressive crowd. Thus, football fans, annoyed and angry at the loss of their favorite team, can easily turn into an aggressive crowd that begins to destroy everything around, break benches in the stadium, break the glass of nearby houses and store windows, beat up random passers-by, etc. It is no coincidence that in many countries the football fields of stadiums are surrounded by special iron bars, fans of opposing teams are seated in isolated sectors, and reinforced police and even security forces are on duty at matches.

An example of such actions by an aggressive crowd can be cited during the final of the 1995 Polish Cup in football. After the final whistle of the referee, a real massacre unfolded at the stadium; Legia fans, “to celebrate,” began beating the fans of the GKS team from Katowice and the police who were protecting them. Stones, iron rods, stakes, and boards from benches were used. The fight lasted an hour and a half. One hundred police officers were seriously injured, 18 police cars were burned and damaged, and 10 horses were injured. The stadium itself looked as if a tornado had passed through it: many hundreds of seats were destroyed, tens of meters of metal rod fencing were dismantled, all advertising boards were destroyed, the sector where the fans from Katowice were was completely destroyed.

An aggressive crowd can be formed by numerous expressive spectators gathered for a concert of their favorite rock star. It is known, for example, that many concerts of the popular American rock and roll performer Elvis Presley ended in mass acts of completely senseless vandalism on the part of his admirers. Being in a state of extreme emotional excitement, they destroyed the seats and equipment of the auditoriums, and started scuffles and fights with the police.

The social reality of many countries, including Russia, provides many examples when participants in initially peaceful political demonstrations, due to certain circumstances, turned into an aggressive crowd. A striking example of such a transformation in conditions of social tension can be seen in the tragic events of the celebration of May Day in Moscow in 1993. Then demonstrators moving along Leninsky Prospekt, encountering police who blocked their passage towards Gagarin Square, stormed the police barricade made up of trucks . At the same time, demonstrators used sticks, stakes, iron rods, threw stones and bricks at the police, and set fire to vehicles. During the ensuing carnage, a riot policeman was killed and dozens of demonstrators and police officers were seriously injured.

Another subspecies of the active crowd is panicky crowd- a gathering of people gripped by a feeling of fear, a desire to avoid some imaginary or real danger.

Panic is a socio-psychological phenomenon of the manifestation of a group affect of fear. Moreover, it should be borne in mind that the primary fear is individual fear, which, however, acts as a prerequisite, the basis for group fear, for the emergence of panic. The main feature of any panic behavior of people is the desire for self-salvation. At the same time, the resulting fear blocks people’s ability to rationally assess the situation that has arisen and prevents the mobilization of volitional resources to organize a joint response to the emerging danger.

Panic can occur under various circumstances: during accidents, fires, natural disasters, terrorist attacks, in a combat situation, etc. Its occurrence is facilitated by a number of conditions of a social, socio-psychological, psychological and physiological nature. In unorganized, weakly cohesive groups, panic can be provoked by even minimal danger. However, under certain conditions, an organized group, for example a military unit, can turn into a panicked crowd. The history of numerous wars shows that the panic that arose in the ranks of one army or another is the turning point psychologically from which defeat often begins.

General Charles de Gaulle described the French panic that arose after the Germans broke through the front in 1940: “On all the roads coming from the north, convoys of unfortunate refugees moved in an endless stream. Among them were many unarmed military personnel. They belonged to units converted to disorderly flight as a result of the advance of German tanks over the past days... Seeing panic-stricken people, a disorderly retreating army, hearing stories about the outrageous impudence of the enemy, I felt boundless indignation growing in me" (Gaulle S. de, 1960).

The scale of the panic has no boundaries. It is capable of covering people gathered both in a limited space and scattered over a vast territory. Tragic experience shows that when panic occurs in a limited space, for example, in a theater, restaurant, stadium, people die not so much from the reasons that gave rise to panic actions (for example, a fire), but from the crush that arises in such cases. This is exactly what happened during the fires at a youth disco in Grenoble (France), where dozens of young people were crushed and trampled by a crowd at the only exit, and at a stadium in Sheffield (England), when most of the dead were simply crushed by the crowd on the protective nets.

On November 28, 1942, in Boston (USA), a fire broke out in the building of one of the nightclubs. It was apparently caused by a spark from a broken light bulb. This spark hit an artificial palm tree, and the flames began to quickly spread throughout the club. People panicked and rushed to the exits. But there were few exits in the building - and there was pandemonium. Some people were burned and many were crushed to death. 491 people died. In all of US history, there have never been fires with so many casualties. That is why many researchers believe that the emergence of a panic crowd is dangerous primarily because of its consequences.

Various types of economic panic that arise during periods of economic crises pose a significant social danger to society. Here we can distinguish: stock exchange panic (panic actions of thousands of investors dumping their quickly depreciating shares for sale), currency panic (mass sale of cash currency with a sharp drop in its exchange rate), food panic (manifested in the form of mass purchases “in reserve” of certain food products).

It should be noted that of the above forms of economic panic, the most common, apparently, is a food panic, which is characteristic, however, mainly for countries with a low or relatively low level of financial standing of the population. Usually its onset is preceded by rumors or official reports about an upcoming increase in food prices. Therefore, the population begins to buy primarily essential products (salt, sugar, flour, soap), as well as matches. For example, the statement of the Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR N.I. Ryzhkov at a meeting of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR in the spring of 1991 about the need to increase prices for bread and bakery products led to the fact that in Moscow, pasta completely disappeared from grocery stores as a result of mass purchases, In just a few days, two months' worth of regular city salt sales were sold.

Among the subtypes of the active crowd we can distinguish money-grubbing crowd which is a collection of people who are in direct and disorderly conflict with each other due to the possession of certain values ​​that are not enough to satisfy the needs or desires of all participants in this conflict.

The acquisitive crowd has many faces. It can also be formed by buyers in stores when selling goods of high demand when there is an obvious shortage; and passengers trying to occupy a limited number of seats on a departing bus or train; and ticket buyers at ticket offices before the start of any entertainment event; and depositors of a bankrupt bank demanding a return of the money they invested; and persons looting material assets or goods from stores and warehouses during riots.

It is known from history that in November-December 1917 a wave of so-called “wine pogroms” swept through Petrograd, when numerous crowds of citizens robbed the city’s wine warehouses. Massive mob robberies of shops and warehouses took place in many cities of Ukraine and Belarus in the summer of 1941, after they were abandoned by retreating Soviet troops. One can recall newsreels from the Civil War period with hundreds of “bagmen” attacking a train arriving at the station in order to take seats at least on the roofs of its cars, or documentary footage from our time from the film by S. Govorukhin “You Can’t Live Like This,” where the crowd “storms "a brewery store in one of the Volga cities.

A striking example of the actions of a money-grubbing mob with serious political consequences are the events that occurred on the evening of November 9, 1969 in East Berlin. Then about a thousand people gathered at the Wall checkpoint on Borholmer Strasse, wanting to cross the border. Three hours later, the pressure of the crowd, which reached 20 thousand people, became irresistible. The border guards were forced to raise the barrier and let everyone through to visit West Berlin without any formalities. Other checkpoints were also opened. These events, which went down in German history as the “night of meetings,” led to the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Some researchers of the crowd phenomenon highlight the rebel crowd as an indispensable attribute of all revolutionary events. It was precisely such a crowd that destroyed French aristocrats during the French bourgeois revolution, burned landowners' estates during peasant uprisings in Russia, freed revolutionaries from prison, etc. The textbook example of a rebel crowd was the mutiny on the battleship Potemkin. The actions of the rebel crowd are specific and aimed at immediately changing the situation, which in some way does not suit its participants.

There are other points of view on existing types and subtypes of crowds and their socio-psychological characteristics.

a large group of people largely devoid of structure, united by an emotional mood or subject of attention, but at the same time, as a rule, not united by clearly recognized common intentions and plans, much less a single goal and clear ideas of how it can be achieved. In modern psychology of large groups, there is the following, essentially generally accepted classification - a typology of different types of crowds as a specific community of people: occasional, conventional, expressive, active. If we talk about an occasional crowd, then the decisive factor in the formation of this type of community is a certain “opportunity”, an occasion in connection with which people gather together in the logic of outside observers, united by an unexpected reason for curiosity, interest and desire to learn about some social phenomenon more than those who are beyond the line of eyewitnesses to the events know. As for the conventional crowd, this type of community arises in connection with some information about some upcoming mass event (for example, a key football match, a pre-announced concert, etc.). In fact, this community, for a short time of its existence, carries out its life activities according to the scheme of a rather unsettled convention regarding equally rigidly undefined norms of behavior, determined by the very general ideas about the rules according to which it is customary for people who find themselves participants in events that have a specific behavior to behave. social specifics. An expressive crowd is traditionally understood as such a large group, which is characterized by the fact that it exhibits a common, essentially unified attitude towards some event, phenomenon, and at the peak of the expression of this attitude turns into an ecstatic crowd, that is, a crowd in a state of mass ecstasy (a similar state often occurs in conditions of rhythmically maintained excitement - concerts, for example, of “hard rock” ensembles, mass religious rituals, mass sessions of supposedly healing hypnosis, etc.). Finally, an active crowd, the distinctive feature of which is some kind of joint action, a kind of active and at the same time unbridled impulse, a common activity clearly demonstrated by its members. At the same time, those researchers who attempted to give a meaningfully comprehensive typology of various types of crowds emphasized that “the active crowd..., in turn, includes the following subtypes - a) an aggressive crowd, united by blind hatred of a certain object (lynching, beating of religious , political opponents, etc. d.); b) a panicked crowd spontaneously fleeing from a real or imaginary source of danger; c) an acquisitive crowd entering into a disorderly direct conflict for the possession of any valuables (money, seats in outgoing transport, etc.); d) an insurrectionary crowd, in which people are united by a common, just indignation at the actions of the authorities, it often constitutes an attribute of revolutionary upheavals, and the timely introduction of an organizing principle into it can elevate a spontaneous mass uprising to a conscious act of political struggle" (A. P. Nazaretyan, Yu. A . Shirkovin). In addition to the fact that, in fact, the lack of structure of such a type of community as a crowd, and, as a rule, a sufficient blurring of the initial goals of such an association of people, lead to an easy change in types of crowd, one cannot help but notice that the above stated and at the same time practically The generally accepted classification of crowd types is obviously imperfect. First of all, such a conclusion is based on the fact that there is no single classification basis here and therefore, for example, a conventional and active crowd can be at the same time an expressive crowd, and, say, an occasional crowd can simultaneously be a panic crowd (one of the varieties of an active crowd ), etc.

The French researcher G. Lebon identified a number of patterns that are characteristic of almost any crowd and determine the behavior of its members.

First of all, the effect of depersonification and weakening of ego control is clearly observed in the crowd: “...whatever the individuals who compose it, whatever their lifestyle, occupation, character or mind, their mere transformation into a crowd is enough to , so that they would form a kind of collective soul, causing them to feel, think and act completely differently than each of them would think, act and feel individually. ...

It is not difficult to notice how different an isolated individual is from an individual in a crowd, but it is much more difficult to determine the reasons for this difference. In order to at least somewhat clarify these reasons for ourselves, we must recall one of the provisions of modern psychology, namely, that the phenomena of the unconscious play an outstanding role not only in organic life, but also in the functions of the mind. Our conscious actions arise from the substratum of the unconscious, created especially by the influences of heredity. In this substratum are contained the countless hereditary remnants that constitute the actual souls of the race. ...

These general qualities of character, governed by the unconscious, and existing in almost the same degree in the majority of normal individuals of the race, are united together in a crowd. In the collective soul the intellectual faculties of individuals and hence their individuality disappear; ... and unconscious qualities take over.

It is precisely this combination of ordinary qualities in a crowd that explains to us why a crowd can never perform actions that require an elevated mind. Decisions concerning common interests, made by a meeting of even famous people in the field of various specialties, differ little from decisions made by a meeting of fools, since in both cases there are not any outstanding qualities combined, but only ordinary ones found in everyone. In a crowd, only stupidity can accumulate, not intelligence.”1

Despite the fact that G. Le Bon interprets the problem of the individual and collective unconscious in a very simplified manner and his views are strongly influenced by biological determinism, in general his conclusions about both the almost inevitable depersonification and depersonalization of the individual in the crowd, and about the destructiveness of the crowd as a whole are completely fair. Moreover, as the practice of organizational psychology shows, in particular, even highly structured large groups of professionals, strictly speaking, who are not a crowd, often turn out to be completely ineffective in solving problems that require a creative and innovative approach. It is no coincidence that techniques for practical socio-psychological work with this kind of communities are, as a rule, based on their defragmentation according to one principle or another, followed by the search for a solution in small groups formed in this way.

G. Le Bon also clearly identified a number of socio-psychological mechanisms that mediate the behavior of an individual in a crowd: “The appearance of these new special traits, characteristic of a crowd and, moreover, not found in individual individuals included in its composition, is due to various reasons. The first of these is that the individual in a crowd acquires, thanks only to his numbers, a consciousness of irresistible force, and this consciousness allows him to succumb to instincts that he never gives free rein to when he is alone. In a crowd, he is less inclined to curb these instincts, because the crowd is anonymous and does not bear responsibility.”2 In essence, we are talking about deindividuation, which in modern social psychology usually means a loss of fear of external evaluation and, at a minimum, a decrease in the level of self-awareness. As numerous studies have shown, the degree of deindividuation clearly correlates with anonymity, due in particular to the size of the crowd. Thus, for example, “in an analysis of 21 cases in which someone in the presence of a crowd threatened to jump from a skyscraper or from a bridge, Leon Mann found that when the crowd was small and illuminated by daylight, then, as a rule, no attempts were made to provoke suicide. But when the size of the crowd or the darkness of the night provided anonymity, people usually egged on the suicide, mocking him in every possible way. Brian Mullen reports similar effects in lynch mobs: the larger the gang, the more its members lose their sense of self-awareness and the more willing they are to commit atrocities such as burning, mauling, or dismembering the victim. For each of the above examples... it is characteristic that the fear of evaluation drops sharply. Since “everyone did this,” they explain their behavior by the current situation, and not by their own free choice.”1

The second reason, which G. Le Bon points out, “contagiousness or contagion, also contributes to the formation of special properties in the crowd and determines their direction... In the crowd, every feeling, every action is contagious, and, moreover, to such an extent that the individual very easily brings sacrificing one’s personal interests to the collective interest.”2 In modern social psychology, social contagion is understood as “... the process of transferring an emotional state from one individual to another at the psychophysiological level of contact, in addition to the actual semantic interaction or in addition to it.” At the same time, “...infection often leads to the disintegration of formal and informal normative role structures and the degeneration of an organized interacting group into one or another type of crowd”3. A classic example of this kind is the transformation into a crowd under the influence of panic of such a rigidly organized group as a military unit. The infection mechanism is actively used within the framework of the so-called “dirty political technologies” during mass events, when groups of fake provocateurs deliberately push the crowd to take certain actions, from chanting certain slogans to mass pogroms.

The third, most important, from the point of view of G. Le Bon, the reason “...determining the appearance in individuals in a crowd of such special properties that may not occur in them in an isolated position is susceptibility to suggestion. ... He is no longer aware of his actions, and, like a hypnotized person, some abilities disappear, while others reach an extreme degree of tension. Under the influence of suggestion, such a subject will perform certain actions with uncontrollable swiftness; in a crowd, this uncontrollable impetuosity manifests itself with even greater force, since the influence of suggestion, the same for everyone, is increased through reciprocity.”4 This effect “in its pure form” is often observed and purposefully used in the practice of religious sects, all kinds of “healers”, “miracle workers”, “psychics”, etc.

G. Le Bon especially emphasized the tendency towards intolerance and authoritarianism inherent in the crowd. From his point of view, “the crowd knows only simple and extreme feelings; The crowd accepts or rejects every opinion, idea or belief instilled in it and treats them either as absolute truths or as equally absolute errors. ... The crowd expresses the same authoritarianism in its judgments as it does intolerance. An individual can tolerate contradiction and challenge, but a crowd can never tolerate it. In public meetings the slightest dissent on the part of any speaker immediately provokes furious shouts and violent curses in the crowd, followed by action and expulsion of the speaker if he insists on his own. Although G. Lebon uses the word “authority,” it is quite obvious that, psychologically, we are talking specifically about authoritarianism.

It should be added that, with all its inherent unpredictability, the crowd, due to all the listed features, is inclined almost exclusively to destructive and destructive actions. As you know, the reason for the riots and pogroms that took place in the center of Moscow in the summer of 2002 was the loss of the Russian national team in the match with the Japanese national team at the World Cup. However, it is difficult to imagine that if the outcome of this match was favorable for the Russian team, a drunken crowd of shaven-headed “patriots” would have staged a merry carnival to celebrate, after which they would have peacefully gone home. It can almost certainly be argued that mass unrest would still have taken place, although perhaps not in such a militant form. The history of various eras and societies convincingly testifies: any attempts to flirt with the crowd and use it to achieve political, ideological and other goals almost inevitably lead to tragic and often irreversible consequences. Bringing this idea to the consciousness of subjects of social management at all levels is the direct professional responsibility of a practical social psychologist.

At the same time, since a crowd of one type or another is an objective factor in the life of modern society, the problems of interaction with it and influence on it cannot in any way be ignored in socio-psychological practice.

A practical social psychologist, professionally oriented to working with crowds, firstly, must psychologically competently determine the type of crowd, its direction, degree of activity, potential or already nominated leaders, and secondly, must own and be able to implement the most effective technologies of constructive manipulation in working with spontaneously emerging large communities of people.

CROWD

the main subject of spontaneous behavior; a contact, outwardly unorganized community, characterized by a high degree of conformity of its constituent individuals, acting extremely emotionally and unanimously. Types of crowd: 1) casual, 2) expressive, 3) “conventional,” 4) active crowd. (D.V. Olshansky, p.426)

Examples: a street crowd watching a mannequin in a store window; a traffic accident, the capture of an offender, the appearance of a celebrity, dissatisfaction with the actions of a passing person, etc.).

Main features:

There are only moments

very loose organization, no unity

attention to an object is temporary

Conditioned crowd

Examples: spectators at an exciting baseball game

Main features:

behavior is expressed in established and ordered forms

3. Active, aggressive

Examples: revolutionary crowds, lynch mobs

Main features:

presence of a goal towards which the crowd's activity is directed

spontaneous and lives in the moment

not a society or cultural group

acts as a non-moral group

Having no set of definitions or rules to guide its behavior and acting on impulse, the crowd is fickle, suggestible and irresponsible

An active crowd is capable of violence and cruelty. Bloomer believes that under certain conditions an entire nation can become like an active crowd if its representatives find themselves absorbed by one exciting object. Mutual excitation due to a circular reaction (a circular reaction is the main form of mutual excitation, in which the reaction from one individual reproduces the excitation of the others) reaches such a high degree that all internal differences recede. To stop an active crowd, it is necessary to switch the attention of its members to different objects.

The active crowd is divided into the following important forms:

Gathering,

Rebellious (rebel) crowd

Fighting crowd

Acquisitive crowd (crowd of consumers)

4. Expressive

Examples: religious sects; group dances; rituals; participation in the funeral of a celebrity

Main features:

Excitement is expressed by physical movement as a form of stress relief, not directed towards a goal

Self-focus, introversion

The tendency for expressive behavior to become rhythmic

The expressive crowd usually manifests itself in collective dances, which allow participants, through the experience of ecstasy, to obtain physical and emotional release from the disturbing meanings of everyday life, the influence of which decreases sharply over time. At the same time, the importance of one’s own self increases, from which individuals experience satisfaction and pleasure, the joy of life.

A brief assessment of the expressive crowd and the acting

In both crowds the individual is stripped of much of his repertoire of normal conscious behavior and becomes compliant, pliant in the crucible of collective excitation. With the destruction of his previous personal organization, the individual must develop new forms of behavior and crystallize some new personal organization, moving in new and different directions. In this sense, herd behavior is a means by which the destruction of social organization and personal structure is carried out, and at the same time a potential project for the emergence of new forms of behavior and personality. The active crowd represents one of the alternative lines for such reorganization - the development of aggressive behavior in the direction of targeted social change. We will see that this line of reorganization leads to the emergence of a political system. The expressive crowd represents another alternative - the release of inner tension in behavior that tends to become sacred and marked by deep inner feeling. It can be seen as leading to the emergence of a religious system of behavior.