The Meaning of the Boundary Phenomenon and Its Social Transformation during the First Wave of COVID-19 and Lockdown in Russia

Abstract

The Russian lockdown 2020 introduced due to the COVID-19 pandemic pro­duced a number of changes not only in the public health, economic and justice system, but also in the sphere of understanding by society of its own place in so­cial reality. The article deals with the question of transformations in social under­standing of physical space. The authors primarily emphasize the changes of boundary phenomenon in the public perception. During the beginning of COVID-19 pandemic, in the conditions of information deficit and physical clo­sure of borders, Russia found itself in the situation, when the lack of precise knowledges about the events, associated with the global pandemic led to the degradation of established ideas about the surrounding space. The purpose of this article is to highlight the key factors, which led to the qualitative changes in the boundary understanding on the level of the social existence. For the achieve­ment of this goal the authors consecutively solve the following problems: to ana­lyze the types of the boundaries, that have been existing in the public discourse before the lockdown; to follow the process of the new boundaries-understanding genesis and to highlight the main media-factors, that led to the transformations of the boundary-phenomenon in the modern society. The methodical system of this research bases on the analyses of the narrations, existing in the Russian soci­ety short before the lockdown (spring 2020). The special attention was paid to the media background, that had constructed world view of an individual at the pan­demic’s beginning. The authors conclude, that the lockdown not only restricted the physical space for a human, but also influenced in the qualitative way on the human’s spiritual and emotional space perception. From the line, dividing two political entities, the boundary turned into the special bastion, whose func­tion consisted in, first, separation from the unknown space, where there was the danger of COVID-19, second, physic protection from this danger.