The dissertation deals with the study of peculiarities of violence manifestations in modern society and ways of minimizing and mitigating its destructive power. The use of a substantive approach to the definition of "violence" allowed it to be interpreted as an attribute of social relations in which some individuals or social groups and classes apply to other coercion, directed at their will, causing physical, mental or moral harm to another person by means of use of force or threat its application in order to motivate the object of influence on a certain behavior, to certain actions, and also stigmatized by society as "necessary" and at the same time "unwanted" use of force.
The existing typology of social forms of violence (by the subject and direction, according to the fields of action and depending on the presence of the subject of action (actor) and in accordance with the nature of social expression) does not allow to adequately reveal the nature of the impact of violence on social transformations. In the dissertation research the classification, based on the orientation on social norms and rules is proposed, and the following forms of violence are defined: "mythical", "transcendental" and "rational". This typology fixes the change in the forms of violence not from the standpoint of stages, in which the transition from one stage involves the completion of the previous, but from the standpoint of preserving the features of one in all subsequent. It fixes the dominant of certain features in certain stages of social development, while others are in a recessive state, preserving the potency that, under certain conditions, becomes an act.
"Mythical" violence - a form of violence, characterized by a tendency to negate specific social norms and rules. "Transcendental" violence - a form of violence aimed at the integration of society on the basis of impudent perception of newly established norms and rules based on faith and committed through sacralization of violent actions. The period of social stability is characterized by the domination of "rational" violence. The rationalization of social processes consists in their theoretical understanding and practical reflection in the form of laws, charters, declarations or customary law.
The linear dimension of social transformations involves an analysis of the change in its essential characteristics, in particular the content and forms of violence, based on the following criteria: duration (social time), substrate, orientation, function, level of violence, its effectiveness and result.
The subjective analysis of violence was carried out on the basis of research on the activities of social agents of violence. The last, in contrast to the objectivist interpretation of the individual as a subject of violence, whose activities are subordinated to models, structures, rules, have the ability to implement systems of practices for changing the social structure, mastering the social space. The dissertation also reveals the specifics of passionary activity as social agents of violence. It is emphasized that this activity is not limited to the ethnic system, but extends to all other systems of society. During the period of social stability, the activity of passionarians is regulated by a legal system that stigmatizes them as a threat to their own functioning, but transformational processes actualize their social significance, due to their inherent features: non-tilt orientation of passionary activities, lack of self-censorship, low self-control, prevalence of impulse to creativity and transformation over the instinct of self-preservation.
Transitions from one dominant form of violence to another are carried out in the form of a jump and involve the availability of appropriate instruments of influence. Such instruments are: provocation in the transition from "rational" to "mythical", stigmatization of the victim - from "mythical" to "transcendental" and legitimacy - from "transcendental" to "rational" violence.
