Personal Development Resources of Modern Russian Society: a Retrospective and Prospective Problem

The purpose of the study is to research the social significance of the individual as the most important resource of social development. The methodological basis of the research.  The author considers the concept of personality, combining philosophical and sociological approaches, identifies its main semantic aspects, while relying on the ideas and theoretical developments of the largest social thinkers of the classical and modern periods. Research results. The article analyzes the attitude of society to the individual in a diachronic cross-section, examines in detail the changes in this attitude in various historical epochs – in a pre-modern society, industrial and modern developed, which has gone beyond industrial development to post-industrialism. The article presents the results of the analysis of the characteristics of the creative orientation of the individual, traces the connection of their formation with the humanistic paradigm of education, which provides the possibility of free and comprehensive development of individual abilities, satisfaction of all individual educational needs. Prospects of the study. The necessity of studying the dependence of the level of development of society, including modern Russian, on the effectiveness of the formation of creative personal qualities in the younger generation on a mass scale.