The problems of Russian national identity sharply aggravated in connection with the collapse of the USSR and in subsequent years in connection with the search for the Russian people of their place in the new Russia, their way in the world. In order to find their worthy place in the family of the peoples of the world and Russia, Russians are trying to realize their Self, their Way, their Mission. And in order to engage in self-awareness of the Self, it is necessary to “look” into your recent past, say, for several centuries, to understand the dynamics of your development. And this process of self-deepening into the Self of the people, the Self of culture, the Self of Russian society has begun. Thus, at the 18th World Russian People's Council, the "Declaration of Russian Identity" was adopted, which defines some framework and directions for the search for Russian national identity. The "Declaration of Russian Identity" prompted many prominent representatives of the Russian people to discuss this painful issue for the Russian nation. In the reverse perspective, the Russian people can find many answers to the sore point of Russian national identity, many solutions to the challenges of today.
The path of finding oneself through turning “inside oneself” is also indicated in another source of Russian thought: “Russian Doctrine”. In this interesting document, the authors try to answer the current issues of the Russian agenda and outline the main directions of the Russian revival (in economics, politics, art, education, science, state building, etc.). The "Russian Doctrine" contains a methodology for acquiring a Russian national identity. Thus, the document notes: “The revival and new ascent of Russian civilization will not begin without a “return to itself”. You need to look for your own, organic. You have to go from your own self. And only then will we (Russia) be recognized as a full-fledged player, when we stop focusing on this idea of the need for recognition. Moreover, it is precisely in our otherness, unlikeness to others, that is, in our civilizational independence, that is the guarantee of our possible acquisitions and success on the paths of History. The above and other documents testify that the process of understanding Russian identity is underway, but it is slow, intermittent, sometimes with great tension and breakdowns. The process of acquiring a national identity by Russians causes not only support, but also strong opposition from a certain part of society, oriented towards Western values and idols. The fact that the process is underway is evidenced by discussions not only in the patriotic and Russian national press, but also in moderate publications, individual programs of central television, and other media. For example, a discussion titled "What do Russians want?" in Literaturnaya Gazeta.
Previously, officials were afraid of the “Russian question” like fire. Now much has changed: a number of statesmen speak frankly about the Russian way, Russian consciousness and Russian culture. The question of national identity was raised especially deeply by V.V. Putin. Speaking on September 19, 2013 at a meeting of the Valdai International Discussion Club in the Novgorod Region, V.V. Putin linked the acquisition of national identity with the formation of a national idea. He noted: “Historical creativity is needed, a synthesis of the best national experience and ideas, understanding of our cultural, spiritual, political traditions from different points of view with the understanding that this is not something frozen, given forever, but this is a living organism. Only then will our identity be based on a solid foundation, facing the future and not the past.”
Comprehension of one's national identity is closely connected with deepening into Russianness. Understanding one's self is impossible without referring to the self of the people, the self of Russian culture, the self of Russian society, the self of the Russian state. The authors of the monograph “Russians. The ABC of Russian National Self-Consciousness”, speaking about the following: “To be Russian, one must recognize oneself as Russian. This is a clear watershed. For several centuries of living together in Russia, many people have ceased to differ from Russians in their culture and language. But they retained the self-consciousness and name of their people and consider themselves, for example, Chuvash or Mordvins. This is not only their right, it is worthy of respect, since ethnic diversity with a common cultural core is a great value, although it complicates many social relations. The peculiarity of Russian identity is that representatives of other nations can recognize themselves as Russians, feel comfortable in Russian culture, and build the Russian world. Many representatives of other ethnic groups in many mental characteristics do not differ from ethnic Russians for a long time. They are quite deeply integrated into the Russian world, they feel comfortable in the Russian statehood and society.
Basic Values form the basis of a national identity. What values are basic at the present stage for the Russian people? This question was raised at the XV World Russian People's Council, which adopted the document: "Basic values - the basis of national identity." In this important source for the Russian national consciousness, the basic values are named: faith, justice, peace, freedom, unity, morality, dignity, honesty, patriotism, solidarity, mercy, family, cultures and national traditions, the good of man, hard work, self-restraint and sacrifice. The formation of these basic values among the younger generation, their cultivation in society is the most important pedagogical and social task. This task should unite everyone: social scientists, politicians, ideologists, and government officials. All social institutions, public organizations, mass media should be engaged in the formation of a positive attitude towards these basic values. Otherwise, the Russian people will remain a people without solidarity, not knowing where to go, what to do and why. The problem of basic values should be raised more acutely and addressed at all levels of government, society, culture and business.
At present, many basic values in the Russian mind are blurred. The Russian consciousness is not deeply aware of their significance for the moral health and spiritual development of the Russian nation. Moreover, in the era of civilizational shifts, when the nation needs to unite around basic values, dangerous trends continue to develop, leading to the degradation of culture, the loss of family values, and the dehumanization of man.
Knowledge of the Russian language and protection of the Russian language. The "Declaration of Russian Identity", adopted at the 18th World Russian People's Council on November 11, 2014, notes the role of the Russian language in the formation of Russian identity. So the declaration says: “In the Russian tradition, the national language was considered the most important criterion of nationality (the very word “language” is an ancient synonym for the word “nationality”). Proficiency in Russian is a must for every Russian.”
In recent years, there has been increasing pressure on the Russian language to change the genetic code of Russian culture. The Russian language is littered with slang and foreign words. In connection with economic reforms, many words from the English language, which is spoken by modern business, have flowed into the Russian language. Although there are many words in Russian that could successfully replace language borrowings. In Russian, some "scientists" are trying to legalize some slang words.
Belonging to the Orthodox faith is the most important element of Russian cultural and national identity. Difficult processes are unfolding in the spiritual sphere. Life in the Church is in full swing, Orthodox churches are being reconstructed and restored, religious books and magazines are printed in mass editions, Orthodox music, book and film festivals are held. In the last decade, the works of famous and forgotten Russian philosophers have been published in large numbers: N.A. Berdyaeva, A.S. Khomyakova, N.O. Lossky, S.N. Trubetskoy, N.I. Ilyina, S.N. Bulgakov, S.L. Frank, V.V. Zenkovsky, G.P. Fedotova, A.F. Losev, B.P. Vysheslavtseva, L.N. Gumeleva, I.V. Kirievsky, K.S. Aksakov, K.N. Leontiev, V.V. Rozanov and many others. All this speaks of the revival of Russian culture, of the deepening of Russians into their I.
Russian culture in general, Russian literature in particular, gives us a vivid idea of the national character of the Russian people. The Russian reader discovers previously unknown names of prominent writers of the Russian diaspora. A Russian person is finally beginning to pay attention to himself, to delve into his dignity, to focus on the main and innermost. Political scientist, philosopher, scientist Ivan Ilyin writes: “A Russian person lives, first of all, with his heart, imagination, and only then - with his will and mind”, “A Russian person expects from a person, first of all, kindness, conscience, sincerity”. That Russian culture brings light, kindness, spirituality, conscientiousness, sincerity of the Russian soul, that Russian culture is universal, cosmic, has long been known. But over the centuries of the Russophobic policy of Western countries, primarily Great Britain, and now the United States, secondarily, by the efforts of the “fifth column” inside Russia, Russian culture, the Russian people, their glorious past have been slandered, perverted, denigrated in such a way that the younger generation has to rediscover Russian culture, look anew at the great achievements of descendants in all areas of life and activity.
The American political scientist S. Huntington wrote: “... cultural features and differences are less subject to change than economic and political ones, and as a result, they are more difficult to resolve or reduce to compromises. In the former Soviet Union, communists can become democrats, the rich can become poor, and the poor can become rich, but Russians, with all their will, cannot become Estonians, Azerbaijanis can not become Armenians... Religion divides people even more sharply than ethnicity. A person can be half-French or half-Arab, and even a citizen of both of these countries. It's much harder to be half-Catholic or half-Muslim." We must agree that religion really divides people more than nations and creates insurmountable obstacles to communication and dialogue. The adoption of faith simultaneously means the adoption of Russianness, the acquisition of Russian national identity. Russians and representatives of other peoples who once accepted the Orthodox faith become staunch supporters and ascetics of the Church. They become part of the Russian Orthodox Civilization, which has given the world so many examples of honest service to goodness, truth, peace, knowledge and justice.
The deep connection of man with the history of Rus', is the most important element of Russian national identity. Member of the State Duma, politician V. Aksyuchets wrote about this: “Only high spiritual ideals brought up in the character of the people such rare traits that allowed them to survive and preserve their dignity in uniquely difficult historical circumstances. These features are, first of all, the universal openness and responsiveness of the Russian people, their healthy instinct for coexistence, their amazing survival. A key place in the history of Russian culture, statehood and people was occupied by spirituality, associated in the pre-Christian period with pagan beliefs, and in the Christian period with the Orthodox faith. Over the two thousand-year history of the spread and establishment of Christianity in Rus' (from Chersonesus to Kiev, then to Moscow ...), the Russian peoples absorbed humility before the authority of the Creator, accepted the Ecumenical Cross and established itself in its mission to bring love, goodness, truth, justice, knowledge , peace and wisdom to the nations. It is no coincidence that the Russian people are called the God-bearing people, that is, they carry God within themselves.
The most important Russian characteristic is solidarity with the fate of the Russian people. In the Address of the Discussion Club of the World Russian People's Council to the thinking people of Russia "We believe in ourselves, our people, our civilization!" dated April 24, 2013, it is noted: “Solidarity differs from totalitarianism in the non-violent, conscious nature of social unity, the preservation of broad personal freedom along with the imperative of a national and civilized duty. It also implies wide and regular participation of citizens in government, maximizing the use of direct levers of government (referendums, self-government of small spaces) and minimizing the level of alienation of ordinary citizens from political decision-making. The ideal of solidarity, conciliar unity of people and power was not a utopian dream for our civilization, but was deeply rooted in our national history.”
Solidarity involves the participation of the Russian people, all of its representatives, from ordinary people to leaders, in specific events of governing the Russian state (elections, referendums, expressing opinions on the actions of deputies of all levels in the media, etc.), managing public associations, local governments, in campaigns to protect Russian interests at all meetings, rallies, in the media, support for Russians, Orthodox people around the world, etc. Solidarity is also ensured by a real desire for the conciliar unity of the people, government and business. These are three great forces on which the Russian state rests.
According to V.K. Egorova “Russians, despite their catholicity and collectivism (which do take place, but manifest themselves inconsistently in everyday life, and “in fatal moments” or when, as the people say, “backed to the wall”), the people are not solidary, atomized and long-suffering , since human life at the individual level and national life matter only before God (subconsciously, according to culture - “non-believers stand on this too”) and before the Patronymic. Life is protected (both individual and national, people's) only when there is danger. A “normal” life is being built slowly, without striving for well-being (comfort, if you like), since (subconsciously) the main life is in the other world, or its meaning, almost to a decisive extent, is in the prosperity of Russia. This conclusion V.K. Egorova says that the development of a sense of solidarity among the people should be dealt with as state institutions, public associations, individual representatives of the Russian elite. It is necessary to create conditions for the manifestation of a sense of solidarity among the people on any issues.
Feeling of kinship with the Russian people and culture one of the most complex components of Russian national identity. And many representatives of other ethnic groups joined the Russian people in the process of its historical development. Thus, the “Declaration of Russian Identity” notes: “The Russian people had a complex genetic composition, including the descendants of Slavic, Finno-Ugric, Scandinavian, Baltic, Iranian and Turkic tribes. This genetic wealth has never become a threat to the national unity of the Russian people. Birth from Russian parents in most cases is the starting point for the formation of Russian self-consciousness, which, however, has never ruled out the possibility of joining the Russian people by people from a different national environment who have adopted Russian identity, language, culture and religious traditions. This means that the Russian people are international in their ethnic roots. Therefore, in Russianness there is respect for the culture, feelings, character and temperament of all peoples living in Russia and abroad.
Internationalism is the essence of Russianness. This feature of Russianness attracted oppressed peoples all over the world to the Russian world. It is no coincidence that the Russian Empire was formed in the process of voluntary entry into its composition of many neighboring peoples. These peoples sought protection in Russia from certain aggressive neighbors, from the colonial aspirations of Great Britain and France.
The identity of the Russian people is associated with the Russian state. Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Rus', speaking at the Tyumen forum of the World Russian People's Council on June 21, 2014, noted: “Conjectures about the heterogeneity of the Russian people are a myth that has a purely political nature. On a global scale, Russians are an exceptionally integral, united nation. In terms of the degree of religious and linguistic unity, in terms of the proximity of cultural matrices, Russians have no analogues among the major nations of the planet. The phenomenon of Russian solidity is explained by the fact that in our national self-consciousness the connection between the individual and the state occupies an exceptional place. The ethnic identity of Russians, more than that of any other peoples, is associated with the identity of the state, with Russian patriotism and loyalty to the state center. The merging of Russian national identity with state and civil identity leads to the fact that Russians have always fought and will fight, as long as they exist as a nation, for the sovereignty of the state in every sense: in symbolism, in defense, in making state decisions in politics and the economy, which is not enough for most national cultures, especially the young, developing nations of Africa, Asia and Latin America. Given the phenomenon of the synthesis of the national, state and civil identity of the Russian nation, Russian culture should create attractive models and programs for its development in the future. The domestic and foreign policy of Russia can be successful if it is based on the above trends in the development of Russian culture and the Russian people. This policy only strengthens the integrity and unity of the Russian people, to which its best representatives aspire.
Bibliography:
- Aksyuchets, A. "God and Fatherland - the formula of the Russian idea" / A. Aksyuchets // Moscow. - 1993. - No. 1. - P. 126
- Egorov, V.K. Philosophy of Russian culture / V.K. Egorov. - M.: RAGS, 2006. - S. 446
- Meeting of the international discussion club "Valdai" on September 19, 1913 / V.V. Putin // http: neus/kremlin/ru/transcripts/192443/print/ - C. 3
- Ilyin, I.A. Against Russia / I.A. Ilyin. - M .: Military Publishing, 1991. - S. 329
- Russian Doctrine "Sergius Project" / Ed. A.B. Kobyakova and V.V. Averyanov. – M.: Yauza-press, 2008. – 864 p.
- Russians. ABC of Russian national self-consciousness. - M .: Generation, 2008. - 224 p.
- Huntington, S. A Clash of Civilizations? / S. Huntington // Political research. - 1994. - No. 1. - P. 36
RUSSIAN NATIONAL IDENTITY: THEORETICAL QUESTIONS
the article raises topical issues of the formation of Russian national identity; the main components and dynamics of Russian identity are analyzed; an attempt is made to determine the role of each component in the process of formation of Russian identity.
Written by: Kargapolov Evgeny Pavlovich
Doctor of Political Sciences, Head of the State Theory Department
and Law and Political Science of the Adyghe State University,
Maikop
Globalization as an objective process that largely determines the contours of the future world order, and the active integration processes that accompany it, have clearly exposed the problem of identity. By the beginning of the third millennium, a person found himself “on the borders” of many social and cultural worlds, the contours of which are increasingly “blurred” due to the globalization of the cultural space, high communication, and the pluralization of cultural languages and codes. Realizing and experiencing his belonging to intersecting macro-group sets, a person became the bearer of a complex, multi-level identity.
The political changes in Russia, by their consequences, led to an identification crisis. The main questions characteristic of the periods of transformational changes arose before the society with all its acuteness: “who are we in the modern world?”, “in what direction are we developing?” and “what are our core values?”.
The lack of clear, unambiguous answers to these questions led to a multifactorial differentiation within Russian society, which accompanied the collapse of the former model of the identification system. The process of this disintegration actualized the entire set of existing levels of identity that fastened the framework of the former identification system, which led to the emergence of an increased interest in the problems of identifying various communities. “The problem of identity is “sick” today in countries, societies and people. The problem of self-identification reflects the interaction of different levels of identity, and that a person can absorb many identities. Difficulties in understanding this social phenomenon are associated with the diversity of its manifestations from the micro level to the macro level.
Sociocultural dynamics is accompanied by the evolution of identity levels, the content of which is not reduced to a linear movement from a generic form of identity (basically natural) to ethnic and national (with ever-increasing cultural mediation), but is a process of integration of identification bases. As a result, modern multi-level identity is a layering of the main levels of identity and is of a precedent nature. Depending on the specific historical situation, any of the identification grounds may be updated or a combination of them may arise. The identity structure is dynamic and changes depending on how the weight of certain elements that make it up increases or, conversely, decreases. According to S. Huntington, the significance of multiple identities changes over time and from situation to situation, while these identities complement each other or conflict with one another.
The problem of multi-level identity today looks extremely complex, including, along with traditional levels of identity, new ones. As historical and cultural experience shows, a multi-ethnic Russia cannot have a “simple” identity: its identity can only be multi-level. The author's version is the allocation of the following levels of identity: ethnic, regional, national, geopolitical and civilizational. The designated levels are closely interconnected and represent a hierarchically structured, and at the same time complexly organized system.
It seems justified the position according to which the basis of identity as such is the identification of oneself with a particular group, belonging to something greater and different from the person himself. In this sense, the first level of identity - ethnic identity can be considered as the totality of meanings, ideas, values, symbols, etc., which allow ethnic identification. In other words, ethnic identity can be considered as belonging to a person in connection with his identification with an ethnic group. Ethnic self-identification of a person can be viewed as a process of appropriating ethnicity and turning it into ethnic identity, or as a process of entering identity structures and attributing a certain place to oneself in them, which is called ethnic identity.
Ethnic identity is a complex social phenomenon, the content of which is both the individual's awareness of community with a local group on the basis of ethnicity, and the group's awareness of its unity on the same grounds, the experience of this community. Ethnic identification, in our opinion, is due to the need of a person and the community to streamline ideas about themselves and their place in the picture of the world, the desire to gain unity with the outside world, which is achieved in replaced forms (linguistic, religious, political, and other communities) through integration into the ethnic space of society.
Based on the prevailing understanding of identity, the second level - regional identity can be considered as one of the key elements in constructing a region as a specific socio-political space; it can serve as a basis for a special perception of national political problems and is formed on the basis of a common territory, features of economic life, and a certain system of values. It can be assumed that regional identity arises as a result of the crisis of other identities and to a large extent is a reflection of the historically emerging center-peripheral relations within states and macroregions. Regional identity is a kind of key to constructing a region as a socio-political and institutional space; an element of social identity, in the structure of which two main components are usually distinguished: cognitive - knowledge, ideas about the characteristics of one's own group and awareness of oneself as a member of it; and affective - assessment of the qualities of one's own group, the significance of membership in it. In the structure of regional identification, in our opinion, there are the same two main components - knowledge, ideas about the features of one's own "territorial" group (sociocognitive element) and awareness of oneself as a member of it and an assessment of the qualities of one's own territory, its significance in the global and local coordinate system ( socioreflexive element).
Recognizing regional identity as a reality, let us single out a number of its features: firstly, it is hierarchical, since it includes several levels, each of which reflects belonging to different territories - from a small homeland, through political-administrative and economic-geographical formation to the country as a whole ; secondly, the regional identity of individuals and groups differs in the degree of intensity and in the place it occupies among other identities; thirdly, regional identity is a form of understanding and expression of regional interests, the existence of which is due to the territorial features of people's life. And the deeper these features are, the more noticeably regional interests differ from national ones.
Regional identity is a factor of territorial-geographical, socio-economic, ethno-cultural existence and an element of state-political structuring and management. At the same time, it is an important factor in the all-Russian political process. Among the levels of identity, it occupies a special place and is associated with certain territories that determine special forms of life practices, pictures of the world, symbolic images.
Considering a multi-level identity, it is necessary to turn to the third level - national identity, understood as common to all its citizens, which is the most multi-valued and multi-faceted of all those associated with the definition of Russian specifics. This is explained, on the one hand, by the lack of unity in approaches to the definition of an ethnos and a nation; close interweaving of ethno-cultural and national identities; purely linguistic difficulties, since the nouns "nation" and "nationality" (ethnos) correspond to the same adjective - "national". On the other hand, the objective criteria of national identity are the language, culture, lifestyle, behavior, common traditions and customs, the presence of an ethnonym, the state.
The complexity of defining national identity is also explained by a number of its specific features: the ethnic diversity inherent in Russia, which predetermines the absence of ethnocultural unity, since 20% of the non-Russian population lives predominantly in almost half of its territory, identifying themselves with it, which makes it impossible to characterize Russia as a national state; uneven age of ethnocultural formations included in the civilizational field of Russia, which determines its pronounced traditional character; the presence of a basic state-forming ethnic group - the Russian people, which is the dominant feature of the development of Russian civilization; a unique combination of a multi-ethnic composition and a single state, which is one of the most stable and significant identification grounds; polyconfessionality of Russian society.
This is the source of the differences in the existing interpretations of the essence of identity: the interests of Russia cannot be identified with the interests of any of the ethno-cultural communities that form it, since they are supranational, therefore, we can only talk about geopolitical coordinates; the identity of Russia's interests with the interests of the dominant state-forming ethnic group, that is, Russian; The national identity of Russia is interpreted not according to the ethno-cultural, but according to the state-legal principle.
Russian national identity is understood as self-identification with the Russian nation, the definition of “who are we?” in relation to Russia. It is important to note that the problem of the formation of national identity is especially relevant in modern conditions. This is due, firstly, to the need to preserve the integrity of the country. Secondly, in the words of V. N. Ivanov, “national-cultural identity sets certain parameters for the development of the country. In line with these parameters, the country is making various efforts to optimize its movement and development, including subordinating the idea of modernization (reform) to them.
Let us now turn to the analysis of the fourth level - geopolitical identity, which can be considered as a specific level of identity and a key element in the construction of socio-political space; it can serve as a basis for a special perception of national political problems. It should be noted that geopolitical identity does not replace or cancel the national one; in most cases, they are of an additional nature.
We understand geopolitical identity as the identity of a particular country and its people, as well as the place and role of this country among others and the ideas associated with it. Identity is closely connected with statehood, its character, with the position of the state in the international system and the self-perception of the nation. The features that characterize it are: geopolitical space, that is, a complex of geographical features of the state; geopolitical place and role of the state in the world; endogenous and exogenous ideas about political and geographical images.
It seems that the geopolitical identity includes such basic elements as citizens' ideas about the geopolitical images of the country, a set of emotions about their country, as well as a special geopolitical culture of the population. The specificity of geopolitical identity lies in the fact that it is an identity based on the awareness of the commonality of a whole people or a group of close peoples.
In the modern world, the fifth level - civilizational identity is becoming increasingly important in comparison with other levels of its analysis. This question arises when there is a need to comprehend the place of one's society and country in the civilizational diversity of the world, that is, in global positioning. Thus, analyzing the issue of the civilizational and socio-cultural identity of Russia, K. Kh. Delokarov identifies factors that complicate the understanding of their essence: a systematic war with one's past, one's history; the habit of looking for sources of problems not at home, but from outside; the uncertainty of the strategic goals of Russian society. And on the basis of this, the author concludes that the criteria for the civilizational identity of Russia are blurred. .
Civilizational identity can be defined as a category of socio-political theory that denotes the identification of an individual, a group of individuals, a people with their place, role, system of connections and relations in a particular civilization. We can say that this is the limiting level of identification, above which only the identification of a global scale can be. It is based on the formed large inter-ethnic mega-community of people living in the same region for a long time, based on the unity of the historical collective fate of different peoples, interconnected by close cultural values, norms and ideals. This sense of community is formed on the basis of the distinction and even opposition of "one's own" and "alien".
Thus, civilizational identity can be defined as the self-identification of individuals, groups, ethnic groups, confessions on the basis of a certain socio-cultural community. This social problem of the continuity of the form-building factors that determine the civilizational characteristics of society is of particular importance, since it concerns the definition of the civilizational identity not only of Russian society, but also of other societies. The civilizational identity of Russia is due to the fact that it is located in Europe and Asia, it is multi-ethnic and multi-confessional. The specificity of civilizational identity lies in the fact that it represents the highest level of social identity, since it is based on the awareness of the cultural and historical community of a whole people or a group of close peoples. The concept of "civilizational identity" describes a set of core, system-forming elements that structure the whole and define the self-identity of civilization.
Watching today the process of transformation of civilizational identity in Russia, it is important to realize that in many respects the future of democracy and the prospects of Russian statehood depend on the result of choosing the right identity. The need to adapt to the realities of post-Soviet existence and to a new geopolitical status contributed to the rapid erosion of the former and the emergence of a new identity.
The current crisis of the all-Russian identity is mainly a conflict with new realities, which entailed the process of abandoning the old social roles, national self-determinations, and ideological images. All this actualizes the problem of recreating the integrity of the all-Russian “we”, taking into account its civilizational features. Ideas about civilizational affiliation and the corresponding images of identity influence the formation of an orientation related to the perception of the place and role of Russia in the modern world.
It seems that the processes of globalization developing in the world, affecting the identification archetypes of all states, the unfolding transition to a post-industrial society in a new way poses the problem of forming a multi-level identity not only for Russia, but for the whole world.
Thus, the analysis carried out indicates that the rapid changes in the world associated with the contradictory processes of globalization and transformation have sharply exacerbated the problem of identity. According to the figurative expression of one of the researchers, scientists simultaneously found themselves both in the role of creators and in the role of prisoners of the world wide web of identities, in the face of its challenges. This problem began to “torment” people and countries from the end of the 20th century: they are constantly accompanied by a desire to either preserve their chosen identity, or make a new choice, or something else related to the search for their “I” or “we”.
Prominent politicians, economists and scientists speak about the role of Russia in the 21st century with its new threats, globalization and reaction to it. They talk about the causes of civilizational conflicts, about whether there is a Russian (Russian) civilization, about how globalization affects identity, and, finally, what will be the role of resource-rich countries, including Russia, in the new century.
Confusion reigns on the question of the formula and mechanisms for asserting national identity as one of the foundations of Russian statehood, which is accompanied by superficial and conflicting debates. Ignoring or manipulating around the key points of using the concepts of "people" and "nation" carries serious risks for society and the state. Unlike the negative meaning given to nationalism in the national political language, nationalism played a key role in the formation of modern states and, in varying degrees and variants, remains the most important political ideology of our time.
In Russia, nationalism and nation-building are studied poorly and with the use of old approaches. This is one of the reasons for the existence of at least three different views on society and the state:
- 1) Russia is a multinational state with a population consisting of many nations, and this is its radical difference from other states;
- 2) Russia - the national state of the Russian nation with minorities, whose members may become Russians or recognize the state-forming status of Russians;
- 3) Russia is a nation-state with a multi-ethnic Russian nation based on Russian culture and language, and which includes representatives of other Russian nationalities (peoples).
global context.
In world social practice, the concept of nations as territorial and political formations with complex, but unified socio-cultural systems has been established. No matter how heterogeneous the state communities may be in composition, they define themselves as nations and consider their states to be national or nation-states. In this case, the people and the nation are synonymous and give the original legitimacy to the modern state. The idea of a single people-nation is a key element in ensuring stability and harmony in society and a guarantee of the stability of the state, no less than the Constitution, the army and protected borders. The ideology of a civil nation includes the principles of a responsible citizen, a unified education system, a version of the common past with its dramas and achievements, symbols and a calendar, a feeling of love for the Motherland and loyalty to the state, as well as defending national interests. All this constitutes what is called nationalism in its civic and state form.
Civic nationalism is opposed by the ideology of ethnic nationalism on behalf of one or another ethnic community, which may constitute the majority or minority of the population, but which defines its members, and not fellow citizens, as a nation and, on this basis, demands its own statehood or privileged status. The differences are significant, because ethnic nationalism is based on the ideology of exclusion and rejection of diversity, while civil nationalism is based on the ideology of solidarity and the recognition of diverse unity. A particular challenge to the state and the civil nation is radical nationalism on behalf of minorities who wish to leave the common state through armed secession. Majority ethnic nationalism also carries risks, as it can declare the state the exclusive property of one group, creating opponents among minorities.
Thus, in India, Hindu nationalism on behalf of the Hindu-speaking majority became one of the causes of civil wars. Therefore, the concept of the Indian nation is affirmed there, although there are many large and small peoples, languages, religions and races in the country. Beginning with Gandhi and Nehru, the elite and the state have championed Indian nationalism (the name of the leading party is the Indian National Congress) as opposed to Hindi and minority nationalism. Thanks to this ideology, India maintains its integrity.
In China, the dominant people - the Hans - and the Chinese nation almost coincide numerically and culturally. Nevertheless, the presence of 55 non-Han peoples numbering more than 100 million people does not allow us to speak of the Han as a state-forming nation. The image of the Chinese nation as all citizens of the country was constructed several decades ago and successfully copes with the task of ensuring the national identity of the Chinese.
A similar situation of two levels of identity (civil nation and ethno nation) exists in other countries - Spain, Great Britain, Indonesia, Pakistan, Nigeria, Mexico, Canada and others, including Russia. All modern nation-citizenships have a complex ethnic, religious, racial composition of the population. The culture, language and religion of the majority are almost always the basis of national culture: the English component in the British nation, Castilian in Spanish, Han in Chinese, Russian in Russia; but the nation is understood as a multi-ethnic entity. For example, the composition of the Spanish nation includes both the main population - the Castilians, and the Basques, Catalans, Galicians.
In Russia, the situation is similar to other countries, but there are peculiarities in the handling of the ideology of nation-building and the practice of using the category "nation". These features should be taken into account, but they do not cancel the world norm.
New Russian project
Due to the inertia of political and legal thinking, the formula of multinationality has been preserved in the Constitution of the Russian Federation, although the formula of a “multinational nation” would have been more adequate. It is difficult to correct the text of the Basic Law, but it is necessary to more consistently affirm the concepts of "nation" and "national" in the national and civil sense, without rejecting the existing practice of using the concept in the ethnic sense.
The coexistence of two different meanings for such a politically and emotionally loaded concept as “nation” is possible within the framework of one country, although the primacy of civic national identity for its inhabitants is indisputable, no matter how ethnonationalists dispute this fact. The main thing is to explain that these two forms of community are not mutually exclusive and the concepts of "Russian people", "Russian nation", "Russians" do not deny the existence of the Ossetian, Russian, Tatar and other peoples of the country. The support and development of the languages and cultures of the peoples of Russia must go along with the recognition of the Russian nation and Russian identity as fundamental for the citizens of the country. This innovation is actually already recognized at the level of common sense and everyday life: in polls and in concrete actions, citizenship, connection with the state and recognition of Russianness are more important than ethnicity.
The proposal put forward by some experts and politicians to establish in Russia the concept of “Russian nation” instead of “Russian” and to return the pre-revolutionary, broad understanding of Russians as all those who consider themselves as such cannot be realized. Ukrainians and Belarusians will no longer agree to consider themselves Russians again, and Tatars and Chechens have never considered themselves as such, but all of them, along with representatives of other Russian nationalities, consider themselves Russians. The prestige of Russianness and the status of Russians can and should be increased not by denying Russianness, but by affirming a dual identity, by improving the living conditions of the regions predominantly inhabited by Russians, by promoting their social and political representation in the Russian state.
In modern states, multiple, non-mutually exclusive identities are recognized at the level of collective communities and the individual. This weakens the ethno-cultural dividing lines within the framework of one co-citizenship and contributes to national consolidation, not to mention the fact that the self-consciousness of the part of the population consisting of the descendants of mixed marriages is more adequately reflected. In Russia, where a third of the population are descendants of mixed marriages, the practice of obligatory fixation of a single ethnicity of citizens is still preserved, which leads to violence against the individual and fierce disputes over who belongs to what people.
All states consider themselves national, and it makes no sense for Russia to be an exception. Everywhere, among the people of this or that country, the idea of a nation is affirmed, regardless of the racial, ethnic and religious composition of the population. A nation is the result of not just ethno-cultural unification and “long-term historical formation”, but the purposeful efforts of the political and intellectual elite to establish among the population ideas about the people as a nation, common values, symbols, and aspirations. Such common perceptions exist in countries with more divided populations. In Russia, there is a real community of Russians based on historical and social values, patriotism, culture and language, but the efforts of a significant part of the elite are directed towards denying this community. The situation must be changed. National identity is affirmed through many mechanisms and channels, but primarily through ensuring civil equality, the system of upbringing and education, the state language, symbols and calendar, cultural and mass media production. After reorganizing the foundations of the economy and political system, the Russian Federation needs to update the doctrinal and ideological sphere of ensuring civil solidarity and national identity.
border russia national identity
STATE AND LAW IN THE MODERN WORLD: PROBLEMS OF THEORY AND HISTORY
Russian Identity: Legal Conditions for Formation
VASILYEVA Liya Nikolaevna, PhD in Law, Leading Researcher, Department of Constitutional Law, Institute of Legislation and Comparative Law under the Government of the Russian Federation
Russian Federation, 117218, Moscow, st. Bolshaya Cheryomushkinskaya, 34
The prerequisites of a legal nature for the formation of Russian identity along with ethnic identity are considered. Legislative measures are being studied to strengthen the unity of the Russian nation, preserve national identity, and revive Russian identity. Guarantees are noted in the field of the preservation and development of native languages, the national culture of the peoples of Russia, the protection of the rights of national-cultural autonomies in the Russian Federation. An analysis of documents of a strategic nature and regulatory legal acts of the regional level is presented in connection with their focus on the formation of Russian civic identity, ways of legal regulation in order to form Russian civic identity are proposed, trends in the development of legislation to strengthen Russian identity are noted.
Key words: Russian civic identity, ethnic identity, interethnic relations, ethnic identity, national language, development of legislation, tolerance.
Russian Identity: Legal Conditions of Formation
L. N. Vasil"eva, PhD in law
The Institute of Legislation and Comparative Law under the Government of the Russian Federation
34, Bolshaya Cheremushkinskaya st., Moscow, 117218, Russia
Email: [email protected]
In the article the pre-conditions for the formation of the Russian identity on a legal basis along with an ethnic identity are examined. The legal measures devoted to strengthening the process of uniting the russian nation and restoring the national peculiarity for the perspective revival of the russian identity are also observed in this article. In the article the author pays special attention to the circumstances, which are in a great demand now, such as: to guarantee the essential development of the national languages, national culture of the russian inhabitants, to protect and support the rights of the cultural autonomous territories. In the article there is also the analysis either of the strategic or of the normative documents, adopted in the regional legislative institutions, which are presented here since they are aimed at forming the Russian civil identity. Besides the above mentioned, the author determines and detects the main nowadays trending in the legal regulation system, targeting at approaching the described goals as well. Particularly the author underlines the progressive features in the everydays development of the legal regulative mechanisms, used for restoration and strengthening the Russian identity.
Keywords: Russian civil identity, interethnic identity, ethnic relations, ethnicity, national language, the development of legislation, tolerance.
DOI: 10.12737/7540
Challenges of the modern world, the changing geopolitical situation, the need to strengthen the unity of Russian society
have become prerequisites for the search for a national idea that unites the citizens of multinational Russia. The success of this search
in a number of cases it depends on the unity within the most multinational people of the Russian Federation, the awareness by each citizen of Russia not only of ethnic, but also of Russian identity.
Identity as a conscious self-determination of a social subject, according to the definition of the French sociologist A. Touraine1, is determined by three main components: the need for belonging, the need for positive self-esteem and the need for security. M. N. Guboglo rightly emphasizes that identity and identification, including ethnic, require constant confirmation from the bearer of ideas about the group with which he seeks to identify2.
In the studies of G. U. Soldatova, attention should be paid to the definition of ethnic identification as common ideas shared to some extent by members of a given ethnic group, which are formed in the process of interaction with other peoples. A significant part of these ideas is the result of awareness of a common history, culture, tradition, place of origin (territory) and statehood. Common knowledge binds the members of the group and serves as the basis for its differentiation from other ethnic groups3.
At the same time, different points of view are also expressed in the literature regarding the concept of "ethnicity". Ethnographers, as a rule, use it to describe groups of the population that differ in
1 See: Touraine A. Production de la societe. P., 1973. R. 360.
2 See: Guboglo MN Identification of Identity. Ethnosociological essays. M., 2003.
3 See International project “National
mental self-consciousness, nationalism and re-
management of conflicts in the Russian Federation
derations”, 1994-1995.
characteristics such as a common language, religion, culture. For example, P. Waldman includes in the definition of the concept of an ethnic group such elements as history, its own institutions, certain places of settlement. This group must also be aware of its unity. Anthropologists, in particular W. Durham, believe that the definition of ethnicity is a matter of identification with a particular cultural system, as well as a tool for its active use in order to improve one's position in a particular social system4.
It should be noted that the concept of ethnic identity also includes the subject's awareness of his belonging to a particular ethnic group, while the subject's nationality may not directly coincide with the self-name of such an ethnic group. In jurisprudence, this is evidenced, for example, by differences in the understanding of the terms “national language” and “native language”5 in their justification of the ethnicity of a native speaker. The concept of ethnic identity is closely related to the concept of "originality" traditionally used by jurisprudence in relation to legal measures to protect the language, culture, traditional way of life (in some cases), religion, historical heritage of certain ethnic and other communities.
The international doctrine, which laid the foundations for the protection of ethnic identity in general, linguistic and cultural identity, contributed to the development of the institute for the protection of ethnic identity and
4 See: Krylova N. S., Vasilyeva T. A. et al. State, law and international relations in the countries of Western democracy. M., 1993. S. 13.
5 For more details, see: Vasilyeva LN Legislative regulation of the use of languages in the Russian Federation. M., 2005. S. 22-25.
national level, as well as supplementing the mechanisms for protecting identity with national measures defined both at the constitutional level and in separate independent laws. At the same time, in the national legislation, measures to preserve ethnic identity - the cornerstone of the correlation of an individual with an ethnic group, the definition of ethnic identity - in most cases are focused on protecting the rights of national minorities.
For example, one of the features of the consolidation of national (ethnic) identity was the consolidation of the right of persons belonging to national minorities to preserve, develop and manifest their ethnic, cultural, linguistic, religious and national essence. It is this right - the right to a national identity - that is established by the Romanian Constitution of 1991, emphasizing that the measures taken by the state to preserve, develop and manifest these rights belonging to national minorities must comply with the principles of equality and non-discrimination in relation to other Romanian citizens.
Currently, a number of interesting trends are emerging in relation to the identity of ethnic groups. So, there are new terms associated with the modern integration processes of states, for example, the term "European identity". In particular, the President of the European Parliament considers the flag of a united and constantly developing Europe "a symbol of European identity"6. The use of such a term in the political-etatist sense is already creating precedents. Thus, in November 2009 the European Court of Human Rights
6 See on this: Bulletin of the European Court of Human Rights. Russian edition. 2005. No. 12.
adopted a decision on the illegality of placing crucifixes in public schools in Italy, which caused a wide public outcry.
At the same time, within the framework of the European Union, in fact, at the official level, the principle of diversity was proclaimed an integral element of the identity of modern Europe. It was primarily about languages and culture in general7.
The uniqueness of the situation in the Russian Federation lies in the fact that the Constitution of Russia uses the term "multinational people of the Russian Federation". According to R. M. Gibadullin, the 1993 Constitution of the Russian Federation contains an etatist idea of Russian identity in the form of the concept of a “multinational people”, expressing the idea of a nation as a supra-ethnic state-forming community8. At the same time, guarantees have been established at the legislative level in the field of the preservation and development of native languages, the national culture of the peoples of Russia, and the protection of the rights of national-cultural autonomies.
The need to form a relatively stable community, united within a common territory by a common historical past, a certain common set of basic cultural achievements and a common awareness of belonging to a single multinational community in all manifestations of the ethnic identity of its constituent peoples of Russia, is obvious today. It seems that the emergence of such a community will become an important obstacle to the development of interethnic conflicts and the derogation of the sovereign rights of the state.
7 See: Haggman J. Multilingualism and the European Union // Europaisches Journal fur Minderheitenfragen (EJM). 4 (2010) 2. R. 191-195.
8 See: Gibadullin R. M. Post-Soviet dis. ... nations as a problem of interethnic unity in Russia // Power. 2010. No. 1. S. 74-78.
The Russian Federation has always been a state that is unique in its multinational nature. In our country, as noted by V. Tishkov9, the concept of “Russian people” (“Russians”) was born in the time of Peter I and M. V. Lomonosov and was approved by prominent figures, in particular N. M. Karamzin. In tsarist Russia, there was an idea of a Russian, or "all-Russian" nation, and the words "Russian" and "Russian" were largely synonymous. For N. M. Karamzin, being a Russian meant, first of all, feeling a deep connection with the Fatherland and being “the most perfect citizen.” This understanding of Russianness on the basis of Russian culture and Orthodoxy occupied a dominant position in comparison with ethnic nationalism. P. B. Struve believed that “Russia is a national state” and that “geographically expanding its core, the Russian state has turned into a state that, being multinational, at the same time has national unity”10.
During the existence of the USSR, the Soviet people were considered as a meta-ethnic community. It was fundamentally different from and opposed to the existing "capitalist nations". At the same time, “the Soviet people could not be called a nation, since within the USSR the existence of socialist nations and nationalities was affirmed as smaller formations, from which a new historical community was created”11.
10 Quoted. Quoted from: Tishkov V. A. Russian people and national identity.
11 See: Constitutional Law and Politics: Sat. mater. International scientific conf. (Law Faculty of Moscow State University named after M.V. Lomono-
It should be emphasized that the concepts of "people" and "nation" are not considered as identical. Let us agree that “nation is the political hypostasis of the people. A nation does not exist outside the state; in the modern world, the dualism of the state and the nation can be considered inseparable. A nation is formed by people loyal to a given state. Loyalty to the state is demonstrated through the exercise by the people of their political rights and the performance of political duties. The main duty is the duty to defend one's country, one's state. It is the desire to defend one's country that is the existence of national identity.
In our country, at the constitutional level, it is established that it is the multinational people that is the bearer of sovereignty and the only source of power in the Russian Federation. At the same time, both in scientific discussions and in the media, attention is drawn to the fact that today the task is to form a single Russian nation, Russian identity. The very concepts of “Russian” and “Russian woman”, which form the basis of the term “Russian nation”, imply not only the possession of Russian citizenship, but also a supranational cultural identity compatible with other types of self-identification - ethnic, national, religious. In the Russian Federation, neither at the constitutional nor at the legislative levels are there any obstacles for a person from any ethnic, national or religious community to consider himself a bearer of Russian culture, i.e. a Russian, and at the same time preserve other
12 See: Constitutional Law and Politics: Sat. mater. International scientific conf. (Law Faculty of Moscow State University named after M. V. Lomonosov, March 28-30, 2012) / ed. ed. S. A. Ava-kyan.
forms of cultural and national identity13.
Currently, a number of fundamental documents on issues of state national policy use the term "Russian civic identity". Thus, in the Strategy of the State Ethnic Policy of the Russian Federation for the period up to 202514 it is noted that the lack of educational and cultural-educational measures for the formation of Russian civic identity, fostering a culture of interethnic communication negatively affects the development of national, interethnic (interethnic) relations.
The Federal Target Program “Strengthening the Unity of the Russian Nation and the Ethnocultural Development of the Peoples of Russia (2014-2020)”15 also emphasizes that the following negative factors influence the development of interethnic (interethnic) relations: erosion of the traditional moral values of the peoples of Russia; attempts to politicize the ethnic and religious factor, including during election campaigns; the insufficiency of measures for the formation of Russian civil identity and civil unity, the development of a culture of interethnic communication, the study of the history and traditions of the Russian peoples; the prevalence of negative stereotypes about other peoples.
In this regard, it is worth emphasizing that the solution to the problem of the emergence of a single Russian nation is impossible without a fair legal assessment of repression.
13 See: Shaporeva D.S. Constitutional Foundations of National Cultural Identification in Russia // Russian Justice. 2013. No. 6.
of the Soviet era in relation to a number of peoples. The said Federal Target Program notes that some of the consequences of the Soviet national policy (for example, repressions and deportations against individual peoples, repeated changes in administrative-territorial borders) still have a negative impact on interethnic relations at the present time. Today, this problem has acquired particular relevance in connection with the admission of a number of territories into the Russian Federation. Indeed, the recognition of an unfair and often far-fetched attitude towards the whole people, based on a number of special cases, requires the adoption by the state of a set of legal and social measures to prevent manifestations of ethno-national extremism.
Even before the adoption of the current Constitution of the Russian Federation, the Law of the RSFSR of April 26, 1991 No. 1107-X “On the rehabilitation of repressed peoples” was adopted. However, it does not contain comprehensive legal tools that allow applying the rehabilitation mechanism to each illegally repressed people as efficiently as possible, in accordance with their ideas about the legal nature of a social and legal state. Today, this is relevant in connection with the admission to the Russian Federation of the Republic of Crimea, in which the Crimean Tatars repressed in the Soviet years live.
In addition, at the state level, the formation of the unity of the Russian nation is closely connected with the ethno-cultural development of the peoples of Russia. The above Federal Target Program offers two options for solving problems in the sphere of state national policy and ethnocultural development: the first option involves an accelerated pace of strengthening the unity of the Russian nation and
ethno-cultural development, a significant improvement in inter-ethnic and ethno-confessional relations; the second is counteracting the existing negative trends, strengthening the common civil Russian identity, and developing ethnocultural diversity.
Thus, in the legal field of the Russian Federation, there are two interrelated terms: "the unity of the Russian nation", which implies the preservation of the ethnic identity of all the peoples of Russia that make up this nation, and "common civil Russian identity" as the awareness of belonging to the Russian nation, awareness of oneself as a Russian - a citizen of the Russian Federation. The general civic Russian identity will lead to the strengthening of the entire unity of the Russian nation (still in the formative stage), and the development of ethno-cultural diversity will only strengthen the general civic identity with a new quality of a solidarizing community.
Legal regulation aimed at the development of ethnic and cultural diversity includes a fairly wide range of issues aimed at the formation of harmonious interethnic relations: issues of preserving and developing national identity, the formation of a single all-Russian culture, ensuring decent conditions for the socio-economic development of regions and representatives of all social strata and ethnic groups in it, countering extremism. However, such regulation is not limited solely to the methods of legal regulation. A significant role here is played by the level of intercultural competence, tolerance and acceptance of a different way of knowing the world, the standard of living of representatives of different ethnic groups. In this regard, the influence of the legislation of the regional level on the qualitative development of these areas is significant.
At the regional level, a set of measures has been developed to protect and develop Russian identity, as well as to form the identity of the community living in a particular subject of the Russian Federation. In the acts of regional lawmaking, the idea is often emphasized that the formation and implementation of national identity, the development of the cultural potential of the constituent entity of the Russian Federation will ensure an increase in competitiveness, the development of creativity, innovation and social well-being, the formation of an orientation of the individual and social groups towards values that ensure the successful modernization of the regional community16. At the same time, it is emphasized that regional identity should be part of the Russian national identity, be built into the system of state cultural policy17. Thus, in the Yaroslavl region, the Council for the Formation of the Yaroslavl Regional Identity has been established and is functioning, which resolves issues on the development of common approaches to the formation of regional identity, the development of the concept of regional identity and a strategy for its promotion.
At the same time, in a significant array of regulatory legal provisions, the volume of those provisions that directly relate to the preservation of ethnic identity by Russians is somewhat minimized.
An essential point for understanding in this regard is the existing set of measures aimed at protecting the Russian language as the national language of the Russian people. In the programs of the federal level, the protection of the Russian language is carried out in three areas: the state language of Russia -
16 See, for example, Decree of the Governor of the Vladimir Region of 25 November 2013 No. 1074.
Russian Federation; language of international communication; language of compatriots abroad18.
At the same time, regional legislation is only partly aimed at developing a system for strengthening Russian identity. A number of regional programs were directed directly at its strengthening in the constituent entities of the Russian Federation, most of which have already exhausted their resource in terms of their duration. Many of them solved this problem only indirectly.
So, some programs in the subjects of the Russian Federation with the predominant resettlement of the Russian people contained a set of measures only for the development of the Russian language as a means of interethnic communication. As an example, we can name the Regional target program "Russian language" (2007-2010)" (Belgorod region)19, as well as the Regional target program "Russian language" for 2007-2010.
2009” (Ivanovo region)20.
Creation of full conditions
for the development of the Russian language as the national language of the Russian people is noted in the departmental target program "Russian Language" (2007-2009) (Nizhny Novgorod Region)21 and in the Regional Target Program "Russian Language" for 2008-2009.
2010" (Vladimir region)22. Among the tasks of the latter were the creation of full-fledged conditions for the development of the Russian language as the national language of the Russian people;
18 See, for example, Decree of the Government of the Russian Federation of June 20, 2011 No. 492 “On the Federal Target Program “Russian Language” for 2011-2015”.
22 Approved. Law of the Vladimir Region dated
propaganda of the Russian language, increasing and activating various kinds of motivations for the study of the Russian national language and Russian national culture and regional studies in the Vladimir region; popularization of the Russian language as the main means of national and international communication and development of interest in its history and current state in the territory of the Vladimir region. However, at the moment these programs have exhausted their resource in terms of duration.
Among the current programs, one can note the State Program of the Voronezh Region “Development of Culture and Tourism” with the subprogram “Ethnocultural Development of the Voronezh Region”23, the Comprehensive Action Plan for the Implementation in 2013-2015 of the Strategy of the State National Policy of the Russian Federation for the period up to 2025. , harmonization of interethnic relations, strengthening of the all-Russian identity and ethno-cultural development of the peoples of the Russian Federation in the Tula region24.
The provision on improving the current monolingual language situation and creating a language environment, on expanding the sphere of active use of the Russian language, contained in the State Program of the Republic of Tyva "Development of the Russian Language for 2014-2018"25, is also interesting. However, the positive resource of such programs to strengthen the status of the Russian language is clearly insufficient for a comprehensive approach to strengthening Russian identity in the regions of Russia.
We should agree with leading Russian ethnologists that the prestige of Russianness and pride in the Russian people should be affirmed not by denying Russianness, but by affirming a dual identity (Russian and Russian), by improving the living conditions of the regions predominantly inhabited by Russians, by promoting their broad representation in institutions civil society and protection of their interests in public national organizations. The rooting of Russian identity as a special system of the identity of the Russian people, expressed in the Russian language, Russian national (folk) culture, traditions, family values and the Orthodox faith, is an additional impetus in strengthening the united Russian nation26.
The Soviet period of our history, in which the Russian people carried out the mission of the “elder brother”, the subsequent “parade of sovereignties” of the new Russia and the consolidation of the rights of the “titular nations” in the republics within the Russian Federation did not contribute to the formation of either Russian or Russian identity. Today, in a period of new global changes and challenges for the Russian Federation, it is necessary to form a clear ethnological, legal and general civil position in these areas.
In connection with these trends in the development of legislation to strengthen Russian identity, we can determine:
strengthening legal protection in relation to the Russian language and national Russian culture in terms of preserving their original qualities;
economic support and social development of territories predominantly settled by Russian-
26 See: Tishkov V. About the Russian people and national identity in Russia. URL: http://valerytishkov.ru/cntnt/publicacii3/publikacii/o_rossisko.htmL
th people, as well as territories strategically important for preserving there, including “Russianness”: the Kaliningrad region, the Republic of Crimea, the Far East;
enhancing the role of institutions, including national public organizations;
the adoption of a comprehensive targeted program of economic and socio-cultural orientation for the revival of the village in the regions of central Russia in the new economic conditions ("new Russian village");
development of patriotic education, cultivation of patriotism and knowledge of the history of their country, the role of the Russian people in the heroic pages of the history of the Russian state, national heroes;
the need for a legal and general civil assessment of those tragic events in our history that affected the Russian people, Russians as repressed persons, Russian identity as a whole;
the need for educational and cultural and educational measures to form Russian identity, familiarization with the Old Slavonic language as additional education, the study of the life and customs of the Slavs, the cultivation of a culture of modern communication within their national group.
It is also possible to create certain tourist ethnocenters and allocate the appropriate territory for the construction of a center for the development of Russian identity, which would include cultural institutions, ethnic villages and educational institutions for familiarization and study of Russian writing, Russian folk crafts and folklore with a primary focus on its attendance by students of educational institutions , including preschools.
However, it should be remembered that national identity, including Russian, is not so much related to the nationality of its bearer as
determined by the individual's reference to himself as a nation. Therefore, the strengthening of the positions of the Russian language abroad, as well as the promotion and protection of the Russian language as the greatest civilizational value within the state, can also be considered a certain legal task.
In this regard, the tasks of attracting public attention to the problems of preserving and strengthening the status of the Russian language as the spiritual basis of Russian culture and Russian mentality seem to be relevant; raising the level of education and culture of Russian speech in all areas of the functioning of the Russian language; formation of motivation of interest in the Russian language and speech culture among different segments of the population; increasing the number of educational events that popularize the Russian language, literature and culture of the Russian people. Similar directions took place in some regional targeted programs.
We must also agree that national identity, unlike ethnic identity, presupposes the presence of a certain mental attitude, the individual's feeling of belonging to a large socio-political entity. Therefore, one should warn against popularizing the idea of creating a “Russian state”. At the same time, the introduction into the current federal legislation of provisions aimed at
on the emergence at the federal level of the corresponding national-cultural autonomy as a form of national-cultural self-determination of citizens of the Russian Federation who identify themselves with a certain ethnic community, in order to independently resolve issues of preserving identity, developing language, education, national culture, is quite justified.
It should be noted that the formation of a single Russian nation is possible only if each citizen realizes not only his ethnicity, but also community with fellow citizens of a single multinational country, participation in their culture and traditions. In this sense, the creation of effective legal mechanisms aimed at the emergence of Russian identity is necessary. Awareness of oneself as a Russian, a member of a large community - a single Russian nation, a bearer of Russian national identity as belonging to the Russian state - is the task of several generations. In this regard, legal measures should be put at the legislative level, along with the established legal tools for the protection of the national and state languages, the development of folk and Russian culture, support for the development of regions and geopolitical interests of Russia, which are already in place.
Bibliographic list
Haggman J. Multilingualism and the European Union // Europaisches Journal fur Minderheitenfragen (EJM). 4 (2010) 2.
Touraine A. Production de la societe. P., 1973.
Bulletin of the European Court of Human Rights. Russian edition. 2005. No. 12.
Vasilyeva LN Legislative regulation of the use of languages in the Russian Federation. M., 2005.
Gibadullin R. M. Post-Soviet discourse of the nation as a problem of interethnic unity in Russia // Power. 2010. No. 1.
Guboglo M. N. Identification of identity. Ethnosociological essays. M., 2003.
Constitutional Law and Politics: Sat. mater. International scientific conf. (Law Faculty of Moscow State University named after M. V. Lomonosov, March 28-30, 2012) / ed. ed. S. A. Avakyan. M., 2012.
Krylova N. S., Vasilyeva T. A. et al. State, law and international relations in the countries of Western democracy. M., 1993.
Tishkov V. About the Russian people and national identity in Russia. URL: http://valerytishkov.ru/cntnt/publicacii3/publikacii/o_rossisko.html.
Tishkov V. A. Russian people and national identity // Izvestia. Nov 13, 2014 Shaporeva D.S. Constitutional foundations of national cultural identification in Russia // Russian Justice. 2013. No. 6.
Mechanism of legal acculturation
SOKOLSKAYA Lyudmila Viktorovna, PhD in Law, Associate Professor of the Department of Civil Law Disciplines of the Moscow State Regional Humanitarian Institute
Russian Federation, 142611, Orekhovo-Zuevo, st. Green, 22
Legal acculturation is investigated - a long-term contact of legal cultures of different societies, depending on historical conditions, using a variety of methods and ways of influencing each other, the necessary result of which is a change in the initial structures of the culture of the contacted societies, the formation of a single legal space and a common legal culture. Forms, methods, means and methods of legal acculturation are revealed, the mechanism of its functioning and impact on the legal system of modern Russian society is revealed.
Key words: legal culture, legal acculturation, mechanism of legal acculturation, modernization, unification.
Mechanism of Legal Acculturation
L. V. Sokol"skaya, PhD in law
Moscow State Regional Institute of Humanities
22, Zelenaya st., Orekhovo-Zuevo, 142611, Russia
Email: [email protected]
Acculturation - this intercultural contact of various societies. When contacting legal cultures subject to investigation legal of acculturation. The article reveals the mechanism of legal acculturation as a set of interrelated, interdependent methods, tools, techniques and factors providing intercultural contact of various societies. Parties acculturation: the society-recipient, society-donor, society-partner. In the process of legal acculturation are the following steps: identification of needs, borrowing, adaptation, perception (assimilation), result. Depending on the position of society enters into intercultural contact and acculturation distinguish legal mechanism such historical forms as reception, expansion, assimilation, integration and convergence. The author applied the historical-cultural studies approach.
Keywords: legal culture, legal acculturation, the legal mechanism of acculturation, modernization, unification.
DOI: 10.12737/7571
The deepening of the processes of legal integration in the era of globalization gives rise to the need to create and study the mechanism of legal acculturation1, which would
1 Legal acculturation is a long-term contact of legal cultures of different societies that, depending on historical conditions, use a variety of methods and ways of influencing each other, the necessary result of which is a change in the initial
differed from the already known and sufficiently studied mechanisms for introducing elements of a foreign legal culture into the national legal culture (for example, the mechanism for implementing the norms of international
cultural structures of the contacted societies, the formation of a single legal space and a common legal culture. See: Sokolskaya LV Interaction of legal cultures in the historical process. Orekhovo-Zuevo, 2013.
The Russian (civilian) identity of a person is a free identification of himself with the Russian people, which has a significant meaning for him; feeling and awareness of involvement in the past, present and future of Russia. The presence of Russian identity implies that for a person there is no “this city”, “this country”, “this people”, but there is “my (our) city”, “my (our) country”, “my (our) people” .
The task of forming a Russian identity among schoolchildren, declared strategic in the new educational standards, implies a qualitatively new approach in content, technology and responsibility for teachers to the traditional problems of developing civic consciousness, patriotism, tolerance of schoolchildren, their command of their native language, etc. So, if a teacher in his work focuses on the formation of a Russian identity in a schoolchild, then:
– in civic education, he cannot afford to work with the concepts of “citizen”, “civil society”, “democracy”, “relations between society and the state”, “human rights” as speculative abstractions, in a purely informative style, but must work with tradition and peculiarities of the perception of these concepts in Russian culture, in relation to our historical soil and mentality;
- in the education of patriotism, the teacher does not rely on the development of a child's non-reflexive pride in "one's own" or a kind of selective pride in the country (pride only for successes and achievements), but seeks to cultivate a holistic acceptance and understanding of the past, present and future of Russia with all the failures and successes, anxieties and hopes, projects and "projects";
- the teacher works with tolerance not so much as with political correctness (a fashionable trend of the secular consumer society), but as with the practice of understanding, recognizing and accepting representatives of other cultures, historically rooted in the Russian tradition and mentality;
- shaping the historical and political consciousness of schoolchildren, the teacher immerses them in a dialogue of conservative, liberal and social democratic worldviews, which is an integral part of Russian culture as a European culture;
- teaching the Russian language takes place not only in the lessons of literature, but in any academic subject and outside the lesson, in free communication with pupils; the living Russian language becomes the universal of school life;
- the teacher is not limited to communication with pupils in a protected, friendly environment of the classroom and school, but brings them to an out-of-school social environment. Only in independent public action, action for people and on people who are not the “inner circle” and are not necessarily positively inclined towards it, does a young person really become (and not just learn how to become) a public figure, a free person, a citizen of the country.
Even this far from complete enumeration shows that the task of forming Russian identity quite reasonably claims to be a key, turning point task in current educational policy.
In modern pedagogical science, the civil (Russian) identity of a schoolchild is fruitfully considered as:
- the unity of a certain type of knowledge, values, emotional experiences and experience of activity (A.G. Asmolov, A.Ya. Danilyuk, A.M. Kondakov, V.A. Tishkov);
— a complex relationship between historical memory, civic consciousness and project consciousness (A.A. Andryushkov, Yu.V. Gromyko).
In our opinion, no less productive is consideration of civic identity from the perspective of the school identity of the child.
It is almost a truism that a child's love for the motherland begins with love for the family, school, and small motherland. It is in small communities, where people are especially close to each other, that “hidden warmth of patriotism” is born, about which L.N. Tolstoy and which best expresses a person's experience of civic identity. That is, the Russian identity of a young person is formed on the basis of family, school, identity with the territorial community.
It is obvious that the subject of special responsibility of the school is the school identity of the child. What it is? This experience And awareness child of his own involvement to school, which has a meaningful meaning for him. Why is this needed? School is the first place in a child's life where he goes beyond blood ties and relationships, begins to live among others, different people, in society. It is at school that the child turns from a family person into a social person.
What does the introduction of the concept of "child's school identity" give? In the usual role-playing reading the child at school acts as a student, boy (girl), friend, citizen, etc. . IN identification in reading, a schoolboy is “a student of his teachers”, “a friend of his classmates”, “a citizen (or inhabitant) of the school community”, “son (daughter) of his parents”, etc. That is, the perspective of identity allows you to more deeply see and understand thanks to someone or something the student feels connected (or not connected) with the school community, what or who creates in him a sense of belonging to the school. And evaluate, diagnose the quality of those places and people at school that engender involvement in the child.
Here is our vision of these places and people:
|
Identification position of the child in school |
Place of formation of this position |
|
Son (daughter) of his parents |
Specially created or spontaneous situations at school where the child feels like a representative of his family (disciplinary entry in the diary, teacher's threat to call parents, encouragement for success, etc.) |
|
Friend of his schoolmates |
Free, outwardly unregulated, direct communication with classmates and peers |
|
A student of his teachers |
All educational situations both in the classroom and in extracurricular activities (circles, electives, sports sections, etc.); educational communication with teachers |
|
"Citizen of the class" (class team) |
Intra-class events, affairs, activities; self-management in the classroom |
|
"School Citizen" (school community) |
School events, children's associations of additional education at school, child-adult co-management, school self-government, school clubs, museums, etc.; extracurricular communication with teachers. |
|
"Citizen of Society" |
Social projects at school; actions and affairs aimed at the out-of-school social environment; children's public associations and organizations. School-initiated communication with other social actors. |
|
Member of your own ethnic group |
All situations at school that activate a child's sense of nationality |
|
Member of your religious group |
All situations at school that activate a child's sense of religious affiliation |
School identity allows you to see if the student connects his successes, achievements (as well as failures) with the school; whether the school is a meaningful place for him or not.
Low identity scores will indicate that the school is not significant or of little significance to the child. And even if he is objectively successful as a student, the source of this success is not in school (but, for example, in the family, tutors, out-of-school additional education, etc.).
High indicators of identity will indicate that the school occupies an important place in the life of the child, is significant for him. And even if objectively he is not very successful as a student, then his personal dignity, his self-respect stem from his school life.
Since we assumed that each of the above identities is formed at school in certain “places” (processes, activities, situations), then low scores for one or another identification position can show us the “bottlenecks” of school life, and high scores - “ points of growth. This can be the beginning of a “reset” of school life, the launch of a development process.
To date, we have the results of a study (with the help of a sociological questionnaire) of the school identity of students in grades 7-11 from 22 schools in the cities of Moscow, Perm, Kaliningrad, Tomsk. We selected schools that are considered “good” by the population and the pedagogical community; At the same time, the schools themselves believe that their educational activities are very well organized.
In order to visually illustrate some of the key trends, we will summarize the data for schools. We have established a distinction on specific aspects of school identity at the level of “experienced – not experienced”, while specifying whether it is experienced positively or negatively (it is obvious, for example, that a student can feel like the son of his parents when teachers praise him or, on the contrary, scold him, and a citizen of the class - when he manages to realize his ideas, plans in a class team, or when he is imposed on this or that assignment). We were interested not only in the very fact of experiencing as an indicator that the school in a particular aspect does not leave the child indifferent, but also in the nature of this experience. We also leveled the scatter in the values of this or that indicator by school, determining the average value for 22 schools.
Here are the scores for each aspect of school identity that were obtained:
|
Identity |
experienced (% of students) |
Not experienced (% of students) |
|
|
positively |
negatively |
||
|
Son (daughter) of his parents |
|||
|
Friend of his schoolmates |
|||
|
A student of his teachers |
|||
|
class citizen |
|||
|
School Citizen |
11% (imposed sense of citizenship) |
||
|
society citizen |
(imposed sense of citizenship) |
||
|
Member of your own ethnic group |
|||
|
Member of your religious group |
|||
Conclusions regarding the civil (Russian) identity of schoolchildren who took part in the study:
- only 42% of adolescents feel positively involved in their classroom team as "citizens", that is, people "doing something, even the simplest, that affects the life of their school class";
- even less - 24% of adolescents feel like "citizens of the school community";
- only 1 out of 10 students will leave school with a feeling of a citizen (non-philistine) of our Russian society.
Recall that this situation, which can definitely be called a situation of alienation, is fixed by us in the educational reality of the so-called "good" schools. It is easy to imagine what happens in the rest.
What's the way out? In our opinion, in a situation of alienation of children from school, a responsible educational policy can only be an "identity policy". No matter what we do at school, no matter what new projects and technologies we propose, no matter what traditions we want to preserve, we must always ask ourselves: “Does this give rise to free involvement of children in school? Will the child want to identify with it? Have we thought of everything and done everything so that he would have involvement with us? Why is it suddenly that what we have done so diligently, with such efforts, is not perceived by children? And then we will not chase novelties from pedagogy, pass off our inertia and lack of curiosity as loyalty to tradition, mindlessly follow educational fashions, rush to fulfill political and social orders, but we will work in depth, for the real development of the individual, for social inheritance and the transformation of culture.
For example, the school is faced with the social passivity of adolescents. Of course, it is possible to increase the resource of social science disciplines, to conduct a series of conversations “What does it mean to be a citizen?” or organize the work of the school parliament, but this work, at best, will provide students with useful social knowledge, form a positive attitude towards social action, but will not give the experience of independent action in society. Meanwhile, we are well aware that know about what citizenship is, even value citizenship does not mean act as a citizen be citizen. But the technology, which involves moving from (1) a problem-value discussion of adolescents to (2) a negotiation platform for adolescents with representatives of local authorities and public structures, and further to (3) a children-adult social project demanded by the territorial community, brings adolescents into an independent public action.
Thus, the real, non-imitation formation of the Russian (civil) identity of students is possible only on the basis of their positive school identity. It is through the feeling, consciousness and experience of citizenship acquired in school life (in the affairs of the class, the school community, in the social initiatives of the school) that a young person can mature a stable understanding and vision of himself as a citizen of the country. A school with which children do not identify themselves, in which they do not feel involved, does not educate citizens, even if it declares this in its concepts and programs.
And one more important effect of “identity politics” in the field of education: it can help, if not unite, then at least not break with each other, conservatives, liberals and social democrats of Russian education. What we all, teachers, (each, of course, someone one and in our own way) are.
