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UDC 101
APPLICATION OF ETHNIC AND NATIONAL TERMINOLOGY IN RESEARCH OF SOUTH RUSSIAN PEOPLE
S.P. Petrenko
Taganrog institute of A.P. Chekhov, Taganrog, Russia [email protected]
The article raises the problems associated with the use of modern Russian scientific and political literature of the two systems of terminology, for the peoples of the world. One of them is a key concept of the term "nation", the second
- "ethnic group." Each system has its own tradition of use, and their key terms should not be considered as complete synonyms "nation" and "ethnic group" (and their derivatives), they are sometimes very similar, almost identical to the concept, and sometimes have very different meanings. The author shows that this situation has arisen as a result of evolution, which has undergone during the XX century domestic Ethnology (ethnography), which did not have at the beginning of the century a clear framework of terms. One such system, "national", originated in the 1920-1950s is on the basis of Stalin's interpretation of the nation, and included a number of concepts that reflect the appropriate representation of the time of occurrence of the nations themselves, their characteristics, etc. The second, "ethnic", formed in the 1960-1970s ethnologists developed in the framework of the theory of the ethnic group, has been widely recognized at the turn of XX - XXI centuries. The article concludes that the need to separate their areas of application: according to the author, the concept of "nation" should be used only in a political sense, to signify the totality of the citizens of Russia (or another country), and under "ethnic groups" mean peoples as a historical and cultural communities.
Key words: ethnicity, ethnic group, nation, nationality, political nation.
In today's world there are many countries with ethnically heterogeneous composition of the population. In this list there is, of course, Russian Federation, ranking at one of the first places. However, due to various sources total number of peoples living in Russia is determined differently, but in any case their number is very large - from a half to two hundred ethnic groups. Among the Russian regions the South is of the highest diversity and originality of the ethnic composition of its population, the number of the presented peoples, languages and cultures is a record even for such a multinational country as Russia. In public speeches of political leaders, artists and other famous people of diverse cultures and ethnic traditions of the peoples of the Russian Federation it is generally viewed as a positive thing, as a matter of pride for its multinational (or multi-ethnic?) Fatherland. However, the states with such a similar composition of the population in some respects is very vulnerable. There is a permanent threat, even hypothetical, creation or strengthening of negative phenomena (extremist and separatist movements, conflicts, etc.) ethnic genesis, which can significantly destabilize the situation in the society. Conducting the successful policy of national (ethnic) relationship involves, among other things, the existence of an accepted and widely understood system of terms used in this area of public life. Meanwhile, in the scientific and socio-political literature, media, etc. Russia and the nations designated as "ethnic groups" (or "ethnic communities"), and as a "nation", although these terms can not be considered as complete synonymous - each of them has its own tradition of use, its shades of meaning, sometimes quite different meanings. In addition, the second of these terms - "nation" - can have at least two fundamentally different from one another meaning: the people as a historical and cultural community (regardless of whether it has its statehood) and the people of the aggregate citizens of a particular state (irrespective of their language, culture, identity, etc.). In the first case it turns out that we have lots of nations (this approach is reflected in the Constitution, which featured "multinational people of Russia"), the second
- we can speak only about a Russian civil nation embracing the entire population. (Such a nation, as many politicians and political scientists, in our country either already developed or is under development). Thus, we see a significant terminological inconsistency in the description and study of everything related to the "multinational European" both Russia and a number of other countries.
These contradictions in the use in the national scientific and political literature seemingly elementary concepts have arisen as a result of a significant evolution, which for most of the XX
century has undergone in our country, the terminology used in the Ethnology (ethnography) to designate the object of the research. At the beginning of the last century Russian ethnographers continued, as well as in XIX century, to use for this purpose such concepts as "people", "nation", "nationality", at least - "race", "tribe". The latter of which is often used to mean, quite distant from the present, in particular, it may designate a group of kindred peoples. For example, all Slavs were regarded as "Slavic tribe" which "breaks down into a lot ... nationalities, different from each other in language, and religion ...» [1, p. 101]. Accordingly, the roman tribe means the combination of the Latins, etc. Among the Russian scientists only S.M. Shirokogorov started using (and even then only during the Civil War, that has formally chronological framework for the pre-revolutionary era) in his writings the term "ethnic group" within the meaning of, not fundamentally different from those today. In his view, "ethnic group is a group of people speaking the same language, recognizing their common origin, possessing complex customs, lifestyles, stored and hallowed tradition and distinguishes it from those of other» [14, p. 13, 122]. However, in the early 1920s Shirokogorov emigrated, and his views long remained virtually unknown in our country, did not have any significant impact on the development of domestic ethnography.
At the beginning of the Soviet period it was maintained for some time, the old tradition of use of ethnographic and other scientific works of such concepts as "people", "nation" and even a "tribe". (Including in the above sense. For example, published in 1926-1927s "Latest Encyclopedic Dictionary" in the article "Russian" said: "The Russian (Great Russians), the Aryan people of East Slavic tribe ...» [9, pp. 22-44]). The term "ethnicity" in 1920-1930 is almost not used, and only occasionally in the publications of those years slipped its derivative adjective "ethnic", including, in the case of just a single, very similar in content to the specified term phrase "ethnic group", as well as in the phrase "ethnic factor", "ethnic elements", "ethno-linguistic substratum", etc. [15, p. 773-774]. The author knows only one direct reference to the term "ethnicity" in Soviet literature 1920-1930-ies., And then in the encyclopedia article on linguistics (the so-called "ethnic theory"), but not on the ethnography, and also in very negative context-sounding phrases about the sentence: "The system of the Marxist theory of linguistic construction of ethnicity based on the abstract concept of "ethnic group", shall be the subject to serious critical reviews» [15, p. 773].
At the same time in the literature, especially the socio-political, it has been spread relatively new to the national science, the term "nation", in which a meaning that is largely (but not entirely) coincide with the modern concepts of "ethnicity", "ethnic group". Determination of the nation, which became for decades the only allowable in official publications, was given by I.V. Stalin: "A nation is a historically constituted, stable community of people, formed on the basis of common language, territory, economic life and psychological make-up manifested in a common culture» [10, p. 296]. Since Stalin insisted that each of the characteristics of a nation it is definitely a must and "lack of enough of even one of these signs that the nation has ceased to be a nation" [Ibid.], that under its definition, mainly because of the lack of the third feature - common economic life - arises only with the approval of the era of capitalist market relations, not only did not get all the ethnic communities once existed earlier historical periods, but many modern (at the time of 1920-30) peoples: Jews, Gypsies, the majority of people as the Asian part of the USSR and other countries of Asia, etc. However, it was obvious that all of them, without being in the Stalinist nations sense of the term, yet are historically defined community, completely ignore the real existence is not possible. That's why a little later with the aim of filling the gap in terms denote introduced the term "nationality" to refer to communities that do not have all the attributes of a nation. So, in the second edition of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, along with article "nation" can be found also the article "nationality", was absent from the first edition. "Nationalism - a historically constituted community of people that precedes the formation of a nation ...» [8, p. 307]. (It is believed that this specific Soviet term that has no exact counterpart in Western literature). Around the same time in line with the people's and the nation it was delivered tribe historically the first form of human community. The result was three successive historical forms a community of people, each of whom, as it was believed, corresponded to a certain stage of development of society; the family (the era of primitive
society), nationality (for the slave and feudal era), the nation (for the era of capitalism and socialism).
This scheme for several decades was a classic of Soviet science. In particular, the peoples of the USSR in accordance with it, are established either as a nation or as a nation. (It often is used, especially in the propaganda literature and periodicals, the phrase "nations and nationalities" to emphasize the multi-ethnic composition of the population of our country.) In theory, features distinguishing the nation from nation, along with the already mentioned common economic life, recognized the existence of the state and literary language, the emergence of national intelligentsia, but in practice, take into consideration the number of people. More or less large nations had their own state in the form of union and autonomous republics, considered the nations, and to the fewer (about 50 thousand people). Nation with only administrative and territorial autonomy in the form of autonomous provinces and national districts (or do not possess it do) fall into the category of nations.
However, ethnographers, it was clear that the forms of community between the people featured in the scheme of "tribe - national community -nation", there is no sharply defined borders, in particular between the People and the nation. After all, the differences between them relating to the social and economic (presence or absence of a common economic life, etc.) and political-administrative (presence or absence of state, the level of administrative-territorial autonomy, etc.) points to presenting a specific value for the other branches of knowledge, from the point of view of the ethnography is not essential. Hence representatives of this awareness of the needs of science in terms that, covering all known historical forms of human community, would mean any object of ethnographic research. The response to this request and it was the appearance of the ethnographic literature at the turn of 40-50-ies a new concept - "ethnic community". 1950-1960s contributed to its spread edition of the multi-volume series "The peoples of the world. Ethnographic Essays" (Leningrad, 1954-1967), the creation of which was required, along with the existing term from the general sense, is applicable to all existing nations in the world - from archaic tribal groups to the nation of the modern type. In the 60 years published a number of articles specifically devoted to the development of the concept of "ethnic group", and soon appeared and the relevant articles in the encyclopaedia, handbooks, etc. (In particular, in the third edition of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia [6, p. 298]). In the next decade, a new, completely original synonymous "ethnic community", the term -"ethnic group", which soon became generally accepted in the domestic ethnography. Accordingly, much of the terminology now used it is derived from a given pair of synonyms: subethnos, ethno-genesis, ethnic history, ethnic processes, etc.
However, to this day it is still not completely solved the problem of precise definition of the concept of "ethnicity" and highlight the characteristics inherent in the social phenomenon it designates. Initially, the ethnic group or ethnic community, have been moved four or five characteristics of a nation, were part of the famous Stalinist definition, but without mention of the binding nature of each of them: a common language, territory, economic and psychological make-up manifested in a common culture. Later, a number of researchers to these were added such features as ethnic identity, ethnonym, common origin, common historical destiny, and others. Allocation of some of them was soon recognized by virtually all ethnographers (ethnic identity, ethnonym, etc.), while others are mentioned as compulsory ethnic signs only in the works of some authors (common origin, etc.). In particular, the concept developed in the 1970s. Academician Y.V. Bromley, ethnicity understood "as a historically rooted in a particular area stable set of people with a common, relatively stable features of culture (including language) and psyche and consciousness of their unity, and unlike all other similar entities (self-awareness), fixed to the self-name (ethnonym )» [3, p. 27]. In the last two decades of the Soviet era it was an interpretation of interest to us the term has become almost an article of faith the official ethnography of our country, the key point only recognized her ethnicity theory and in the publications of those years, as a rule, reproduced verbatim or nearly verbatim just above definition of the ethnic group. But the semi-official science in these years has spread developed by L.N. Gumilyov alternative understanding of ethnicity as a biological unit, which has a special pattern, which is a universal criterion of difference ethnic groups from each other. "Ethnos - a stable, naturally formed a team of people opposing the same to all the other teams ("we" and not
"we"), having its own special internal structure of the original pattern, which changes regularly in historical time» [5, p. 285, 540]. Therefore, as the S.V. Lurie says "meaning that eventually fixed for the term" ethnic group "is a cross between bromleevskim Gumilevsky and in principle it is synonymous with" the people» [7, p. 38].
At the same time it was formed and is continuing to the present relationship between the two neighboring, originally synonymous terms - "ethnicity" and "ethnic group" - which soon acquired the multiple differing values associated with the notion of so-called "ethnic hierarchy". According to an established domestic science in a 1970 point of view, "ethnic formation of different taxonomic rank ... in their totality form a complex hierarchical system", which has three main levels: metaetno-sy, ethnic groups and subethnos [4, p. 7]. Ethnic groups that make up the average, - "it is like the basic unit of an ethnic classification of mankind, along which there are ethnic groups higher and lower order» [13, p. 30]. The latter, referred to as sub-ethnoses, are distinctive group within the ethnic groups to isolate partially as a result of territorial, state-political, religious and other factors. Subethnos may differ from the main part of the ethnic group linguistically (a special dialect or accent), some components of culture (including religion and often), as well as elements of ethnic identity, reflected in the self-name. At the top of the hierarchy are ethnic (in the terminology YV Bromley) metaetnicheskie community or simple - metaetnosy, each of which, according to this concept, there is a set of ethnic groups that have similarities in language, culture and other ethnic areas significant enough that it was reflected in the their ethnic identity (approximately in the same sense at the turn of XIX-XX centuries., as we know, often used the term "tribe"). As an example of such a community domestic ethnographers often brought Slavic peoples. Despite the fact that the concept of "metaethnic community" has a few vague sense, in any case, less certain than the "ethnic group" or even "sub-ethnos" and is used by scientists rather arbitrarily, as a whole, this scheme is very firmly established in our science. At the time, it agreed in principle such an implacable opponent of the official Soviet ethnography as L.N. Gumilev (the only difference is that to refer to a higher tax-on ethnic hierarchy, he preferred the term "super-ethnos"). Consequently, the ratio of the concepts of "ethnicity" and "ethnic group" may slightly vary depending on the value of eating in which the second of them. In a narrow sense, the phrase "ethnic community" is a full synonym of the term "ethnic group", indicating only the basic level of the hierarchy of ethnic communities. In a broad sense, it refers to the ethnic community of any taxonomic level and applies to all divisions of ethnic hierarchy - subethnos actually ethnos metaetnosu (terminology Y.V. Bromley) or superethnos (in the terminology of the L.N. Gumilyov).
As a result, the development of domestic ethnographers ethnicity theory emerged into a quite peculiar situation: for about three decades in our country there are two systems in parallel terms to refer to people of the world (and all that is related to their specific nature, the nature of their relationship, etc.) which can be given code names - "national" (nation, nationality, national identity, national culture, international relations, etc.) and "ethnic" (ethnicity, ethnic group, ethnicity, ethnic identity, ethnic culture, ethnic relations, etc.), each of which had its own fairly well-defined scope. "National" terminology is completely dominated the socio-political literature (party and government documents of those years, including the Constitution of the USSR in 1977, which is still not figured ethnic groups, and the "nations and nationalities", etc.), and in the relevant scientific and educational literature (for example, the so-called historical materialism). "Ethnic" is the terminology used mainly in the most Ethnography (although representatives of this science was used, of course, the previous version of the terminology) and some allied disciplines (ethnidemography geography and population, partly historical and religious studies and literature, etc.).
This continued until the time of adjustment and only at the beginning of the last decade of the XX century, after the changes have taken place in the country, old scheme "tribe - nation - a nation" and related terminology gave way to more neutral in ideological terms "ethnic" terminology. Among other things, this was due to the fact that this terminology used and the only one who was at the time in opposition to the official Soviet Ethnography prominent scientist-ethnologist L.N. Gumilyov, whose concept of ethnogenesis reached in the first half of the '90s peak of his popularity. Anyway, for the last 20-25 years, "ethnicity" (and derivatives thereof) from the highly technical
terms has become a well-known concept, widely used not only in the literature on the various scientific disciplines, but that never happened before, in the media media (up to issues of criminal news, often mentions the "ethnic criminal groups").
Thus ethnic understanding, formed in the Soviet period in 1990-2000s, has undergone certain changes. For example, according to the academician V.A. Tishkov, the people in the ethnic sense of the word "is a group of people whose members share a common name, and cultural elements have representation (myth) of the common origin and a common historical memory, bind themselves to a particular area, have a sense of solidarity» [12, p. 4]. V.A. Tishkov stresses that "among the signs of the decisive role played by self-consciousness and solidarity" [Ibid.]. His proposed list of ethnicity differs markedly from the "classic" version by Bromley - language is not mentioned, but it added to the myth of common origin, a common historical memory and, most importantly, a sense of solidarity. In general, in the ethnological literature of the last decades, we have seen different approaches to the problem, some of them radically different from the understanding of the ethnic group that emerged in the domestic ethnography of 1960-1980s., some - to the old concept (up to rephrase the repetition of certain ethnic groups Soviet era).
Although existing in the national ethnological and other scientific literature definitions differ markedly from each other, all the researchers treat ethnicity as historically constituted community of people who have certain specific features - the so-called ethnic or ethnoidentifiers. (The fact that some of them use some other, but virtually synonymous terms of community - "group of people", "collective" and a few others - does not change the substance of the matter). It is interesting that the representatives of Western science is usually put in the term "ethnic group" about the same sense as our scientists - a set of people linked by common cultural traditions, language, etc. And in the West, along with the term "ethnic group" a few less common than we used it as a synonym or at least very similar concepts as "ethnicity" and sometimes "ethnia". One example of the use of Western scholars "ethnic" terminology is the work of Swiss historian W. Altermatt "Ethno-nationalism in Europe," in which the author calls etnia certain "social group having a common origin and imaginary storing shared memories of the past» [2, p. 62].
So, over the past decades by Soviet ethnographers and Russian ethnologists were invited to several more or less significantly differing definitions of ethnicity (ethnic community), each of which ethnicity was defined primarily as a historically constituted community of people, has a number of characteristics (ethnic characteristics) . The number of the latter in each individual definition ranges from four to five to eight, but since different definitions even coinciding in number allocated by the authors characteristics ethnicity themselves symptoms recur, usually only partially, the total of them is dialed to a half tens. Of them will be recognized only ethnic identity, and, with some reservations, the ethnonym. Such features as language, common culture, particularly psychological make-up connection to a particular territory, the common historical destiny and a common historical memory, are considered important, but not universal. Yet a number of features: community economic relations, the presence of their own state, religion, common origin, endogamy, and some others - are referred to as attributes of the ethnic community only individual (or, at least, few) researchers.
All this testifies to the fact that in modern ethnological science absent as a generally accepted theory of the ethnos, and, accordingly, its generally accepted definition, and scientists a little differently understand the specifics of the ethnic group, have different definitions of the characteristics of the ethnic group, indicating as the main (system-) feature one or other of the above (or even others). And it's not the only problem associated with the use of "ethnic" terminology in describing and studying the ethnic processes in the Russian Federation and in other countries. In particular, despite the fact that "ethnicity" and especially "ethnic community" have been introduced in a scientific revolution is like an umbrella term covering any kind of historical community of people - from tribal groups to modern nations, inclusive, sometimes attempts to narrow their meaning denoting these terms only education pre-national type. (In other words, use the "ethnicity" in the sense close to the old Soviet concept of "nationality").
As for the term "nation" (and its derivatives), despite the increased in the post-Soviet period the popularity of "ethnic" terms, he also remained in use, but mainly in different socio-political sense, denoting "the totality of the citizens of one state» [11, p. 892] regardless of their ethnicity. Understanding of the nation as a "sovereign civil society" [Ibid.], ie as the civil or political nation, for us, until recently, an unusual, but widespread since the era of the French Revolution in the West, especially the English - and French-speaking (English. nationality, and French. nationalite mean "nationality" is not in the usual sense of the ethnic, but in terms of "citizenship", "citizenship"), is gradually becoming, as mentioned earlier in this article, the generally accepted in the domestic scientific literature and journalism. However, such an interpretation of the concept we have combined with the continuing Soviet-era understanding of the nation as a kind of historical and cultural community. And in the Western tradition of "nation" is not always so clearly associated with the "totality of the citizens of one state". Along with a similar sense of the term (let it be called the Anglo-French) in Europe for a long time already, there are other interpretations.
The fact that the concept of the nation significantly changes its value at different stages of historical development of foreign countries, and even in our day can have each of them their own connotations. Without going into details (issues related to the historical evolution and the different interpretations of the concept of "nation" in the Western scientific and political traditions, may be the subject of a separate review), we note that there is now a huge amount of scientific definitions of the phenomenon, which, however, It can be reduced to two main concepts of the nation. These concepts, developed in the XIX century (but dating back to the ideas of the Enlightenment of the XVIII century), conventionally referred to as "state nation" and "cultural nation". In one case, the central point is the state, as the nation of this type is constituted on the basis of already existing state and territorial community. In another - come to the fore categories such as language, culture, common origin, historical memory, etc. In other words, the nation is understood solely as a linguistic, cultural, or, if you prefer, an ethnic community whose existence does not depend (or little affected) the presence or absence of "their" state. This option is the understanding of the nation, has called ethnic nation, is more characteristic of Central and Eastern Europe.
With regard to the domestic scientific thought and social practice, that is in our opinion, it is necessary to divide the final scope of the two terminologies. Thus, the concept of "nation" (and its derivatives), it is desirable to use only in the sense of political (government, civil) nation, designating him the totality of citizens of the Russian Federation (regardless of whether there was any such community, or is still in its formative stages). "Ethnic" terminology is perfect for the peoples - and our country, and any other - as a cultural and historical communities, regardless of their public-political status and level of social development.
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April, 20, 2015
