CC BY
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DOI 10.23947/2414-1143-2019-17-1-59-64 UDK 001+008+37
CIVILIZATIONAL-CULTURAL DIALOGUE IN THE CAUCASUS AS THE BASIS OF REGIONAL STABILITY
© Victor V. Chernous
Victor V. Chernous - candidate of political sciences, professor. Southern Federal University, Rostov-on-Don, Russian Federation.
Черноус Виктор Владимирович - кандидат политических наук, профессор. Южный федеральный университет, г. Ростов-на-Дону, Российская Федерация.
The problem of stability and security of the Caucasus and the South of Russia is one of the most complex and acute in the Russian Federation. Many authors try to understand and explain it through the methodological, more precisely, ideological construct of the "war of civilizations", thrown into the scientific discourse of S. Huntington. On this basis, a very common myth is built in the Western and partly Russian literature on the incompatibility of the traditional culture of the Caucasian peoples with modernization and the modern democratic system. As a proof, an alarmist picture is built, built on the absolutization of terrorism and extremism, behind which the dominant of all-Russian co-citizenship, mutual cultural germination of the peoples of Russia, defining all-Russian identity, is not visible.
Meanwhile, an integrated approach to the history and modern social life of the Caucasus and the South of Russia testifies to the unconditional dominance of constructive, peaceful relationships among the peoples of the region over marginal separatist, extremist and terrorist manifestations (without minimizing their social danger).
We consistently defend the construct of dialogue, more precisely the polylogue, of civilizations and cultures in the Russian Caucasus, which gives an understanding of historical and modern processes without lacquering, on the one hand, and demonizing, on the other.
In this context, the North Caucasus since ancient times, since the period of sapienta-tion, i.e. formation of modern man and racial formation, is a space of dialogue between civilizations, religions, ethnic cultures, traditions and innovations of other institutions of social life.
The current state of society in the North Caucasus is the result of a centuries-old social polylogue, which continues today, which is the key to the development of the peoples and polities of the region. The local autochtonous peoples (the Caucasian variety of the South European sub-race of the great European race - carriers of the Dagestan and Abkhaz-Adyghe proto-languages of the North Caucasian language family) were in constant interaction with each other. From the first half of I millennium BC this polylogue includes the Iranian-speaking peoples - the Scythians, then the Sarmatians and the Alans. They became part of the ethnic and sociocultural history of almost all modern peoples of the region, especially the Ossetians - the direct heirs of the most ancient Indo-Europeans of the Caucasus.
From the middle of I millennium AD an important role in the transformation of the ethnical and cultural and demographic picture of the North Caucasus was played by Turkic nomads - Huns, Bulgarians, Khazars, later Pechenegs and Polovtsy. Their heritage is
traced in the anthropology, languages and culture of the modern peoples of the region, especially the Turkic-speaking - Karachay-Balkarians, Kumyks.
The period of Mongolian domination in Eurasia (XII - XV centuries) also left its mark in the history of the region.
As a result, in the North Caucasus there was a racial diversity, in which with different degrees of manifestation of the Caucasian variety of the South European race, there are anthropological types: Persian (Abkhaz, Armenians), Caspian (Azeris, Kurds, Talysh, etc.), Pontian (Balkars, Ingush, Kabardians, Karachai, Ossetians, Chechens, etc.). In addition, in the North Caucasus, the Eastern European type of the large European race (Slavic peoples) and the Central Asian anthropological type (Kalmyks, Nogai) are represented.
Even more complex, but organic and mutually permeable is the linguistic picture of the North Caucasus: the North Caucasian family (the Dagestan and Abkhaz-Adyghe groups) of the Sino-Caucasian macrofamily of languages; Indo-European languages (Russian and other Slavic languages, Armenian, Ossetian, Tat, Kurdish, etc.), Turkic languages (Kara-chay-Balkarian, Kumyk, Nogai), Mongolian (Kalmyk).
The result of the dialogue in the sacral sphere was the phenomenon of religious syncretism, which is a characteristic of most of the autochtonous peoples of the region: various local beliefs from the first centuries of our era experienced the influence of Judaism, then Eastern Christianity, from the 7th century a long period of Islam ization began. Without taking into account the most complex interpenetration of these religious systems, it is impossible to understand the modern religious situation, the peculiarities of the religious consciousness of the peoples of the North Caucasus.
Since the time of Kyiv Rus, but especially since the XVI century this polylogue of civilizations and cultures includes Eastern Slavs (Russians). Until the end of the XVIII - beginning of the XIX century in the polylogue of cultures, the eastern channel dominated, through which the experience of two great sociocultural systems of Islam of the Osman and Persian empires, reflected in all spheres of social life of the peoples of the region, was transmitted to the North Caucasus. The Caucasian Jurassic civilization was not an object, but the subject of this interaction.
With the accession of the North Caucasus to the Russian Empire (late XVIII - 1864), the eastern channel was expelled by the Russians, who began to play the role of translator of modernization processes in the region. Modern forms of professional culture and art, positive law, a model of coexistence on a limited territory of Orthodoxy, Islam and Buddhism came to Russia in the North Caucasus. In the legal sphere of the empire, polyjurid-ism was established which is the distribution of the spheres of functioning of Russian law, Sharia and customary law with all the inevitable contradictions, conflicts to the beginning of the XX century. The region as a whole organically integrated into the sociocultural system of the empire.
The revolution of 1917, the Civil War almost destroyed the integrity of Russia on its southern borders, and the socialist experiment led to both great achievements and the loss of many achievements in the sociocultural dialogue of the previous period. Religious culture was lost, including the constructive coexistence of religions without proselytism in each other's historical territories. The experience of combining various systems of law, state and legal relations was discarded.
Nevertheless, the preservation of the dominant role of Russian culture allowed, despite the Soviet ideology, through the dialogue of cultures to achieve the creation of writing among the peoples of the North Caucasus based on Cyrillic, universal literacy, the creation of the modern structure of the economy, science and education. Russian language not only replaced Kumyk (Turkic) as a language of interethnic communication, but also significantly expanded the space of the language dialogue of interaction between the cultures of the North Caucasus, became a channel for incorporating them into world culture.
The North Caucasus has turned by the 90s of XX century in a highly developed socio-cultural region.
In the late 80s - early 90s of XX century during the crisis of socialist ideology, which formed the ideological basis of the system integrity of the methanational community of the Soviet people and its culture, it led to the segmentation of the post-Soviet cultural space, it becomes mosaic, multi-component, consisting of typologically different cultural systems.
In the conditions of crisis and modernization of processes in Russia, the importance of traditional forms of culture of the peoples of the North Caucasus has increased. They conflicted with other forms of traditional culture and modernism, Russian culture and cultures of the peoples of the North Caucasus, modern intercultural communication is ambivalent and multi-vector, not reducible to opposition or synthesis.
In the first decade of the XXI century, the dialogue forms of interaction that underlie the reintegration of the sociopolitical and cultural space were being restored. The consequence of this was the weakening of the conflict of ethno-confessional identities and the gradual strengthening of Russian civic identity.
Such a social choice is able to restore the balance of cultures in the North Caucasus during the last two centuries, restore the systemic unity of the North Caucasian culture and its synthesis with Russian culture, the reviving Russian civilization model.
The Russian cultural tradition has never set as its task complete assimilation of the peoples of Russia; they all retain the intrinsic nature of their traditions and cultures, moral standards. However, two centuries of co-development objectively brought the peoples of the North Caucasus to each other, made it an integral and bright part of the civilizational and cultural space of Russia. It is Russian culture, interacting with ethno-traditional cultures that reinforces the commonality of the North Caucasian culture and the peoples of the region.
The irreversibility of integration processes is determined by the spiritual and moral transformation of Russia, which is based on a multi-religious dialogue. Its most important subjects are the Russian Orthodox Church and the traditional Islam for the regions of southern Russia.
The rapid religious revival as a response to the crisis of values and the moral system of Soviet society arose to a certain extent continues to develop in the context of a lost religious culture because of a ten-year administrative, almost complete, monopoly of atheism. As a result, confessions in Russia face the problem of conflicts radically interpreting certain religious dogmas without taking into account the richest theological experience. Nevertheless, in all the constituent territories of the Russian Federation in the South, Orthodox bishoprich have tolerant and constructive relations with the Spiritual boards of Muslims. Well known are joint statements, actions condemning extremism, terrorism, attempts to stir up interethnic and interfaith relations.
Another thing is that it would be desirable to make it more efficient and systemic. Without this, it is impossible to restore the spirituality and morality in our society.
The imperative of the effectiveness of the dialogue between Orthodoxy and Islam in Russia is overcoming intra-Islamic contradictions, which is connected with the radicalization of certain religious groups and the active use of pseudo-Islamic rhetoric by extremist and criminal groups.
At the same time, we must not forget that the re-Islamization of the region in the 90s developed under the direct influence of a number of factors: geopolitical, internal socioeconomic and ideological. The determining factors were internal ones i.e. a systemic crisis, demodernization of the economy, the absence of a clear policy in the Caucasus, the federal center, the corruption of power, social hopelessness, etc. At the same time, the external factor should not be underestimated. After the collapse of the USSR, the North Caucasus turned into a border region. Thirty-eight states, leading international organizations and
transnational companies have declared their interests in this important military-strategic region where transport and energy communications take place.
A.V. Malashenko and others have consistently denied the possibility of dialogue between religions. It seems that they are right when it comes to the dogma of monotheistic religions. Recognizing another religion or denomination in its composition as an equal participant in the dialogue will mean the beginning of apostasy for religious knowledge. Therefore, ecumenist projects, the construction of a single world religion are doomed only to partial success and are not popular in Russia. However, in a long historical perspective, syncretic forms of religions can emerge (by the way, what Islam is among the peoples of the North Caucasus with elements of pagan beliefs and Christianity integrated into it).
The subject of dialogue, or rather a polylogue, in the confessional space may be social issues. In this case, the subjects of the polylogue, along with denominations, should be the state and the institutions of civil society. The subject of the polylog can be:
- social doctrines of confessions (in the social doctrines of Orthodoxy and Islam there are close ones, there are inconsistent positions and there are positions contradicting the liberal understanding of human rights);
- the problem of introducing courses of the foundations of religious (Orthodox, Muslim, Buddhist, etc.) cultures. The problem is acutely and ambiguously perceived in society, but it is extremely important. In our opinion, one of the factors in the spread of religious radicalism and extremism is the low level of religious culture. In addition, is it possible to understand adequately folklore, classical Russian culture without knowledge of the foundations of Orthodox culture? Alternatively, to return morality to the social sphere of modern Russia outside of religion? Therefore, not only confessions, but also the state and society are interested, given the consequences of decades of atheism, in enhancing religious culture. This is a question of the content of courses, forms of teaching, etc.
- counteraction to ethnoreligious terrorism and extremism. There is already considerable experience;
- providing believers with the opportunity to satisfy spiritual needs.
These and other problems have different interpretations and understandings. That is why the polylog of the noted subjects is important.
Often there are fair accusations of individual religious figures of hypocrisy in dealing with important spiritual and social problems, trying to use them in their own narrow interests. However, in the process of interaction between denominations, states and society, officials or liberals are not hypocritical, who also do not accept Russian traditional religions, as well as adherents of the last liberals? Nevertheless, this cannot be a reason for rejecting such a polylog, especially since it will go spontaneously with an unpredictable result. If you try to drive religions on a reservation or marginalize them, then the most likely result will be a reciprocal rise in extremism on religious grounds.
At the same time, by the mid-1990s, when the federal center was losing real political control over the regions, bureaucratic authoritarian ethnocratic regimes, which spoke on behalf of titular ethnic groups of the republics, became stronger in the Federation subjects. They concluded a kind of "social contract" with the federal center. Ethnocracy suppressed extreme forms of ethnonationalism (both "indigenous peoples" and the Russian-Cossack population), drove the radical "Islamist" movements underground. At the same time, they relied on DUM, upheld the constructive and peaceful nature of traditional Islam, and emphasized the Christian-Muslim character of the Russian state. The federal center did not interfere in the affairs of ethnocratic regimes, focusing on maintaining functional stability. Ethnocratic regimes played a positive role in freezing the tendencies of separatism, but turned out to be extremely inefficient in economic terms, in the ability to modernize, subject to systemic corruption. Socio-economic hopelessness, a sharp income gap contributed to the radicalization of the population, especially young people. Federal and regional authori-
ties, DUM turned out to be unprepared for ideological opposition to the pseudo-Islamist radicals, focusing on the administrative prohibition in the republics of Wahhabi activities, which was actually limited to police methods of suppressing their legal forms of activity. At the same time, in almost all republics, underground societies ("jamaats") of extremists appear, using Islamist rhetoric and radical criticism of actual crisis phenomena, inefficiency and corruption of power.
At the turn of the XX - XXI centuries, public opinion and expert appraisals were dominated by two approaches: some idealization of traditional Islam and the demonization of Wahhabism as pseudo-Islamic extremism. Recurrences of this approach usually took place in connection with large-scale terrorist attacks (Beslan, Nalchik), but on the whole a more balanced, differentiated approach was established, which does not deny the possibility of the emergence of extremist manifestations under the influence of politicization in conditions of crisis processes both among Salafists and traditionalists and even modernists in Islam.
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Опубликовано на русском языке в сборнике: Кавказская цивилизация: историко-культурное наследие народов Юга России. Ростов-на-Дону: Магас. 2009, С. 82-90. На английском языке публикуется впервые.
The article is published in Russian in the scientific works collection: Caucasian civilization: historical and cultural heritage of the peoples of the South of Russia. Rostov-on-Don: Magas. 2009, pp. 82-90. In English it is published for the first time.
8 January, 2019
