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UDC 101
MEANING OF RUSSIAN ETHNIC IDENTITY IN MODERN CIVIL PROJECT
S. Ivanova
Southern scientific center RAS. Rostov-on-Don, Russian Federation science-almanac@mail. ru
The crisis and the destruction of the Soviet ideology and culture once again exposed and exacerbated the very problem of Russia's civilizational identity. Successful reforms, the implementation of national projects in Russia at the moment are not possible without taking into account the factor of identity. In recent years, political elites are increasingly paying attention to the project for the formation of civic identity. The basic fields for the formation of civic identity are the cultural, economic and political. At the end of 1980s, we observed the crisis of civic identity. At the beginning of the 1990s, we have been overcoming the crisis connected with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the destruction of the usual Soviet identity. Currently, you can already assume that the notion of "Russians" as the identification of the term as a whole has received public recognition and turned into a bit of updated operating cultural concepts, and not only by experts, but also at the grassroots level.
Formation of Russian identity occurs in a multicultural and multiethnic environment, with the intensification of migration flows, total ethnic self-determination. These factors raise the question of the development of an optimal model of human identity in modern Russia. Here arises an important question about the place of Russian ethnic identity in modern civil project. In the center of methodological research related to the problem of identity actualization of the national cultural and historical specificity, as well as the analysis of the current mentality should be placed. Russian mentality underlying ethnic identification of Russian people, driven by the values of the spiritual, not the material and in the process of civilizational interaction borrowed socio-psychological qualities of other people, which resulted in a kind of solution to the Russian civilizational issues, such as the formation and development of statehood, relations between society and the individual, understanding of the nature of democracy, etc.
When it is said that the Russians have lost identity, it seems either misleading or deliberately exaggerated. Over the years most Russian citizens have defined their religion. Many, as it was mentioned earlier, consider themselves to be Russians. Many even continue to consider themselves Soviet. The vast majority of people still consider themselves to the great Russian culture, citizens of a great country. Apparently, we should talk about what really is happening with self-development of identity, the transformation of new knowledge and ideas into new values and norms, adapting traditions to new realities.
Key words: ethnic identity, citizenship, values, civic identity, polyethnic environment mentality, civilization.
The crisis and the destruction of the Soviet ideology and culture once again exposed and exacerbated the very problem of Russia's civilizational identity, to actualize the various potencies of its transformation, each of which has the potential vector of social and cultural change. Russian identity problem most often raised in scientific publications, due to the fact that the analysis of the processes taking place in contemporary Russia is ascertained identity crisis as the most important consequence of the collapse of the former state and the source of the moral and psychological discomfort of many people. Identification crisis has powerful destructive potentialities, and the most significant danger is the primitive form of the new identity of the object, which has resulted in the destruction of a single image of the Fatherland. The identity crisis often can lead to the selection as an object of identity has much more narrow range of social communities, more local, and sometimes marginal in character. A man who has lost the sense of homeland, fills the void with different content, identifying with religious, ethnic, tribal, professional or even criminal communities.
Successful reforms, the implementation of national projects in Russia at the moment is not possible without taking into account the factor of identity. It is also an important economic issue related to the mechanisms of goal-setting and strategic planning, the formation of new incentive arrangements, the structuring of the system of interests and values. Modern processes of modernization in Russia can be traced in the three-tier model of socio-cultural identity: macro-identity of our society has two versions (the national government and civilization); mezzo-identity (social group) shows the individuals belonging to certain communities and social groups within a given society;
micro-identity lets us see the individual in a unique relationship with the community. For effective development of the modernization process there must be an organic interaction between all levels of identity. However, today we are dealing with an identity crisis at all three levels.
Currently, a large number of Russians has narrowed its "geographic" identity, which has a negative impact on their ethnic and national identity. Transformation of the Soviet socio-cultural identity has lowered the level of supra-ethnic identification of the structuring process, they fell to the level of local communities. Nevertheless, there is reason to believe that among all emerging groups in modern Russia there is a "cross identity", i.e. something in common, which suggests the presence of a kind of integrative, socio-cultural, philosophical-activity framework, which could be the basis for the consolidation of Russian society. Clarification of identity is not personal and cultural, social and political science in nature. The search for identity beyond the scope of the personal file of the citizen is often the "general case" of the political elite, that serves as a means of mobilizing the masses and manipulate them. In recent years, political elites are increasingly paying attention to the project for the formation of civic identity.
Civil identity is a kind of socio-cultural identity, which is based on the identification with the community, state and country. It serves as a comprehensive status-identification basis for the formation of massive social practices that constitute and reproduce a given society as an independent and specific socio-cultural system. Civic identity is a social integration on the basis of the common terminal and instrumental values (including values through such systems as the Motherland, state, country), objectified through the identification of individuals with a certain position in the social and cultural space and secured through social practices in the identification of specific fields. The basic fields are the cultural, economic and political.
The cultural field is the value-normative framework of civil identity and constitutive acts with respect to other fields, playing the role of a kind of matrix within which there is a construction of social reality. In the socio-economic field of civil identity objectification can be traced through the attitude and orientation to the way of organizing economic life of society and the system of the relevant objective and subjective social dispositions and related behaviors. The political field of civil identity is realized through its relation to the political structure of society, government institutions, political organizations and leaders, as well as through political behavior and ideological orientation.
Civil identity of Russian society is largely based on negative projections in all basic identification fields. The hierarchy of identities to a certain degree flips, and is performed not only at the global (Motherland, country, state, Fatherland), but also at the local levels of identity (small group, subculture, religion, nationality). However, there is reason to believe that the crisis of civic identity, activity was shown at the end of 1980s. The beginning of the 1990s, coupled with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the destruction of the usual civic identity is gradually being overcome. There is a convergence of traditional conservative values of Russian culture and the innovations introduced by the reform of society and his openness to other cultures [1. p. 256-258].
As you know, throughout the a short period of existence of the Russian Federation as an independent state, the country's political leadership is taking consistent steps to strengthen the general civil consciousness. This insistence on the promotion of the political practice of the identification of the term "Russians", and blocking attempts to multiplication of recognized state of ethnic and eth-no-cultural groups (for example, attempts to constitute as a special "people" Cossacks), and the abolition of the famous 5th entry in the Russian passport. How successful were these efforts?
Currently, you can already assume that the notion of "Russians" as the identification of the term as a whole has received public recognition and turned into a bit of updated operating cultural concepts, and not only by experts, but also at the grassroots level. Formation of Russian identity occurs in a multicultural and multiethnic environment, with the intensification of migration flows, total ethnic self-determination. These factors acutely raise the question of the development of an optimal model of human identity in modern Russia. However, to analyze the changes that occur with the identity is to realize that it embodies a sustainable mechanism of social and cultural reproduction. It is necessary to treat the identity not as to what is given, but to what is invented. In other
words, it is necessary to treat identity as a project. The project assumed as the subject of a special "ontological" design is a very social and cultural existence of Russia.
Therefore, it is necessary to treat the Kiev Rus to the Mongol Rus, Russian tsar Ivan the Terrible and Soviet Russia not as an alternative "legacy" which the Russians lost and hope to regain, but as equal and partly complementary confirmation of this projectivity. In the center of methodological research related to the problem of identity, actualization of the national cultural and historical specificity, as well as the analysis of the current mentality should be put. Let us dwell on the analysis of the specificity in detail.
Russia, as we know, lies between the two main streams of civilization of historical existence - East and West. In the theoretical consciousness it has been recorded a variety of views on the matter: 1) the idea of Russian exceptionalism in the world history and culture; 2) the idea of Russia as the East; 3) the idea of Russia as the West; 4) the idea of Russia as a special Slavic civilization; 5) the idea of Russia as a Eurasian great civilization from the East and the West; 6) the idea of Russian specifics, which is expressed in a combination of Eastern and Western characteristics; 7) the idea of Russian identity within the Christian world; 8) the idea of Byzantium Russia; 9) the idea of Russia as a "third force", as a synthesis of East and West.
Thus, in the Russian culture and, consequently, in mentality, there are two values. One of them was built on contradictions and pointing the way to man from evil to good. Others seek to eliminate these differences. It created the image of an ideal relationship for the Russian society: the warmth of family, justice, power, exaltation of the native land, the willingness to protect it. However, there is the system of values in its infancy in the pagan period. For its formation it had a sense of national identity, which was only possible with the acquisition of statehood and Christianity.
The peculiarity of Russian history was the fact that the traditional culture has developed here later than in Western Europe. It was not focused on the future and the past; not to meet the growing needs and interests of people, but on immutable values, the established patterns; not on the logic of evidence, but on belief and imitation; not on the personality and behavior of internal controls, and on the team and the external control of behavior. Traditional culture is in great harmony with the natural environment and man. It does not require the transformation of nature and the surge of the individual forces. In those days, people felt much more comfortable and more protected than in today's society.
From the analysis it is clear that the Russian mentality underlying ethnic identification Russian driven by the values of the spiritual, not the material and in the process of civilizational interaction borrowed socio-psychological qualities of other people, which resulted in a kind of solution to the Russians civilizational issues, such as the formation and development of statehood, the relationship between society and the individual, understanding the nature of democracy, etc.
When it is said that the Russians lost identity, it sounds misleading or deliberately exaggerated. Many, as mentioned earlier, consider themselves Russians. Many even continue to consider themselves Soviet. The vast majority of people still consider themselves the part of great Russian culture, citizens of a great country. Apparently, we should talk about what really is going on with self-development of identity, the transformation of new knowledge and ideas into new values and norms, adapting traditions to new realities. The context of the Russian civilization preservation and maintenance of cultural identities is possible on the basis of consolidating the foundation, which is conventionally called the "almighty factor", understood as the union of all the socio-cultural communities of Russia. At this stage, we can talk about changing the social paradigm of the pursuit of social consensus, as the political segments and ethnic components. Due to the marked differences in the specifics of Russian civilization this function can perform only a strong state, and acting as a guarantor of fulfillment of rules of the game and as an active subject of social process. Not the last role in this process belongs to the integrative ideology adequate to maintain and strengthen all cultural identities on the one hand, cementing and consolidating the whole society - on the other.
References
1. Grishina E.A. Civil identity in Post-Soviet Russia. Abstracts and presentations at the II All-Russian Congress of Sociology ''Russian Society and Sociology in the XXI century: social challenges and alternatives'' In 3 volumes. M., 2003. Vol. 1.
2. Gogol N. V. Selected passages from correspondence with friends. M., 1993.
3. Kant I. Anthropology from a pragmatic point of view. Vol. 6 M., 1966.
Литература
1. Гришина Е.А. Гражданская идентичность в постсоветской России. Тезисы докладов и выступлений на II Всероссийском социологическом конгрессе ''Российское общество и социология в XXI веке: социальные вызовы и альтернативы'': В 3 т. М., 2003. Т.1.
2. Гоголь Н.В. Выбранные места из переписки с друзьями. М., 1993.
3. Кант И. Антропология с прагматической точки зрения. Т.6. М., 1966.
August, 26, 2016
