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What is the Russian nation? Who and what creates a nation? What is national identity? The editor of the website's politics department, political scientist Alexander Mikhailov, answers these questions
In 1991, a new, democratic Russia emerged from the fragments of the Soviet empire. This historical event The era of the global political experiment, implemented by the famous politician and terrorist Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (Lenin), has ended. Failures of Russia in the First World War, betrayal of the monarchy by Tsar Nicholas II and the conflict of political elites played their role historical role in this bloody, controversial experiment that radically changed the course of the history of the Russian state.
The experiment ended in the collapse of the system, leaving a lot of unanswerable questions for future generations. However, it cannot be said that the attempt to build socialism led to the collapse of the Soviet nation. Rather, the Soviet nation transformed along with the republics former USSR, having inherited the adjective “Russian” and rejecting the term “Soviet” as not corresponding to the political reality of the late 20th century.
I will probably not be mistaken if I note that the majority of Russian citizens do not realize that the events that occurred two decades ago marked the beginning of the process of creating a new Russian nation. Or, after all, the Russian people?
In general, what is the Russian nation? Who and what creates a nation? What is national identity?
By thinking about the answers to these questions, we “turn on” our idea of historical path development of the Russian nation and the Russian state. If you take the simplest route and look into terminological dictionaries, it turns out that, according to the scientific definition, a “nation” is a historically established stable community of people that arose on the basis of: common origin, language, territory, common sphere of public self-government, mental makeup, manifested in a community of culture.
By this definition, a group of people living in the same territory, having a similar culture, way of governing or common language, can safely be called a “nation”. However, trying on scientific definition to the term “Russian nation”, one involuntarily stumbles upon obvious contradictions.
Today it is already obvious that one of the reasons for the collapse of the USSR was cultural: a fatal mistake was made in Soviet ideology when the concept of “nation” was transferred to a level below the national level, to the level of individual ethnic groups. Even today one can endlessly turn away from the unpleasant consequences of public discussion of national problems, but as a result one has to put up with the presence of national issues, at least in a multinational society, which is the Russian nation.
The Russian Constitution, by the way, has a similar error. It again talks about the multinational Russian people, and not about the Russian nation. A similar picture emerges: according to the main document of the country, Russian people- these are Russians, Tatars, Chuvashs, Kalmyks, etc., that is, people who are linked into a single term by having a Russian passport. But this is fundamentally wrong: Russians, Tatars, Chuvashs, etc. - these are ethnic communities, in other words - separate peoples, but we have one nation - Russian.
Many historians and political scientists do not like the word “nation”. We agree that he smells a little of the term “Nazism” and fascism in general. Perhaps this is why this word itself is artificially erased in political discussions: there is too great a danger of opening another “Pandora’s box”.
Thus, one of the tasks that I set while working on this book is to return the meaning to the term “Russian nation” in order to understand ourselves, that all of us, residents of Russia, are one nation.
If we talk about the origin of the Russian nation, then first we should consider approaches to the origin of nations as a whole. Some researchers consider nations to be all ethnic groups that are “suprahistorical formations” and have maintained their traditional, unchanging essence for centuries. Unfortunately, it was this direction of geopolitical philosophy that became the basis for manifestations of nationalism, which led to the collapse of many states.
There is another opinion, according to which nations are presented as ideological constructs that are created by elites with the aim of consolidating their compatriots. And in this approach there is much more reasonable grain, because the course of history may develop in such a way that even people from the same ethnic group do not form their own nation. And vice versa, when people of very different ethnic and racial origins are able to form a nation in the full sense of the word, as, for example, in the United States.
Russian philosopher Lev Gumilev in his work “From Rus' to Russia” wrote that the entire history of mankind consists of a series of changes. Perhaps the change of empires and kingdoms, faiths and traditions does not have any internal pattern, but represents an inexplicable chaos, Gumilyov wondered? For a long time, inquisitive people have sought to find the answer to this question, to understand and explain the origins of their history.
The answers were different, because history is multifaceted: it can be political, economic, military, etc. Therefore, if law school historians studied the laws and principles government system, then historians and philosophers looked at history through the prism of the development of social forces and social classes, ethnographers-linguists studied the evolution of languages, and some even relied in their research on national psychology. Is it possible to imagine human history as the history of peoples?
Lessons national history show us how the expansion of Russia was carried out in practice by the Moscow princes, Russian Tsars and All-Russian Emperors, who managed to unite the entire set of Eurasian peoples, found optimal measures for their reunification into a huge state and for centuries maintained the national and religious balance of our country.
According to Gumilyov, the formation of a new ethnic group is always associated with the presence in some individuals of an irresistible internal desire for purposeful activity, always associated with a change in the environment. Under favorable conditions, they commit (and cannot help but commit) actions that break the inertia of old traditions and initiate new ethnic groups.
Lev Gumilyov proposed calling this phenomenon the term “social passionarity” to describe it (from passio - passion). Passionarity is the ability and desire to change the environment, or, translated into the language of physics, to disrupt the inertia of the aggregate state of the environment. The impulse of passionarity can be so strong that the carriers of this trait - passionaries - cannot bring themselves to calculate the consequences of their actions. This is a very important circumstance, indicating that passionarity is not an attribute of consciousness, but of the subconscious, an important feature expressed in the specific constitution of nervous activity.
For us, as researchers of the formation of the Russian nation, the question arises: have our compatriots retained the previous level of passionarity, have they not lost it during the numerous wars of their history, two world wars, a civil war, Stalin’s terror, socialist stagnation, Gorbachev’s “perestroika”? Have the Russians become a weak-willed toy in the hands of manipulators, including as a result of a completely conscious conspiracy of foreign elites?
Formation modern Russia from the Middle Ages to the present day, it has been going around the Great Russian center - the Moscow Principality, which was determined by the passionary impulse that, according to Gumilyov, passed through Great Russia. Among many positive qualities“Great Russians” we note what F. M. Dostoevsky called “the ability to understand and accept other peoples.” The historian Klyuchevsky wrote that “the entire history of Russia is the history of colonization.”
The history of the successive annexation of Siberia, Ukraine, the Caucasus, and Central Asia shows that the inclusion of vast territories into Russia was carried out not through the extermination of the annexed peoples, not by forcibly driving them into reservations or violence against their traditions and faith, but on the basis of bilateral agreements and the voluntary entry of peoples under the patronage of Russia. At the same time, the Russian ethnic group became a “system-forming ethnic group” around which other, less numerous ethnic groups gathered and mutually integrated.
Let us also note the constant presence nearby of a “system-forming religion” - Orthodoxy - a religion that miraculously merged with the Slavs and the traditional way of life of the ancient Slavs. Unlike Catholicism, Orthodoxy is the lightest Christian religion that does not emphasize original sin, and calling for the salvation of the soul through personally accomplished good deeds and “self-atonement of sin” through repentance (as opposed to Catholic indulgences and the Inquisition). Orthodoxy, in addition, was not characterized by “militant missionaryism,” thanks to which Orthodoxy has always coexisted peacefully with other faiths and cultures.
But let's return to the history of Russia. In the era of feudal fragmentation, Rus', isolated into independent principalities, could not throw off the Horde yoke. The course of history required the Russians to significantly strengthen their statehood. As a result, trends emerged towards the unification of Russian lands around Moscow and, as a result, the centralization of power.
The rise of Moscow, in the past a modest principality of the Vladimir-Suzdal land, was facilitated by its favorable geographical location (the city was at the crossroads of important trade routes and was isolated from external enemies by other principalities) and the centralized policy of the Moscow princes. The rise of Moscow led to the subsequent unification around it of Russian lands, aware of their cultural and religious community, bound by a common desire to gain independence.
The beginning of the unification of Russian lands around Moscow was preceded by a struggle for power between the Moscow and Tver principalities, from which Moscow emerged victorious. Subsequently, the Moscow princes managed to retain the grand-ducal throne for themselves. And when the Moscow prince Dmitry Donskoy began an open struggle with the Golden Horde and in 1380 won a brilliant victory over the Mongol-Tatar army on the Kulikovo field, this victory strengthened the authority and importance of Moscow, turning it into the de facto capital of Rus'.
By the middle of the 15th century, conditions had developed for the completion of the unification of Russian lands and the creation of a single state. The completion of the unification process occurred at the end of the 15th - beginning of the 16th centuries and is associated primarily with the name of Ivan III, during whose reign the Grand Duchy of Yaroslavl was annexed to Moscow, Perm region, Rostov Principality, Novgorod and its lands, Tver Principality, Vyatka Land. Ivan III also demonstrated his independence in relation to the Tatars, refusing to pay tribute, and the historical “standing on the Ugra” in 1480 put an end to the Mongol-Tatar yoke.
The creation of a unified state had a serious impact on its economic development. The nature of land ownership of the princes was changing, and serious changes took place in the army. From the end of the 15th century, social class began to take shape, and by the beginning of the 16th century, an autocratic monarchy was established in Russia, where political power belonged to the Grand Duke. In fact, at this stage we can talk about the full formation of the Russian nation.
The history of the Russian nation is amazing in its ups and downs. Having formed as a single state, Muscovy soon entered a long-term era of systemic state crisis.
First of all, the crisis was associated with the reign of Ivan the Terrible, whose contradictory domestic and foreign policies led to the destruction of the economy, the loss of many Western territories, and the aggravation of social conflicts within the Moscow state, which covered the entire Russian society.
With the end of the dynasty of the House of Kalita, Boris Godunov becomes a key figure in Russian politics. Godunov radically changed the nature of the state’s domestic and foreign policy: he began the development of the southern outskirts of Siberia, and made attempts to return the western lands. However, the systemic crisis laid down by Ivan the Terrible could no longer end. In April 1605, Godunov unexpectedly died (as historians believe today, as a result of poisoning), and already in June False Dmitry the First entered Moscow, who was also killed 11 months after his accession to the throne.
The next stage of the “troubles” is associated with Vasily Shuisky, an intriguer and the alleged mastermind of Godunov’s murder. He ascended the throne immediately after the death of False Dmitry the First by decision of Red Square, but already in 1610, Polish troops defeated Shuisky’s troops, and he was overthrown from the throne, and the “Seven Boyars” began to rule the country.
It was at this historical stage that the true “people's will” of the Russian nation manifested itself, independently taking on the task of establishing political order in the state. The second zemstvo militia, which arose in Novgorod under the leadership of Kuzma Minin and Dmitry Pozharsky, managed to take the Moscow Kremlin in the fall of 1612.
The results of the “time of troubles” were monstrous: total number the number of deaths was equal to one third of the population, the global economic catastrophe affected all spheres of life of the Russian nation, significant territorial losses cut off important trade routes from the state.
The emergence of a new royal dynasty in 1613, when the Zemsky Sobor elected 16-year-old Mikhail Romanov, marked the beginning of the revival of the Russian state. The first representatives of the Romanov dynasty were forced to solve three main problems of the state - economic restoration, return of lost territories, and the formation of a reliable system of government.
At the end of the 17th century, when Tsar Peter I came to power, Russia was still going through a difficult period in its history. Unlike the technologically developed Western European countries, Russia remained an economically backward country with no large industrial enterprises, there was no access to the seas through which trade could develop, and there was no own navy. The army that Peter inherited was obsolete and consisted mainly of noble militia.
At the same time, Russia and its rich lands aroused the aggressive ambitions of its Western neighbors. It was urgently necessary to modernize the army, seize access to the seas and build a fleet, create a domestic industry practically from scratch, and rebuild the state administration system. And Tsar Peter turned out to be just such a monarch - imperious, extraordinary, intelligent, and these qualities played a leading role in the rise of Russia, which had not risen “from its knees” since the time of the “Troubles”.
It should be noted that it was during this period Russian history The formation and development of a secular national culture and serious changes in the traditional way of life of Russians are taking place. Secular schools began to open, education began to acquire a secular character. During Peter's reign, major technical innovations and inventions appeared, especially in the development of mining and metallurgy, as well as in the military field. Changed and appearance Russians: European style in clothing, he replaced the traditional clothing of Russians, especially in an urban environment, wigs were introduced and beards were prohibited.
Peter sent hundreds of young nobles to Europe to study various military specialties, mainly to master maritime sciences. The Tsar also took care of the development of education in Russia itself, opened educational institutions, and formed the Russian scientific elite.
In general, Peter I began the modernization of the Russian nation in the truest sense of the word. The king strove to overcome as soon as possible the problem that had arisen since the time of Tatar-Mongol yoke inferiority and backwardness of Russia from Europe. The main result of Peter's reforms was the establishment of absolutism in Russia, the crown of which was the change in the official title of the Russian monarch in 1721 - Peter declared himself emperor, and the state began to be called the Russian Empire.
During the years of his reign, Peter achieved his plans: he created a state with a vertical management system, a strong army and a powerful navy, and a technological economy. The role of Peter the Great in the history of Russia is difficult to overestimate; he is also one of the most significant figures in world history. And his reign marked the revival of the Russian nation, which had lost its significance for almost a century.
Peter's reforms to strengthen the Russian nation were actually continued by Empress Catherine II, who, declaring herself the successor of the work of Peter I, directed all her efforts towards creating an absolute state. Unlike her many powerful predecessors, Catherine II was a talented politician who understood perfectly well that it was no longer possible to rule in Russia using old, archaic methods.
The policy pursued by Catherine II was called in history the “policy of enlightened absolutism.” The socio-economic basis of the policy was the development of a new, in fact, capitalist structure of the European model.
Until the February Revolution, the Russian nation strengthened its authority in numerous wars and military conflicts. Russian-Turkish, Crimean wars, long-term Caucasian clashes, and, of course, the Patriotic War of 1812, allowed Russia to firmly occupy one of the leading geopolitical positions on the planet. Even failure in Russian-Japanese war and the bloody battles of the First World War could not even imagine what Russia was to experience after 1917.
In 1917, Tsar Nicholas II betrayed Russia. It is impossible to describe the emperor’s act of renouncing power in other words. In difficult times for the country, in a difficult situation in western front, Nikolay II betrayed not only the Russian monarchy, but also the entire Russian nation, dooming the peoples of his state to civil war and anarchy.
At the same time, it cannot be said that Nikolai’s betrayal II was the first betrayal of the Russian people by the authorities. From the course of history we remember how Tsar Ivan the Terrible left his country to be torn apart by the oprichnina, and he himself actually moved away from governing the state. We already said what this led to: “time of troubles” and Polish intervention.
However, then there were popular forces that managed to save the country from collapse and division of territories. And 1612 became the year of the revival of the Russian nation, the consolidation of the people's ranks, and the return of national unity. Unfortunately, in 1917, a “miracle” did not happen: the country’s history followed the bloody path of Bolshevism.
The terrorist and Bolshevik Vladimir Ulyanov (Lenin) came to power not as Russian politician, but as a representative of Germany’s national intervention using its own funds. In fact, Lenin betrayed the national interests of Russia, and if the results of the First World War had been different, and Germany and its allies would have won, fate Russian territory would be in the hands of the German government.
On October 25 (November 7), 1917, as a result of an armed coup in Russia, the Provisional Government was overthrown. On the night of October 27 (November 9), the congress created the Soviet government - the Council of People's Commissars (Sovnarkom), and already on November 9 (22), Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars Lenin sent a telegram to all regiments of the front armies: “Let the regiments in positions immediately elect authorized representatives to formally enter into negotiations on a truce with the enemy."
Today, historians are clear that by concluding the Brest-Litovsk Treaty and withdrawing Russia from the war, the Bolsheviks, under the leadership of Lenin, fulfilled their previously assumed obligations to Germany for financial support in seizing power in Russia.
According to the terms of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty, Russia lost the Vistula provinces, Ukraine, provinces with a predominant Belarusian population, the Estland, Courland and Livonia provinces, and the Grand Duchy of Finland. In the Caucasus, we lost the Kars and Batumi regions. The army and navy were demobilized. The Baltic Fleet was withdrawn from its bases in Finland and the Baltic states. The Black Sea Fleet with its entire infrastructure was transferred to the Central Powers. In addition, Russia owed 6 billion marks in reparations plus to pay the losses incurred by Germany during the Russian revolution - 500 million gold rubles.
In fact, a territory of 780 thousand square meters was torn away from Russia. km. with a population of 56 million, which was then a third of the population Russian Empire).
Treacherous Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, concluded by Lenin, not only allowed the Central Powers, who were on the verge of defeat in 1917, to continue the war. The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk served as a catalyst for the transition of the civil war from local conflicts to large-scale battles for power on Russian soil.
The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was a betrayal of Russia’s national interests and almost immediately received the nickname “obscene peace.” As a result, the civil war in Russia lasted until 1922, and hundreds of thousands of Russians became victims of this long-term, senseless bloodshed.
In Great Patriotic War, of course, the national component won. Russian wars went into battle with the slogan “For the Motherland!”, meaning defense native land and his people, and not the ideology of the Soviet state. The results of the war even today can hardly be called positive for the Russian nation: on the one hand, the Victory over fascism, on the other, the confrontation between East and West, which as a result led to half a century of stagnation in the life of Soviet society.
Of course, during the Soviet period, the Russian nation did not lose its spiritual and historical heritage. Victory in the Great Patriotic War, space exploration, the creation of a powerful nuclear shield and other achievements preserved and confirmed the authority of the Russian nation on the world stage. However, the Soviet system had a negative impact on the Russian citizens. The violent rejection of the Russian national idea led to a misunderstanding by Soviet citizens of the ideology of their state.
By the end of the 80s, a small “crack” in the ideology of the USSR was enough for a powerful flow of “expectation of change” to crush the seemingly indestructible dam of the Soviet system. This “crack” was Gorbachev’s “perestroika,” the most unpredictable phenomenon in the political history of the country in the 2nd half of the 20th century.
Editor of the website's politics department, political scientist Alexander Mikhailov
Preamble
Before the Russians become a nation, they need to restore themselves as a people
In Russian society there is no consensus on who the Russians are - a people or a nation? This is due to the influence of the Soviet period in the formation of Russia and the fact that each of these concepts promises its pros and cons, can potentially influence the vector of the further formation of Russian society and the set of principles for the formation of the Russian World. The improvised watershed separating these two groups of people is the concept of “Soviet people” from the USSR, with the usual and inherent ideology of internationalism.
Figuratively speaking, people who miss the Soviet Union gravitate toward the opinion “Russians are a nation,” while people who consider the periods of the Russian Tsardom and the Russian Empire to be more significant in the history of the development of Russian statehood are closer to the opinion “Russians are a people.” Therefore, before we begin to search for an answer to the question: are Russians a people or a nation, it is necessary to define these two terms, as well as briefly evaluate their essence.
About terms
People is a term for the science of ethnography (Greek folk description) and is understood as an ethnos, that is, a group of people of common origin (blood relationship), which, in addition, has several unifying characteristics: language, culture, territory, religion and historical past.
That is, people are a sociocultural phenomenon.
Nation- is a socio-economic, cultural-political and spiritual community of the industrial era. The nation is studied by the theory of political doctrines, and the main task of the nation is to reproduce the cultural and civic identity common to all citizens of the country.
That is, a nation is a political phenomenon.
To summarize: the concept of “people” is based on interconnected ethnic processes that do not always depend on the will of the people, and the concept of “nation” is closely related to the influence of the state apparatus. General historical memory, language and culture- the property of the people, and the common territory, political and economic life is closer to the concept of a nation. Let us note one more point: the concept of people arose much earlier than the concept of nation.
In relation to the processes of development and state formation, it can be argued that the people create the state, and then the state volitionally shapes the nation: The basis of a nation is the principle of citizenship, not kinship. A people is something organic and living, a nation is an artificially built rational mechanism.
Unfortunately, in pursuit of civil unity, the nation involuntarily nullifies everything that is original, ethnic and traditional. The people who created the state and are the core of the nation gradually loses its ethnic identity and natural self-awareness. This is due to the fact that the living, natural processes of linguistic evolution, traditions and customs in the state acquire a formal, strictly defined form. Sometimes the price for the formation of a nation can be a split and confrontation within the people.
From the above, two conclusions suggest themselves:
- A nation is an analogue of a people, which is artificially formed by the state.
- The people are the people, the nation is the principle, dominant over people, ruling idea.
The people create the state, and the state volitionally forms the nation
About Russian problems
An approach to the Russian question would not be complete without mentioning the enormous external and internal pressure on the Russian community over many centuries, which sometimes took a form of outright ethnic and cultural terror. In the history of Russia there are three most significant and striking moments of attempts to break and reformat Russian identity:
- reforms of Peter I, which manifested themselves in all spheres of Russian life, the stratification of Russian society with the subsequent separation of the elite from the common people
- Bolshevik revolution of 1917, which actively fought against the Orthodox religion and culture, pursued a policy of Belarusianization of Russians, and used distortions of Russian self-awareness
- color revolution 1991, was characterized by a particularly violent defamation of Russians in the world media space, where everything Russian was presented in an exclusively derogatory light, and Western countries also pursued a policy of reducing the birth rate towards Russians and replacing Russian folk culture with the symbols and concepts of Western media culture
It can be argued that for almost three centuries, the Russians were subjected to quite conscious pressure from their own state. The goals were pursued differently, the methods also corresponded to their time, but the result of the impact was always weakening of the Russians and their societies. Add here numerous wars, epidemics and famine, multiply this by the extermination of the most prominent Russian representatives and the picture will become even more depressing.
Russians are very “historically tired” and very much “exhausted”: ethnic identity is distorted, folk culture is not perceived to the required extent, mortality exceeds the birth rate of the formation of the Russian people, habits and worldview are confused and cosmopolitanized, the institution of family and internal ties of the people are destroyed. The Russian state actively and harshly took advantage of the Russians, doing practically nothing to support their people's and.
Russians are very “historically tired”
And what?
If now Russian state will begin the formation of the Russian nation on the basis of the Russian people in its current state, then the result will be disastrous both for the state and for the Russian people, who, no matter what, still recognize themselves as a people. Although, of course, it depends on what kind of nation the state wants to form...
The example of events in Ukraine clearly shows what attempts to form a nation on the basis of a people with distorted ethnic identity, formatted historical memory and state-imposed archetypes and guidelines.
Without due and complete restoration of the Russian people in all its uniqueness: ethnic, cultural, religious, ideological, behavioral and geopolitical, it is impossible to create a reliable and integral Russian World, and ultimately the Russian nation. Russians need to be a little conservative with themselves for a while...
According to the decree of the President of the Russian Federation on the strategy of national policy, it main goal is “strengthening the all-Russian civic consciousness and spiritual community of the multinational people of the Russian Federation ( Russian nation)".
The wording “multinational people” is also found in the preamble of the Constitution of the Russian Federation, but it does not explain what this concept means. At the same time, similar terms are strictly defined in the constitutions of other countries.
It is known that the authors of the Constitution of the Russian Federation intended to introduce the concept of “Russian nation” into the text, but these attempts were not crowned with success. Meanwhile, this term, found in the presidential decree, requires attention at the highest level - legislative.
"Russian nation" - this is not a civil-political term, but an ethnic one. Actually, this should be fixed at the constitutional level. However, we cannot immediately propose changes to the text of the Constitution of the Russian Federation. An intermediate step is necessary in the form federal law, which would provide clear legal explanations of what a “Russian nation” is.
As the head of the expert group, I proposed not just a law “On the Russian Nation,” but a law that would correspond to the tasks set in the presidential decree. Title of the law: “On the Russian nation and management of interethnic (interethnic) relations.”
It is extremely important that the concept of “ethnos” appears in it, which does not allow the Russian nation as a civil nation to be separated from the ethnic nation. In this way we close the unity of the civil-political and ethnic nations.
This will allow us to reach the level of the European legal field, where the nation is clearly defined as a civil one, but at the same time it allows us to preserve the diversity of interethnic relations that are an integral part of the Russian Federation.
However, the idea of this law was not born today. Similar proposals have arisen before, but they were, as they say, around the bush. Because they defined the nation not through the dual unity of civil and ethnic and did not give a strict normative definition of the concept “Russian nation”. After all, this is a term that, except in the text of the presidential decree, does not appear anywhere at the official level. Yes, and there it is enclosed in parentheses as a note. However, if you take a closer look at the president’s public speeches and his articles, it becomes clear that this issue is extremely important to him.
You need to understand that solving such a problem is not elementary arithmetic. It's about the decision the most difficult question. However, we can already say that, based on existing developments, it is possible to give a strict legal definition to the concept of “Russian nation”.
There is no way around this without explanation.
The Russian people is a political concept, not an ethnic one. This, roughly speaking, is all of us: Tatars, Jews, Russians, Ingush, Chechens, etc. This is us, the Russian people.
The Russian people or Russian nation is already an ethnic concept. However, historically, the concept of “Russian people” was multi-ethnic: it includes Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarusians. In tsarist times, for example, this multitude was divided into Great Russians, Little Russians, and Belarusians, and “Russian” was an exclusively civilian definition.
Later, the division was removed for obvious reasons, but already under Yeltsin, discussions about the need to restore the concept of “Great Russian” revived. Of course, the majority did not agree with this, and “Russian” became part of a pure “ethnic group.” So, Ukrainians no longer call themselves Russians.
Curious, but Ukrainian language"Russian" is translated as "Russian". But in reality, Russian and Russian are not identical concepts. This is difficult for the residents of our many republics to accept. Thus, it was extremely difficult for us to introduce the concept of “Russian nation” into the Strategy.
For example, the Yakuts categorically refused to accept it for this very reason. We went out and talked, trying to reach a consensus. And now, with the adoption of a new law, such discussions, of course, cannot be avoided. The work with the republics remains very serious, but I think that understanding will be found.
The press is already writing that the president approved our law, but this is not entirely true. It’s too early to talk about timing. The Presidential Council was held, following which we expect a direct order from Vladimir Putin in a few days. And after this, an expert group will be formed that will begin work in this direction. I will lead the group.
Then everything is standard: preparation of a bill, its adoption in the State Duma, the Federation Council and signing personally by the president. If the law is successfully passed, it may be followed by corresponding changes to the Constitution. After all, the wording “multinational people” needs to be clarified: behind it is ethnic people Russian Federation, many ethnic groups, not a civil nation.
Why is it important?
It is officially believed that there is no state ideology in Russia, but in reality the state cannot live without ideology. Each political party, as a part of the state, has its own ideology, and the president also has certain ideological guidelines.
The question is different. State ideology cannot be made mandatory. But the state itself must inevitably follow a certain ideological path. And the people who will replace the current government will be able to change the paradigm of this ideology.
Therefore our law has target an installation, as in the USA, which created the state precisely through goal-setting, or even the USSR, which saw its goal as achieving communism. What goal does modern Russia set for itself? What is the goal of a multi-ethnic people? Is he just living?
The goal of our bill is the Russian nation and its unification.
Lermontov is a great Russian poet, but remove “Mtsyri”, “Hero of Our Time” and “Demon” from his work. That's it, Lermontov is gone. And why? Yes, because there is no Caucasus in his work. I think in this example the concept of “Russian” or “Russian nation” is fully revealed.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, at a meeting of the Council on Interethnic Relations in Astrakhan, supported the proposal to create a law on the Russian nation. Experts in the Volga region republics gave their assessment of this initiative and possible ways implementation of the law.
VITALY STANYAL, Chairman of the Central Council of Chuvash Elders, Cheboksary:
– Probably, by “Russian nation” we have to understand the civil and political community of all the peoples of the country, numerous migrants and representatives of foreign countries living in the Russian Federation. Then the indigenous ethnic communities (Tatars, Bashkirs, Chuvash and others) are deprived of the definition of “nation”: the “main” nation cannot recognize some small nations next to it...
Russifiers of all ranks and dignity fought for centuries with their foreigners, did a lot of grief and injustice, but could not destroy the multinationality of the empire
I think that in Russia it will be difficult to artificially create a capitalist, so-called (according to E. Smith) aristocratic nation, because in our multinational country, after all, the roots of civil community lie in ethnic, popular structures. Chauvinists and Russifiers of all ranks and dignity fought for centuries with their foreigners, did a lot of grief and injustice, but could not destroy the multinationality of the empire. Maybe now, when the country is flooded with millions of migrants, sovereign Moscow will be able to lay down the small nations and peoples along with the visiting miserable guest workers.
Back in 2012, reflecting on the article by V.V. Putin's "Russia: the national question", many of us in our articles on problems of Russian citizenship, defending the values of nations, peoples, nationalities, ethnic communities, proposed to Moscow political scientists the term “meganation” to designate an all-Russian nation. What was the answer? They called you ignorant!
The capital did not and does not know how to hear the aspirations of the working peoples
So it’s pointless to talk about the “Law on the Russian Nation” in some Shubashkars, Ishkars or Yoshkars. Moscow is a master, and it will be as she said. The capital did not and does not know how to hear the aspirations of the working people. Only in times of great need did she remember the Volga foreigners, and the rest of the time she cared only about conquering and ruling them. Therefore, apparently, the proposed version “On the Russian Nation and the Management of Interethnic Relations” sounds rougher to me than Stalin’s reports and speeches a hundred years ago.
The option “On the Russian nation and the management of interethnic relations” sounds ruder to me than Stalin’s reports and speeches a hundred years ago
In materials about the Astrakhan meeting of President V.V. I was unable to grasp Putin’s clarity in his concepts of nations and nationalities. The president talks about “the key role of the social, spiritual unity of our people”, about the preservation and protection of “the culture, traditions, languages of the peoples of Russia”, but state advisers write not about peoples, not about reciprocity national identity with Russian citizenship, but about ethnic groups and migrants, about the uncertainty of a quarter of Russians about the benefits of multinationality, about the threat of interethnic conflicts. Local government officials are in full swing against public associations that are not under their control, while Cheboksary churchmen continue their irreconcilable war with the Chuvash ancient ethnoreligion...
Sometimes it seems to me (probably because I live among quiet and patient people) that they are deliberately agitating us about the national issue and are looking inappropriately among the indigenous Volga nations and peoples for the reasons for the troubles with migrants, terrorists, and corrupt officials. As the elders say, “Utne çitmen – turtine” (He who doesn’t get the horse hits the shafts).
STANISLAV SHKEL, political scientist, Doctor of Political Sciences, Ufa:
– The concept of Russian identity, the concept of a Russian civil, political nation, without any ethnic characteristics, is the only conflict-free concept that can create conditions for the coexistence of different ethnic groups in Russia and generally consolidate Russian society. Moreover, in fact, this concept has already become a reality - sociological data suggests that if in the early 1990s only a minority of residents of the Russian Federation identified themselves as members of the Russian nation, citizens of the Russian Federation, then since 2011, according to data sociologists of the Russian Academy of Sciences, at least 70 percent of Russian residents identify themselves in this way. In my opinion, this is a working model for all civilized countries.
Subtle matters such as national identities are not created by laws
The law has not yet been written, it is difficult to discuss, but it seems to me that it will not affect anything. Such subtle matters as national identities are not created by laws. Such long-term phenomena are created more by a chain of positive events that consolidate people and make them involved in a common cause. For example, these are political elections or referendums, when people jointly make decisions about the fate of their country. Of course, elections must be free and fair, only in this case they create a sense of involvement in a common cause. Otherwise, they only generate apathy, disappointment or protest mobilization. An equally important role is played by the country’s general successes in science, technology, and sports - all this gives rise to pride in the country and shapes the nation.
Politicization of ethnicity is the road to separatism
An alternative to the model of a single civil nation is the politicization of ethnicity, which is the road to separatism. We must understand here that the concept of the Russian civil nation does not at all exclude ethnic identification. If we maintain reasonable parity, allow all ethnic diversity to develop and integrate it on the basis of this umbrella concept of a general civil non-ethnic political nation, then ethnic concepts may well coexist with it.
We need to get rid of the rudiments of the “republican sovereignties” of the 1990s - apart from ethnic authoritarianism and the threat of separatism, they have not given and will not give anything to Russia
Within the framework of the Soviet Union, the first experience of forming a general civil, Soviet identity was carried out. This Soviet identity was very powerful and many people still feel nostalgic today. Therefore, I do not think that this experience was unsuccessful, rather the opposite. Another thing is that the USSR was very inconsistent in its national policy - along with the formation of the Soviet project, which was quite successful, the communists also quite successfully developed the policy of “indigenization” of nationalities, in fact, they stimulated the development of ethnicity. And these contradictory processes eventually exploded Soviet Union from the inside. We must not repeat the mistakes of the USSR and politicize ethnicities. Moreover, these mistakes and diseases from the Soviet legacy have migrated into the current legislation. The very concept of “multinational people of the Russian Federation,” as stated in the preamble of the Constitution of the Russian Federation, in my opinion, no longer corresponds at all to the realities and the need to form a single Russian civil nation. We need to get rid of the rudiments of the “republican sovereignties” of the 1990s - they, apart from ethnic authoritarianism and the threat of separatism, have given and will not give anything to Russia.
ILDAR GABDRAFIKOV, regional coordinator and expert International Network ethnological monitoring and early warning of conflicts, candidate of historical sciences, Ufa:
– The formation of a Russian civil nation is the right idea, but such things are not carried out by the adoption of laws. What should work here is the consciousness of belonging to a single state for the citizens of our multinational, multi-confessional country. There is a basis for this - we all have Russian passports, we all enjoy the benefits of this country, bear some responsibilities, are proud of the country’s successes, and worry about some of its miscalculations. Of course, this is not enough - to create a strong Russian nation, we need institutions of civil society, we need transparent, honest, fair elections. We need developed infrastructure, good communications everywhere, from Kaliningrad to Vladivostok. It is necessary that a Russian citizen everywhere, throughout the entire country, can feel safe, cozy and comfortable. But I don’t think that all this needs to be enshrined in some new law.
It is necessary that a citizen of Russia can feel safe, cozy and comfortable everywhere, throughout the country.
In addition, there are already existing acts - there is a law on national-cultural autonomies, there is a Strategy for the State National Policy of the Russian Federation, there is a Federal Target Program "Strengthening the unity of the Russian nation and the ethnocultural development of the peoples of Russia." In my opinion, there are enough of them. If some kind of framework law is needed, it would be a declarative one.
A resident of Russia may well feel like a citizen of the Russian Federation, and at the same time remain a Russian, Tatar or Bashkir
I believe that, in principle, the Russian civil nation has already been formed in the minds of many people. We just need to explain to people what it is. It is known that in national republics Well, there are opponents of this concept - they argue that it poses a threat to ethnicity. That Russia, by adopting such laws, seeks to level out all national diversity and, ultimately, eliminate national-territorial entities. I think that their fears are in vain - one may well complement the other. After all, a person is a bearer of many identities, and a resident of Russia may well feel like a citizen of the Russian Federation, and at the same time remain a Russian, Tatar or Bashkir.
I will also note that in general ethnic federations there are very few in the world. There was Yugoslavia - it fell apart. There was Georgia, but Abkhazia and South Ossetia left it. There are separate national-territorial entities within Uzbekistan and China. But there is no such extensive ethnic federalism as in Russia anywhere. Most countries prefer territorial federalism as a model.
VALIAKHMET BADRETDINOV, head of the Interregional public organization "Union of Bashkir public associations "Arkadash", Ufa:
The Bashkir public and intelligentsia will be against its adoption
– The idea of creating such a law has been pushed for many years by such scientists from the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology, headed by Valery Tishkov. They are following the wrong path that they already followed in the Soviet Union, constructing a community called the “Soviet people.” Then the advocates of this path advocated a gradual reduction in the use of national languages, proposing to replace everything with one Russian language, promoting the “merger of nations.” And in modern Russia, attempts have been made more than once to eliminate schools teaching in national languages. It is impossible to create such communities as a nation by laws, decrees or directives. Nationwide unity does not appear immediately, but over a long period of time, based on common life practice.
The idea of adopting a new law has drawn sharp criticism
The law “on the Russian nation”, which does not yet exist even in the draft, has caused such sharp criticism that it has already been decided to rename it. This reaction is by no means accidental, since the bill affects the foundations of the country’s national-state structure and reveals deep layers of historical and ethnic identity that the authorities for a long time preferred not to touch.
At a meeting of the Council on Interethnic Relations in Astrakhan on October 31 last year, Vyacheslav Mikhailov, head of the department of the Russian Academy of National Economy and Public Administration, proposed developing such a law. In an interview with TASS, he explained that the purpose of adopting the new law is “to consolidate at the highest level the concept of the Russian nation as “political fellow-citizenship” and determine the goal of the state’s development.” The impetus for the development of the bill was the absence of the concept of “Russian nation” in the Constitution of the Russian Federation, where the term “multinational people” is used, for which there is no single interpretation. At the same time, the “Strategy of State National Policy until 2025” contains such a concept, but the validity period of this document is limited, while the law will be in force permanently.
“When we say ‘Russian nation’, this is co-citizenship in a country with clearly defined borders,” he believes. At the same time, the concept of a nation in the law will be purely political and does not provide for any ethnic content.
“The Russian nation in this case is the union of all citizens,” he explained. “We connect the civil, political nation with ethnic communities.”
How this connection should occur is not clear from the text of the interview, but judging by the plans to change the preamble of the constitution, which should read “We, the multinational people (Russian nation),” the methods will be comprehensive.
The United Russia faction in the Duma hastened to declare that the law is extremely necessary and important, as it will strengthen the national unity of the state. “The unity of the Russian nation is the basis of Russia’s internal strength,” said Nikolai Pankov, first deputy head of the United Russia faction. – We see today how in many countries nationalist organizations are reviving and beginning to dictate their policies. Intolerance for other people’s opinions is growing, and past mistakes are being repeated.” According to State Duma Vice Speaker Irina Yarovaya, “the unity of the Russian nation is the most important historical asset and advantage of Russia,” and the Russian people, “for whom faith and justice, dignity and solidarity are enduring values, defend and defend the values of peace, equal and indivisible security, dignity and integrity, national sovereignty."
Of course, strengthening national unity, especially in the context of the most acute confrontation with the West in the last thirty years, is extremely important. But the question is whether the new law will truly strengthen national unity, albeit in its political interpretation as a community of all Russian citizens, regardless of their ethnic and religious affiliation, or, on the contrary, will become a trigger for processes that will develop in the completely opposite direction direction?
The law itself, even the most ideal one, cannot strengthen national unity, since it relates to the mental-psychological, and not the legal, sphere. You cannot force people to unite around an idea if they themselves do not want to and they do not have incentives to do so.
WITH national unity it is even more difficult, since it affects a whole layer of extremely sensitive issues for people related to their origin, language, faith (or lack thereof), individual and collective consciousness, which has absorbed the historical experience of previous generations.
The expert community, as well as a number of public and religious organizations, do not share optimism about the law. The idea of its adoption was met with extreme caution. The bill, in their opinion, poses a great danger to Russia, since it is capable of blowing it up from within, once again making the national issue one of the main items on the domestic political agenda.
Many experts note the essentially Soviet approach of the initiator of the adoption of the new law to national problems. If in the USSR the “Soviet people” officially existed as a supranational community, then V. Mikhailov proposes to do something similar, calling it the “Russian nation”. “The law has practically no real content,” Kirill Martynov, associate professor at the School of Philosophy at the Higher School of Economics, noted in an interview with the BBC Russian Service. “Either you give an ethnic interpretation of the Russian nation, and then it is defined as Orthodox with the priority of the Russian ethnic group, or you give a civil interpretation of the Russian nation.” nation, then you return to the Constitution with its words about a multinational people and you have no room for maneuver - it cannot be said that Russian culture can have priority over other cultures, since we have a multinational people.” According to him, “nations cannot be fixed by decree from above... [The initiative] sounds absurd: it is a social contract in reverse, as if it is not the nation that creates the state, but the state that forges the nation.”
Historian and sociologist A.I. Fursov, in an interview with the Den TV channel, assessed the very idea of adopting such a law in the words of the leader of the Cadet Party P.N. Miliukov, spoken by him at a meeting of the State Duma on November 1 (14), 1916: “Stupidity or treason?” Fursov recalled that in the USSR they had already tried to create a “new historical community” - the Soviet people, but “Sovietness” rather organically fell on the Russians, partly on the Belarusians and the Russian population of the eastern part of the Ukrainian SSR, which was never Ukraine. However, on the national periphery - in the Baltic states, Transcaucasia, Central Asia, as the events of late perestroika and the 1990s showed, there was no “Sovietness”; there it was perceived as “Russianness”. Now an attempt is being made to step on the same rake, only in a worse situation. This idea contains a time bomb, because if we're talking about about the Russian nation, then there cannot be any divisions within it, and in the “Russian nation”, in addition to the Tatars, Bashkirs and other ethnic groups, Russian subethnic groups, such as Pomors, Siberians, Cossacks, etc., may appear. In the West, the idea of a “political nation” in Europe and a “melting pot” in the United States is collapsing before our eyes, and there is no point in borrowing their negative experience from Russia.
According to publicist Yegor Kholmogorov, the consequences of such a law will only be negative. “This will not lead to anything good,” he said in an interview with the BBC Russian Service. “It is written in our Constitution that Russia is multinational country, where there are many nations, and among them is the Russian one, which created this state, and there are others who, with varying degrees of voluntariness, became part of it, there are certain relations between them: and national autonomies, and the processes of assimilation, and, unfortunately, manifestations of separatism, when Russians were killed in the 90s, and now they are being gently squeezed out of some regions.
And now the only thing on which the state can be built is that the absolute majority of residents of the absolute majority of regions are Russian, be it the former German Kaliningrad or the once Japanese Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk.
In fact, it is proposed: let's put everything into one pot, declare it the Russian nation, and let's build it. But it is not clear on what basis to build it - purely logically, it must be built on a Russian basis, as on the basis of the majority of the population, and if on some kind of neutral basis, then there is a danger that the Russians will be artificially separated from their roots.”
The Russian Orthodox Church also opposed the adoption of the law. Head of the Synodal Department for Church Relations with Society and the Media Vladimir Legoyda, speaking at the meeting working group, according to Kommersant, noted the unifying role of the Russian people, language and culture. In addition, the law on the “Russian nation,” in his opinion, will contradict the concept of the “Russian World,” which unites all Russians, and not just those who live in Russia.
The national republics of the Russian Federation also reacted negatively to the law “on the Russian nation.” The head of Dagestan, Ramazan Abdulatipov, said that such a law “cannot exist in nature,” since the formation of nations is “objective historical process“, and the law only regulates social relations. In return, he proposed developing “a memorandum on the Russian nation, a declaration, a comprehensive development program interethnic relations", noting that the formation of the Russian nation does not cancel the identity of other peoples of the Russian Federation. Deputy of the State Council of Chuvashia Viktor Ilyin regarded the preparation of the law as an attempt to violate Article 3 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation, which states that “the bearer of sovereignty and the only source of power in the Russian Federation is its multinational people.” The head of the Tatarstan State Council Committee on Education, Culture, Science and National Issues, Razil Valeev, also opposed the law, saying that the legal basis for nationality policy in the Russian Federation already exists.
In fact, the national republics opposed the main idea of the law, which is the political “unification” of all the peoples of the Russian Federation within the framework of a single civil nation, regarding it as an attack on their rights and a desire to level out ethnocultural differences between the peoples of Russia.
It is noteworthy that even the state news agency RIA Novosti criticized the idea of the law. “National unity in our country, as I see it, is already being formed and will continue to be formed in a multi-stage manner,” notes its observer Mikhail Demurin, “that is, not by uniting individual representatives of the various peoples inhabiting it into some kind of non-national community (such a community would be a chimera) , but on an interethnic basis.”
An unexpected result of the discussion was a proposal to develop a law on the state-forming role of the Russian people, which is in the Constitution and other normative legal acts The Russian Federation is not displayed in any way now. Thus, a member of the commission of the Public Chamber of the Russian Federation for the harmonization of ethno-confessional relations, Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin, proposed “removing the division between the elite and the people and starting an open discussion in society on the main problems,” to which he includes the question of the state-forming role of the Russian people. To do this, it is proposed to adopt not one, but two laws at once - on the Russian nation and the Russian people.
“We need to start with a clear, possibly legal definition of the place of the Russian people in the structure of Russian statehood,” Yegor Kholmogorov told the Tsargrad TV channel. “When this place is determined and legally secured, then from this starting point it will be possible to move towards legislative definitions of national policy " Otherwise, “... we will come to a serious internal ethnic crisis, when damage will be done to the Russian people, while separatism will only increase on the outskirts.” A.I. also agrees with the need to legally consolidate the power-forming status of Russians. Fursov.
In the idea of the “Russian nation” there is indeed a lot that reminds us of the “Soviet people”, and this similarity is by no means accidental. It is enough to remember that the initiator of the adoption of the law, V. Mikhailov, was in the past a career employee of the apparatus of the CPSU Central Committee and a specialist in the history of the CPSU. The topic of his candidate’s dissertation is “The activities of party organizations in the western regions of Ukraine for the international education of the population,” and his doctoral dissertation is “The activities of the CPSU in the formation and deepening of the internationalist consciousness of the working people of the western regions of Ukraine (1939–1981).” Idea " Soviet people", which in a modernized form can be called the "Russian nation", from this scientific issues follows in a completely logical way. At the same time, the international education of the CPSU of the working people of the western regions of Ukraine, as we know, ended in complete collapse, and its fruits can partly be observed today in the Donbass.
The introduction of the idea of the “Russian nation” to the masses will inevitably undermine the national-state structure of Russia, which it inherited from the USSR.
The fact is that Russians, as the main, state-forming people of the Russian Federation, actually do not have their own “ethnic” territory today. The federation includes national republics and “non-ethnic” territories and regions that bear “geographical names” (Kursk, Oryol regions, Primorsky Territory, etc.). A similar situation was in the USSR, where its “backbone” - the RSFSR - had much fewer rights than other union republics, and was the main economic donor in relation to them. Throughout the post-Soviet period, they were simply afraid to touch this situation for fear of further aggravating national relations, which in some regions were already far from calm.
It is not surprising that immediately after the “stuffing in” of the idea of a “Russian nation,” there were demands from the Russians to adopt a similar law on the Russian people, and from the national republics – not to break the existing situation and not to touch their ethnic identity.
As a result, the law, which it was decided to rename and call “On the Fundamentals of State National Policy,” may not lead to the consequences that its developers expected. At the same time, the tight knot of ethnonational and ethnoregional problems in Russia remains, and if it does not want to repeat the fate of the USSR, it will require its resolution in the future.
Especially for "Century"
The article was published as part of a project using funds state support allocated as a grant in accordance with the order of the President of the Russian Federation dated 04/05/2016 No. 68-rp and on the basis of a competition held by the National Charitable Foundation.
