T. N. Fedorova
RUSSIAN NATIONAL IDENTITY AS AN OBJECT OF EXTREMISM
Along with various forms of extremism, brought to life by certain factors, manifested in specific spheres of public life (politics, economics, ecology, interethnic and religious relations), and accompanied by aggravation of conflicts, destruction and chaos, there is also a completely special type of extremist influence; combining conceivable and inconceivable, rational and irrational types of destructiveness. Its peculiarity lies in its focus on one object - Russian national identity, despite the multiplicity and diversity of the subjects of influence.
The peculiarity of Russian national identity is that it cannot be defined as purely ethnic. Approaches to the concept of ethnicity vary among different researchers.* Nevertheless, ethnicity, to use a metaphor, is rather “blood and soil,” material, bodily. National is the overcoming of the material through the spiritual, an impulse towards a common idea, towards the spirit. Strictly speaking, this is the difference between the “Russian idea” and other national ideas, understood for the most part as ethnonational. The Russian superethnos is a naturally developing biosocial organism - not a self-closed entity. The prerequisite for its formation and development was, firstly, the economic integration of the Slavic, Finno-Ugric, Baltic, Turkic ethnic groups that merged as a result of a long historical process in a unique landscape environment (continuous extent of territories) and difficult natural and climatic conditions for life, which imposed a certain imprint on the character of the Great Russians. Secondly, a necessary prerequisite for the formation of a superethnos is, according to some researchers, the presence of a common ideology, which is not necessarily common religion, but “a conscious, clearly formulated, shared by all, idea of the world and of oneself.”1 Still, the peculiarity of Russianness is that the crystallization of the Russian people as a historical community did not occur as a result of the natural work of an intertribal ethnic cauldron, but as a result of the discovery of a new, a higher form of identity, determined not by blood, but by the Orthodox faith.2 According to the modern philosopher A. Dugin, Russia has always been perceived by its population as a reality of a higher level than ethnicity, namely “as the reality of a geosacral tradition in which different the peoples took their proper place.”3
One of the reasons for the lack of clear expression of national ethnic identity Russians, who make up more than 82% of the population of Russia, are connected with the entire history of the formation of the Russian state. For many centuries, the state in Russia was the most important factor in ethnogenesis, and on the other hand, the desire for state unity could be realized only on the basis of the unity of ethnic groups and peoples. This is the reason for the uniqueness of the formation of statehood and the development of the national self-consciousness of the Russian people, endowed with distinctive features of a very special kind: “this is livability, innate internationalism, the absence of a syndrome of xenophobia, a sense of national superiority.”4
For example, according to historian A. Oblonsky, ethnicity is a community of ethnic origin, common historical and genetic roots. According to anthropologist H. Shteive, ethnicity as a sign of personal and social identification has its roots not in nature, but in the heads of people.
Research has also revealed the archetypal predisposition of Russians to be “all-worldly” - it lies in the peculiarities of the life and way of life of the Slavic tribes, who made up the bulk of the population. “Unlike many ethnic groups that live in a closed, hierarchical manner, cultivating genealogy and a sense of “blood,” denying any assimilation into a consanguineous community (such as Chechens, Jews, Norman Vikings, etc.), the Slavs lived as a territorial community.”5 Tribes among the Slavs they were called by habitat, and not by the name of the ancestor, like the Germans, they did not build genealogical ladders, did not attach importance to origin, slaves were released after some time or allowed to remain in their position free people. Polygamy also contributed to widespread assimilation; children of different wives, including by blood, were considered equal to each other. “Defense of the family, clan-tribe,” writes A.G. Kuzmin, “was not put forward by the Slavs as a separate task, giving way to the idea of protecting the “native land.”6 Since ancient times, not an inch of land was given to the enemy; the idea of that land is something that cannot be sacrificed, because when you voluntarily give up an inch, you give up everything. Up to a certain point, the ability of the Slavs to assimilate other peoples and to assimilate themselves had a positive effect on the state building of Russia. Along with many other factors, all of the above contributed to the fact that the national feeling of the Russian people was not fundamentally of a narrow ethnic nature, “and it would be more correct to call the national self-awareness of the Russian people patriotic rather than nationalistic. As such, it has always been primarily a state power.”7
Over the course of the thousand-year history of the development of the Russian people, the immutable components of the Russian idea have been developed, these are sovereignty, patriotism, the desire for social justice and universal (not narrowly national) solidarity, conciliarity, limitation of law in the name of duty. All Russian life is not a life of law, but a life of duty. Even in the famous “Sermon on Law and Grace,” written by Metropolitan Hilarion of Kyiv no later than 1050, an understanding of the course of world history was given, a prediction of the replacement of the kingdom of “law” by the kingdom of “grace”, i.e., in essence, a change in the material formation spiritual, to which the only Russian civilization was (and will be!) directed. Hence the utopianism of attempts to immediately impose legal statehood from above, the success of which requires a long unnatural process of reforming a living traditional society into an amorphous atomized civil society, into a crowd of lonely people with the slogan “the struggle of all against all” (T. Hobbes), where morality is supplanted by law and where the state endowed with the function of a police baton regulating this struggle. According to the philosopher Yu. Boroday, “with the replacement of morality by a compulsory legal norm, the path to future totalitarian structures begins, where law itself, in turn, will be replaced by arbitrary total administration.”8
The confrontation between the West and Rus' has existed since pre-Mongol times, marked periodically by striking milestones, including the famous “Drang nach Osten”, which choked on the ice of Lake Peipsi. Another milestone - 1380. Having laid down most of their army on the Kulikovo field, the Russians won this essentially religious battle and prevented the division of Rus' between the Horde and the Catholics. XIV century in Rus' - one of the periods of recovery associated with the revival of the patristic tradition of hesychasm, ascetic-spiritual construction, and the creation of mental and spiritual structures. It was in the XIV century. “personal research revealed some kind of well in the depths human soul(“Like fire breathes through a well.”) Light began to shine from this well. And this inner illumination, embodied in Russian culture, became her distinctive feature. The spiritual experience of moving towards the inner light was not the property of only the spiritual elite of that time. He was the property of the people and gave Rus' additional forces to make peace with the Horde.”9
St. Sergius of Radonezh, according to many researchers, is the first Russian hesychast who inspired the Russians to a key victory. In the West at this time, the Renaissance began, essentially neo-paganism, opposed to our version of the revival - neopatristics. “This is precisely the fundamental difference between the East and the West, their division, which continues to this day.”10 This is also the root of the opposition between two types of God and world perception: Western, primarily through ratio, and Orthodox, Russian, through the heart. Although, undoubtedly, archetypal prerequisites existed for this at one time.
For centuries, secret and overt Orders, organizations, their doctrines and memoranda, aimed at destroying the national worldview and adherence to national values, have worked against Russia and its Orthodox space.
External and internal enemies of Russia, united in various currents, social strata who want to subjugate the country to their power, use it as a means to achieve their goals, transform it from a subject of historical creativity into an object of management, for centuries they have felt Russian national self-consciousness as an obstacle for themselves, the destruction of which, according to the prominent Russian philosopher I.A. Ilyin, turns generations of people into “historical sand and garbage.”11
Aggression was consistently directed against Russian, Soviet and post-Soviet space. The peculiarity of Russia lies in the “middle” of its location between East and West. And if over time it managed to cope with the East, uniting the Muslim world with itself and within itself, Russia continued and continues to experience the influence of the West both from the outside and from the inside. Internal unrest emerged with the advent of the Westernizing intelligentsia under Peter I, preparing the ground for the penetration of Freemasonry into Russia with its long-term anti-national goals and objectives destructive for the Throne and the Church. After the suppression of the Masonic Decembrist conspiracy, the confrontation between the West and the East entered a rather peaceful, domestic course in Russia, denoted by a dispute between “Westerners” and “Slavophiles”, who were, ultimately, two sides of the same coin. Both of them were united by a feeling of love for Russia, a desire to see it prosper (here we can ignore the fact that the clashes between them sometimes took sharp forms both at the interpersonal and academic levels). Having survived the destructive tornadoes and hurricanes of the 20th century. and having become entrenched in Soviet civilization, Russia again found itself plunged into perestroika and post-perestroika chaos. The old dispute between East and West is acquiring increasingly painful, extremist features in the country, as it threatens irreversible deformations of the national mentality and public consciousness. The entire technological information power of the West fell upon the country, supported from within by a fifth column of destroyers both from above and from below. There is an open invasion of America into our information space (film and video production, advertising, background music and songs, sectarianism). An avalanche of Anglo-American vocabulary, alien to the structure of our language, poured into everyday speech (and consciousness!). Such an invasion of national consciousness cannot but be called extremist, i.e. excessive, excessive, exceeding the required degree of impact, the permissible limit. The very core of culture - the language and the Orthodox faith - is the object of extremist influence.
We have witnessed the systematic implementation of the anti-Russian doctrine developed back in 1945 by Dulles, head of US political intelligence in Europe, later director of the CIA. “Having sowed chaos in Russia,” he wrote, “we will quietly replace their values with false ones and force them to believe in these false values. How? We will find our like-minded people, our assistants and allies in Russia itself. Episode after episode, the grandiose tragedy of the death of the most rebellious people on earth will play out; the final, irreversible extinction of his self-awareness. We will shake... generation after generation, we will take on people from childhood, teenage years, we will always place the main emphasis on youth, we will begin to corrupt, corrupt, and corrupt them. We will make spies, cosmopolitans out of her... And only a few, very few will guess or understand what is happening. But we will put such people in a helpless position, turning them into a laughing stock. We will find a way to slander them and declare them the scum of society.”12
The main method of destructive influence on an unprotected consciousness is the imposition of pseudo-democratic values of the “free world”, an attempt to tear the fabric of national identity through the destruction of all cultural and moral foundations of the people. In recent years, aggression against Russia has been based on basic strategies for establishing American world dominance. The U.S. National Security Strategy for a New Century, published in the fall of 1998, was very explicit about the idea of global leadership: “We must be prepared to use all necessary instruments of national power to influence the actions of other states and non-state actors.” international relations... We must clearly demonstrate our will and ability for global leadership.”13
The concept of Russia's national security should begin with the identification of national goals and the awareness of its belonging to the Orthodox space. Not only is culture, but also economics, not non-national. Until Russian Russia fully finds itself, restoring the integrity of the national worldview and national self-awareness, it will be impossible to avert the implementation of the globalist idea of a “new world order.” The law of productive diversity, formulated by modern political science, indicates that within the framework of monoformism, only the death and degradation of humanity can be organized. K. Leontiev, a Russian thinker of the 19th century, coined the term “flourishing complexity,” which he introduced into Russian philosophy, denoting the highest stage of existence. Complexity, according to Leontiev, is spirituality, meaningfulness (embracing meaning), creativity, and not creeping ingenuity.14
In Christian historiosophy and eschatology, it is the concept of “one world” that encroaches on the highest plan for a diverse world, leading to disastrous confusion in a non-religious basis of cultures, peoples and states, destroys the accumulated experience of civilizations. This position is confirmed by the words of the modern philosopher and political scientist A.S. Panarin: “If civilizational memory cannot be preserved, then the formational shift expected by humanity will inevitably be very one-sided - carried out according to the Western “project.” If, on the contrary, civilizational diversity can be preserved, then the expected post-industrial society will be multivariate, pluralistic, and therefore closer to the ideal of social justice, which excludes hegemony and dictate of one part of the world over all the rest. This is the high mission of popular conservatism in modern times. transitional era: to preserve the civilizational polyphony of the world and thereby ensure its participation in the Divine diversity of the Cosmos.”15
However, along with the awareness of the high destiny of the Russian people, voiced by the great Russian thinkers (Vl. S. Solovyov, F. M. Dostoevsky, N. A. Berdyaev), prophetic warnings were also heard about the passivity of the people as a disastrous “characteristic feature of Russian life” (M E.Saltykov-Shchedrin). Indeed, the flip side of the “all-worldliness” turned out to be the clearly protracted long-suffering of the Russians, their passivity, and almost insensitivity to those terrible processes of denationalization that were latently but persistently carried out in the country from the beginning of the 20th century. Their consequences are the inability to consolidate, to defend national interests, indifference to Russian refugees and to the fate of the newest Russian diaspora, which finds itself in an unequal position in the near abroad.
According to sociological studies, Russians came to the collapse of the USSR with the lowest indices of national cohesion and solidarity. E. Durkheim has a concept of the dynamic density of one or another human association, which is understood as the moral cohesion of society, the absence of segmentation in it. Russians, finding themselves in a virtually unequal position in the state, deprived of their own statehood, were unable to resist the growing segmentation of society, the sharp decline in its moral cohesion, and the degradation of national self-awareness. Not last role The economic reform of the 1990s in its shock version also played a role here, especially mercilessly affecting the production sector, knowledge-intensive industries, science, education, and healthcare. Russia is faced with disastrous depopulation, dismemberment, integration into other geopolitical frameworks created by the architects of the “new world order,” and complete depersonalization during the latest processes of globalization. At the personal level, the loss of national roots, the erosion of national feeling lead to catastrophic consequences: the dehumanization of society, the loss of human qualities, the emergence of “one-dimensional” people (G. Marcuse) with a consumer psychology, devoid of a sense of national pride, defending the slogan: “Let the Americans come, maybe , will be better". The antithesis to all negative processes is the growing awareness that we are fighting to preserve our country, our identity and independence. And in the current situation, there can be no other national idea other than saving Russia from complete destruction, protecting its population and its territory.
In the last 5-7 years, some positive changes have begun to emerge in the sphere of Russian self-awareness, its growth and even activation. According to research, an increasing number of people attach importance to their nationality and call themselves Russian. This means that the people are gradually recovering the ability for empathy and solidarity at all levels of life - from family to national. The argument becomes obvious that without the well-being of the Russian nation, which makes up 4/5 population of the country, which is the main bearer of the national idea uniting all the peoples of the country, there cannot be stable well-being for the other peoples inhabiting the country.
It seems that the tasks of the upcoming research are to study the processes and factors leading to the accumulation of tension in the Russian national environment, ways to relieve this tension; analyze the state of Russian national identity and its reaction to destructive extremist influences, including the influence of the media, and all kinds of provocative influences, in order to formulate postulates for preserving and maintaining the information health of society. It is necessary to explore the manifestations of both healthy, holistic and unhealthy, flawed national self-awareness, and pay attention to the aggravation of national feeling due to various reasons of a socio-economic nature. Currently, it is difficult to predict specific manifestations of both healthy and deformed national self-awareness of various age groups, in particular youth, on extremist influences from the outside; Of course, these will be significantly different reactions. It is necessary to explore the factors that contribute to the consolidation of a nation, its moral cohesion, the possibility or impossibility of ideally meeting the following definition: a nation is the highest form of existence of a people, in which it becomes a united individual with an awareness of the highest goal of its existence. It is known that one is introduced to an ethnic group in a group way, to a nation - individually, through the growth and development of individual self-awareness and personal dignity. So one more important aspect future research - analysis of factors affecting the individual self-awareness of a young person, both eroding and strengthening his national self-identification, involvement in national and religious archetypes, a sense of national dignity and patriotism.
1 Kulpin E. S. The phenomenon of Russia in the coordinate system of socio-natural history // Other: Khre-
dentistry of the new Russian self-awareness. M., 1995. P. 95.
2 Panarin A. S. Revenge of history; Russian strategic initiative in the 20th century. M., 1998.
P.159.
3 Dugin A.G. Mystery of Eurasia. M., 1996. P. 17.
4 Nationalism: Theory and Practice / Ed. E.A. Pozdnyakova. M., 1994. P. 70.
5 Kuzmin A. G. Origins of the Russian national character // Russian people: historical fate
in the 20th century. M., 4993. S, 229.
in Ibid. P. 230.
7 Nationalism: Theory and practice. S. 70,
8 Beard Yu. M. Totalitarianism: chronicle and feverish crisis // Our contemporary. 1992. No. 7.
P.122.
9 Prokhorov G. M. Cultural originality of the era of the Battle of Kulikovo // Battle of Kulikovo and below
eem national identity. Proceedings of the department ancient Russian literature. St. Petersburg, 1979. P. 4.
10 Gubanov O. On the foundations of Russian ideology // St. Sergius of Radonezh and revival
Russia at the end of the 20th century. Narva, 1993.
11 Ilyin I. A. For national Russia // Slovo. 1991. No. 7. P. 83.
12 Platonov O. A, The Crown of Thorns of Russia. Secret history Freemasonry M., 1996. P. 400.
13 Ivashov JI. G, Economic aspects of the Balkan war // Our contemporary. 1999. No. 8. P. 118,
14 Leontyev K. Anti-national politics as a weapon of world revolution // Our modern
Nick. 1990. No. 7.
18 Panarin A. S. Decree. op. P. 14.
Modern Russia is a multinational state, however, the vast majority of its population (more than 80%) are Russians who live throughout the country and in all federal subjects. This circumstance determines a special interest in the history of the Russian ethnic group, its formation and development.
The formation of the Russian nation is inextricably linked with the process of formation of Russian national culture and national identity. Self-awareness is inherent in any ethnic group; it is it that carries within itself the initial sign of ethnic identification - the image “we are them”. However, the problem of ethnic self-awareness becomes relevant only in certain periods of history; it mainly intensifies at turning points in the life of society. In Russia this happened, for example, at the beginning of the 17th century. (Time of Troubles), at the beginning of the 19th century. (Patriotic War of 1812), at the beginning of the twentieth century. (first World War, revolution of 1917, Great Patriotic War) and today (the collapse of the USSR with the subsequent socio-economic and political crisis of Russian society).
The mentioned stages of Russian history are similar in one thing - the presence of a threat to the existence of the Russian state and the Russian people as such. At the same time, in different historical periods the question of “ why are we Russian?” stood quite concretely, and its various elements came to the forefront in national self-consciousness.
The national self-awareness of the Russian ethnos developed primarily in connection with changes in its territorial and state characteristics. This can be traced by how the use of the concepts “Rus”, “Russian land”, “Russian” changed at different stages of Russian history.
In the era Old Russian state, which was formed in the 9th – 11th centuries. over a vast territory of the European part former USSR, inhabited by East Slavic tribes, the concepts “Rus”, “Russian” had both broad and narrow meaning. In the first case, they applied to all lands included in this state - from the left tributaries of the Vistula to the foothills of the Caucasus, from Taman and the lower Danube to the Gulf of Finland and Lake Ladoga; in the second case, they applied only to the Kyiv, Novgorod and Chernigov lands.
The Mongol invasion violated the territorial integrity of the Old Russian state and weakened the strength of the ethnic group, breaking off several parts from it: the lands of Galicia-Volyn, Turovo-Pinsk, Kiev, Polotsk, and later Smolensk and part of Chernigov became dependent on the Polish, Lithuanian, and partly Hungarian states.
With the beginning of the unification of Russian lands around the Moscow Principality, that part of the Old Russian ethnic group, which was called Moscow Russians. The latter were the result of mixing the Kyiv Rus and Baltic Slavs with local Finno-Ugric tribes. This mixture occurred in the 12th – 14th centuries. and little touched the outskirts of the former Old Russian state, where local tribes - Estonians, Karelians, Vepsians, Sami, Pechoras, etc. - retained their original face.
It is characteristic that at the end of the 14th century. the expression “Russian land” is still used in in a broad sense, and the Moscow possessions are called “Zalessky land”, but already at the end of the 15th century the “Russian land” begins to be identified with the territory of the Moscow Grand Duchy. Ivan III minted the title “ Gospodar of All Rus'”, and in the future the terms “Russian” and “Moscow” become synonymous. Thus, by the end of the fifteenth century. during the unification of Russian lands around the Moscow principality and the formation of the Moscow kingdom, a Russian people. By the same time, two more nationalities were being formed - Ukrainian and Belarusian, – and three new concepts come into circulation: “Great Rus'” in relation to the lands of the Muscovite kingdom, “Little Rus'” – to the lands inhabited by Ukrainians, and “White Rus'” – to Belarusians.
With the formation of the Moscow Kingdom, the continuous expansion of the ethnic territory of the Russians began due to the annexation of the sparsely populated eastern, northern and southern regions. By the end of the sixteenth century. Russia included many peoples of the Volga region, the Urals, Western Siberia. The country has become multinational. In the seventeenth century. The territory of the Russian state continued to expand. It included Left Bank Ukraine with Kiev and the Zaporozhye region, lands along the Yaik River. The borders of Russia approached the Crimean Khanate, North Caucasus and the territory of modern Kazakhstan. There was also an advance of the population to the north - to Pomerania, and to the south – to the territory of the so-called “Wild Field”, where the Cossack class was formed, which later acquired the characteristics of an ethnic group. Moving further into Siberia, the Russians by the end of the 17th century. reached the Pacific coast.
We can say that by the end of the seventeenth century. The formation of the Russian ethnos in the state-territorial sense was basically completed, its ethnic territory and main ethnic groups were determined.
In the period from the seventeenth to the mid-nineteenth centuries. the Russian nationality turned into the Russian nation. It was in the seventeenth century. The process of transforming the Russian merchant class into a powerful economic and influential political force unfolded, which created the preconditions for the development of capitalism. Manufactories and regional markets arose, trade between city and countryside grew, districts began to specialize in the production of certain types of agricultural products - stable economic ties were formed between different regions of the country, and a single domestic market was formed.
The process of formation of the all-Russian market was slowed down by the events of the Time of Troubles associated with the Polish-Swedish-Lithuanian intervention, but it was these events, however, on the other hand, that stimulated the process of formation of ethnic self-awareness and contributed to the national unity of the Russian ethnos. Only in conditions of confrontation with a common enemy does a truly centralized state emerge; only in conditions of counteracting foreign invaders does a holistic national identity emerge.
Statehood has always been an important dominant of Russian national identity, but another equally important dominant was associated with it - religious or, to put it more precisely, confessional.
The struggle against foreign invaders in Rus' was always carried out not only from the desire to preserve one’s ethnic territory and statehood, but also, no less, from the desire to preserve one’s Orthodox faith - against attempts to introduce Catholicism or Protestantism into Russia as the main threat to national identity.
So, in the Russian national identity, which has developed over the centuries, three main features or three leading, core principles can be distinguished: 1) the Orthodox character of religious ideology; 2) statehood (authoritarian-charismatic type); 3) ethnic dominant (the image of “us – them”, common historical destiny, ethnic solidarity, etc.
Until 1917 These principles were the defining elements of Russian ethnic self-awareness and were expressed in concentrated form in the formula: “For the faith, the Tsar and the Fatherland!”
During the Soviet period Significant changes have occurred in the national self-awareness of Russians. Subjected to the greatest deformation or transformation religious element of national identity: Orthodox Christian ideology was replaced by a new state ideology - the teachings of Marxism-Leninism, which acquired the character and features of a quasi-religion in the USSR.
Another element of Russian national identity is statehood- during the years of Soviet power, not only was it not destroyed, but it became even stronger, becoming its main support.
Third, ethnic element Russian national identity, under the pretext of the fight against great-power Russian chauvinism, was practically leveled out during the years of Soviet power.
After the establishment of Soviet power, the center began to pursue a policy towards the national outskirts that cannot be defined unambiguously: on the one hand, providing them with all possible assistance, primarily economic and cultural, on the other, the unification of public life, ignoring ethnic and cultural specifics. However, the qualitative difference between the Soviet “empire” and classical empires was the absence of a privileged imperial people. There was no dominant nation in the Soviet Union; it was ruled by nomenklatura, and the Russian population of the Center sometimes found itself in a worse position than the residents of the national republics.
In Russian national identity, as a rule, “we”, that is, ethnic solidarity, was rather weakly expressed. In the history of Russia, a split in national identity was more often observed, for example, a split in the church in the 17th century, a split between “whites” and “reds” during the Civil War, and a split between communists and democrats at the end of the 20th century.
Usually, every nation has some unifying idea that serves as the core of its ethnic unity. For the British it was “the idea of being chosen by God, of domination over other less developed peoples”; The Russians did not have this. For the Americans, this idea was “confrontation with the old world on the basis of new forms of democratic structure of society.” The Russians did not have this either; the Russians were not a new nation. Armenians united under the threat of physical destruction. This also, in general, never threatened the Russians, partly due to the presence of a huge ethnic territory and large numbers, partly due to the strong imperial state.
And yet, all of the listed factors: the experience of a threat to the existence of the nation, and the civilizing, modernizing role in relation to other peoples, and opposition to the “old world” on the basis of the establishment of new social forms of life - all this was inherent in the Russian people, although in a very peculiar form.
The existence of the Russian ethnic group has been threatened several times since the time of the Tatar-Mongol yoke, and each time this threat was overcome at the cost of enormous sacrifices and efforts. It was these sacrifices and efforts that became the unifying factors of the Russian people. Russian national identity was formed through the experience of joint extreme efforts and suffering.
Thus, the decisive role in the formation of the Russian “we” most often was played not by constructive and creative motives, but self-protective motives. At the same time, due to historical circumstances, Russians have always been an integrating factor for all the peoples that were part of it, as Russian Empire, and the Soviet Union. It is the Russian language that has become a means of interethnic communication for many peoples living in Russia and the CIS countries. However, the unifying role of the Russian people never played out directly and directly, but always under a certain ideological cover. During tsarism it was the ideology of autocracy, in the Soviet period it was the ideology of proletarian internationalism.
During the reforms of the 1990s. Russian national identity suffered another shock. Collapse of the USSR and the threat of collapse Russian statehood, the collapse of the state ideology of Marxism-Leninism, the socio-economic crisis in Russia itself, which became the cause of mass impoverishment of the population, discrimination against Russians in the former Soviet republics, their migration from areas of national tension affected all the most important components of the national self-awareness of Russians and caused a response on their part.
As a result of the collapse of the USSR, the Russian people found themselves in a divided state and lost their leading position not only in the new CIS states (where they often make up from a third to half of the population), but also “... in Russia itself, where representatives of active national minorities, which, as a rule, have their own state entities outside Russia.”
The situation is further aggravated by the fact that immigrants from Transcaucasia and Central Asia. For many Russians, they seem to personify everything negative that the market brings with it. According to surveys conducted in Moscow between 1993 and 1997, the majority of residents of the capital believe that “non-Russians have too much influence in Russia,” and 37% of Muscovites directly stated that they “dislike persons of a certain nationality,” and among Among young people under 20, 69% of all respondents already held this opinion.
The growth of nationalist sentiment among Russians today is already quite obvious. During the existence of the USSR, their share gradually decreased, approaching 50% of the population. In today's Russia, Russians make up more than 80% of the population, and their “ethnic well-being” can have a serious impact on the overall political situation in the country.
Russian national identity
Russian national identity includes a set of views, assessments, opinions and attitudes that express the content, level and features of Russian ideas about their history, current state and prospects for its development, A also about the place of the Russian nation among similar communities and the nature of relationships with them; includes rational (own awareness of one’s belonging to the Russian nation) and emotional (sometimes unconscious empathy of one’s unity with other representatives of the Russian people) components.
The genesis of Russian national identity represents a long historical process, multi-level and very uneven in its development. The development of self-awareness of Russians as a nationality can be traced by how the use of the concepts “Rus”, “Russian land”, “Russian”, reflecting the idea of an ethnic and territorial community, has changed. In the era of the Old Russian state, they had both a broad meaning - they applied to all lands included in this state, and a narrow meaning - they were applied only to the Kyiv and Chernigov lands. Names such as “Great Rus'” in relation to lands inhabited by Russians, “Little Rus'” - Ukrainian and “White Rus'” - Belarusian, appeared back in the 14th century, but acquired a more stable meaning by the end of the 15th century.
We can say that by the end of the 17th century. The formation of the Russian ethnos was basically completed, although in certain regions of the country various ethnographic groups (Pomors, Cossacks, etc.) with a specific way of life persisted (and still persist) for a long time. In the XVIII-XIX centuries. The Russian nation is gradually being formed. Reforms of the 60s XIX century gave a strong impetus to the development of capitalism in Russia. In the second half of the 19th century. Russians became a bourgeois nation.
Powerful factors in the growth of national self-awareness were the overthrow of the Mongol yoke, the liberation war against the Polish-Swedish invaders at the beginning of the 17th century, the reforms and government activities of Peter I, the war of 1812 against the Napoleonic invasion and other historical events.
Over the course of a long historical period, the basic characteristics of Russian consciousness took shape. When analyzing its main elements, three leading principles of the Russian worldview can be identified:
1) the religious nature of ideology;
3) ethnic dominant.
Apparently, before 1917 they were the defining elements of Russian ethnic identity. Subsequently, these principles were largely weakened, although they probably have not disappeared to this day.
However, today the situation is more complex than at the beginning of the 17th, 19th or 20th centuries. Although there is no direct, open occupation of Russian territory, as in the Time of Troubles or during the Napoleonic invasion, there is a threat of Russia becoming a colony and a raw material appendage of the Western powers. This cannot but affect the state of national self-awareness of the Russian people.
Among the factors influencing the development of Russian national identity, the following can be noted. First of all, this is a threat to the territorial integrity of Russia, attempts to dismember it. There are clear signs of deformation of the Russian language and cultural life. This is due to a clogged tongue. in foreign words and the penetration into everyday life of Western, often American, customs and traditions. The mentality of the Russian people is characterized by collectivism and community in work and rest. However, in recent years, the idea of the priority of individual, personal values over public ones has been increasingly introduced into the public consciousness. In Russian society, unjust ways of obtaining wealth have always been condemned, and the idea of the need to share one’s wealth with the poor was very popular.
It should be noted that during the years of Soviet power, the national self-awareness of Russians was constantly suppressed, and everything was done to ensure that the national self-awareness of non-Russian peoples grew and strengthened. Due to the supposed overcoming and prevention of manifestations of Russian chauvinism and the imperial ambitions of the Russians, the outstanding role of the Russian people in the creation and strengthening of the USSR, in the achievements of economics, science, education, culture, in the victory over fascism in the Great Patriotic War, in selfless assistance to all peoples was hushed up multinational country. Large and obvious benefits and benefits were provided to non-Russian nations and nationalities at the expense and to the detriment of the interests of the Russian ethnic group. As a result of this, the pace of development and successes of regions and territories of Russia with a Russian population in the economy, social, cultural, educational, everyday spheres, etc. began to slow down. All this could not but affect the state of Russian national self-awareness. Notes of oppression, infringement, and inferiority began to appear in him; in the minds of Russians, a feeling of “second-classness” and hopelessness involuntarily arose, especially among residents of the national republics.
Since the 70s XX century The outflow of Russians from the Union republics began. The Russians, one way or another, began to be pushed out, forced out, they felt insecure, abandoned, useless. And this concerned the most numerous state-forming, system-forming ethnic group of the USSR! We can say that since the 1970s. Russian national identity began to weaken significantly. Since the 1990s certain features of consciousness are subject to deformation or destruction to varying degrees. However, in recent years, another trend has been gaining strength - the rise and strengthening of Russian national self-awareness, the intensification of patriotic sentiments, and the desire to defend national interests.
This interesting material was written by two authors on the platform of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation. It reflects the dissatisfaction of many communists with the situation of the Russian people and the solution to the Russian question.
We can say that the Russian question today is a self-evident non-obviousness. Undoubtedly, it exists, reminding us of itself in almost all areas of life. However, another thing is no less clear: in society there is no clear understanding of what it consists of and what are the ways to solve it. Modern approaches to the Russian question are clearly one-sided
Chronological: both analytical and journalistic thought here, as a rule, does not descend further than the pre-revolutionary and revolutionary times of the beginning of the 20th century.
Political: the problem focuses on Trotskyism in its past and present manifestations, as well as on Stalin’s struggle against it.
Subject: the objects of analysis and even simple mention consistently remain phenomena such as the modern genocide of the Russian nation, discrimination against Russians in the economy, social sphere, political affairs and public administration.
Psychological: the mood of such works is most often of a “compassionate”, so to speak, nature, reducing everything to lamentations about the cruel fate that befell the Russian people.
There is no doubt that all of these are striking and significant aspects of the Russian question. However, only aspects. The problem, if we take it systemically, is incomparably deeper in historical terms and more multifaceted in structure.
It is no coincidence that the “flower” of the demo-liberal intelligentsia, to whom B. Yeltsin set the task of quickly creating a “national idea” for Russia, after much work, published a quotation book from media materials in the late 90s. Leaving, we must understand, it is up to the readers themselves to understand the problem and draw the necessary conclusions. And - no “national ideas”.
Addressing the Russian question means analyzing the entire history of Russians from ancient times to the present day. It requires an answer to three key questions: where are we from, who are we, what do we want and what are we striving for?
To introduce such ideas into the self-consciousness of the people - precisely to introduce, since ideology is introduced into the consciousness of the masses, according to Marxism - is today the main task of the party, which sets itself the task of the national liberation of Russia.
Where are we from?
The first thing to do here is to decide who is who.
Let's start with the fact that the Russian's view of the key question: what determines a person's nationality is by no means reduced to "blood problems" (5% of supporters), or to a formal entry in documents (6), or to such external signs as a warehouse face, eye and hair color (2), nor even to origin - the presence of three or four generations of ancestors of a given nationality (15% of the requirements), nor to other similar things.
For the majority of Russians, a Russian is someone (36% of opinions) who is “completely immersed in the culture, history and traditions of this people, who respects and loves them,” who selflessly considers himself part of the Russian people (23), and whom Russians recognize (10 % of opinions) to your own.
Moreover, such a view of Russianness, revealed by sociological surveys, is stable and traditional, dating back centuries (the article uses materials from sociological monitoring conducted by the Center for Research of Political Culture of Russia for more than seventeen years, since 1988).
And yet, the commonplace of today’s official propaganda has become the assertion that there seem to be no Russians as a historical phenomenon, and that Russia’s entire past is eternally unpredictable. From television screens and the pages of the media about Russians and everything Russian, fables and fairy tales of the lowest quality pour out. But why? How is it that the most incredible “discoveries” are so easily thrown into the mass consciousness, designed to “erase the blind spots of history”? In many ways, this is predetermined by the low level of historical consciousness of the Russians themselves.
The problem of Arkaim. It would seem that the scientific sensation of recent years is the discovery of a city of Indo-Europeans of the 3rd - 2nd millennia BC - “Russian Troy” on the territory of the Chelyabinsk region. Its code name is Arkaim. This is a fortified city, a foundry city that produced bronze, a temple city and an observatory, where astronomical observations, complex for that time, were probably carried out. It would seem that this proves that it was Russia that was the fundamental foundation of modern European culture. It would seem that the Russians, as the descendants of the discovered civilization, stood on a par with the ancient Egyptians and Babylonians. And what? Who knows about this? What conclusions did state propaganda and the education system make in the conditions of global competition for civilizational primogeniture? How do parties, including communists, use this?
No one and no way.
But in the late 80s, when the public fought against the flooding of this historical monument, the prevailing sentiment was: “The Ural branch of the Academy of Sciences must raise the issue decisively, even to the point of leaving the Academy of Sciences, if Arkaim is not protected”; “The Ministry of Water Resources does not need Arkaim. We need him"; “If Arkaim is not saved, the idea of socialism will fall completely for me,” such demands came to government authorities in large numbers at that time.
A decade and a half later, the problem of Arkaim is again on the agenda of the struggle for national identity. At the IV Congress of Patriotic Organizations of the Urals, chaired by G. A. Zyuganov in December 2005, communists were again called upon to rely on their political struggle on fundamental national values: “We, Russians, have a special attitude towards the Chelyabinsk land - the land ancient civilization Arkaim, where our spiritual roots go back thousands of years,” noted Yu. N. Perkhun, head of the delegation of the people’s patriotic forces of the Perm Territory, at the congress. - We are grateful to the Chelyabinsk communists for their unifying role in the patriotic movement of the Urals. I am sure that such meetings and exchange of experience help us unite forces in the revival of our Russian, Russian socialist civilization. And comparing the experience of our struggle, we can confidently declare that only through the revival of the moral and political spirit of the Russian nation can we revive our Fatherland.” Good calls and intentions. But they never left the hall, even a large one, where up to a thousand activists of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation and patriotic movements gathered.
Depth of historical memory. As a result, if, say, a modern Pole, as evidenced by the data of local sociologists, is able to more or less confidently identify himself in the array of names and events of his native history as far back as the 10th - 12th centuries, and the average resident of the United States knows his ethnic roots and family ancestry throughout, at least four to five generations, then for the current Russian person the personal historical horizon ends somewhere in the times of the Great Patriotic War or, at most, on the revolutionary era of 1917.
The entire rest - at least a thousand-year - stage of history for him is literally “shrouded in darkness” and is sometimes inhabited only by characters from buffoonish television series. Those who drink, debauch, swear, fool around - and that’s all, this is where Russian “television history” ends. And understand how miraculously such “monsters” created an empire that was located mid-19th century on three continents at once (Europe, Asia and America), is absolutely impossible.
In rare cases of recognition in the historical space, as a series of sociological surveys by the Center for Research on Political Culture of Russia conducted over the past decade and a half says, very few names emerge in people’s memory today: Vladimir the Saint, who baptized Rus' (55% of Russians remember him); Alexander Nevsky, who defeated the army of the crusaders, recruited from all over Europe, on the ice of Lake Peipsi (75); Ermak, who began the annexation of Siberia to Russia (66% of memories); and Field Marshal Kutuzov, who expelled Napoleon with his army of “twelve languages” from Russia (73). There are reference points, so to speak, but between them there is almost a gap: events and faces here are recognized by, at most, a quarter or a third of Russians.
In such conditions, it is easy for an ill-wisher to attack everything - history, values, symbols of the Russian nation.
The Red Banner Problem. Let’s say the red flag, which over the past two decades pro-regime intellectuals have been strenuously trying to interpret as something “random,” “non-historical,” “bloody,” and “calling for violence.” Of course, such attacks are countered by the fact that the banner is the Banner of Victory. But this is not enough.
It is forgotten that even the Red Banner of Victory was, at least, twice: not only in 1945, but also in 1380, on the Kulikovo Field, where Dmitry Donskoy’s army fought under the “chermny”, according to the chronicle, i.e. a red flag with the once again international army of Mamai, where, in addition to the Tatars, warriors of a dozen more nations gathered, right up to the “black” Genoese infantry.
Another thing that is absolutely not included in the political debate here is that since ancient times the color red has been the most prestigious state symbol, for the possession of which the leading countries of Europe competed intensely. Let's say, the struggle for the right to use it as state symbol played a significant role in the Hundred Years' War (1337 - 1453) between England and France. As a result, France, which initially had a red national flag (the famous “Oriflamme”) for centuries, lost this battle, replacing it with a white banner, while the British took the red color of the banner as an honorary trophy for themselves.
So the red Soviet banner, with all its revolutionary origins (although the red color, by the way, dominated many banners White movement), is historically the most prestigious symbol of sovereignty in world history.
It is no coincidence that all kinds of radicals of our day - from Georgia to Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan - are trying to paint their banners something resembling red. It was from here, based on the historical prestige of the color red, that overseas political strategists generated all these “rose revolutions,” “orange” and “tulip” coups. By the way, the unsuccessful choice of blue (“jeans revolution”) for the special operation to overthrow A. Lukashenko in Belarus, among other factors, played a role in the failure of attempts to destabilize the situation in this republic during the recent presidential elections. In general, if the color red were not inseparable from the Russian people and the communists, all sorts of pro-Western forces in the post-Soviet space would have long ago fought for the right to call red their own. By the way, in this series is the attempt to intercept the now communist symbols of “Motherland”: let us remember the re-facing of their flags in red and gold...
And yet: despite the failure of historical memory and openness to all kinds of suggestions, a powerful springboard for revival remains in Russian self-consciousness.
The people remember themselves. "Russians - ancient people, whose roots go back thousands of years, making a huge contribution to world civilization. The state of the Russian people, Russia has always been the guarantor of world stability, restraining the most terrible destroyers (Genghis Khan and Batu, Charles XII, Napoleon, Hitler)” - this is the position of more than half of Russians.
Whereas the statement that Russians are an “adjective” and there is no point in talking about their civilizational role (4% of opinions); hypocritical complaints that they have lost their ethnic and cultural self and are doomed to disappear from the historical stage (6); pseudoscientific concepts of the “immaturity” of Russians, which supposedly must be led by some other people (9); accusations that Russians are possessed either by a “mania of self-destruction” or by messianism (6% of mentions) - none of this, despite all the suggestions, has taken root in Russian, and Russian self-awareness in general.
“The Russians were, are and will be an original and great people, even a super-people, who over the millennium have united many, many other peoples around themselves. The future is behind them” - this is how up to 35 percent of Russians and Russians see the essence of the issue. This is the essence of Russian self-awareness. Self-awareness has not yet been realized in the socio-political sphere.
Yes, Russians today are a divided, split people. And not only because the collapse of the USSR left 20 million of their fellow tribesmen outside the borders of present-day Russia. Cracks have riddled the very mentality of the nation, largely depriving it of homogeneity, and therefore the ability to effectively counteract destructive, oppressive influences from the outside. The atomization of the Russian ethnic group has perhaps reached its limit today. And it is only comparable to the era preceding the accession of Ivan III (XV century), who threw off the Horde Yoke, or the time of the Troubles of the 17th century, before the formation of the militia of Minin and Pozharsky.
“You don’t know your own” is the best characteristic of today’s Russians. Judging by what brings people together these days, only 3 percent of Russians point to a national community. And neither religion (3%), nor culture and education (3), nor profession (3), nor even life in one country (10% of mentions) - none of this can unite a nation. Social and class interests are powerless here (6), and Political Views(2), and even purely mercantile, monetary (5% of statements) aspirations.
So far, family has at least some unifying influence (20% of responses).
However, for almost every third of our contemporaries, nothing can bring them together and unite them.
This defect is acutely felt by the Russian self-consciousness itself, prompting it to ask itself over and over again the question of what to do? However, the answer here turns out to be, as a rule, banal and unable to indicate the path for practical national action.
Thus, speaking about values and guidelines that can serve to unite the people, the majority of citizens mention legality (45% of ratings), guaranteeing the interests of the individual and the people (35), order (29), etc.
But how to achieve all this?
The block of nationally colored values is in second, or even third place. Few rely on patriotism (25% of ratings) or restoration of the integrity of the historical Russian State (18), on the memory of the great historical past of the people (17), on Russianness and originality (8% of mentions) of Russian civilization.
And all this despite the fact that the people's worldview senses - and very acutely - a threat growing on all sides. For example, up to four-fifths of the Russian people regarded NATO’s aggression against Yugoslavia as a demonstration of “what the loss of its former great power could mean for our country.” And they concluded: “it is necessary to carry out a complete change of guard at the leading state level.” However, this threat, even being realized, could not activate the self-awareness of Russians, move from the plane of feelings to the plane of action.
This is clearly manifested in political affairs: the decisive part of Russians (and with them the overwhelming mass of the entire population of the country) still cannot connect politics and their national interests. Unlike not only foreign states, but also countries that emerged in the post-Soviet space, the national (Russian) and political (party) principles in Russia remain ununited, and each exist in the public life of the people on its own. Hence the constant defeats and losses.
And yet, the relative majority of Russians (a third) believe that only very well-organized mass parties that combine devotion to national and state values with the defense of the ideals of social justice and democracy can protect the interests of Russia in the 21st century. And they point to the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, seeing in it, every fourth, the most “pro-Russian party.”
It is not for nothing that the well-known Mr. Posner recently interpreted this circumstance as follows: “Many of those who give their votes to Zyuganov and his team in the elections actually vote not for communist, but for nationalist ideology.” Note: “nationalist ideology,” translated from Posner’s language, means national-patriotic ideology.
However, unfortunately, Posner flatters the Communist Party of the Russian Federation. The creative national, patriotic moment in the work of the Communist Party is still weak. When it comes to political practice everything turns out a little differently. None of the political parties of today's Russia, be it the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, United Russia, LDPR or Rodina, is perceived as a force that actually relies on the Russian people in its activities by more than 5-6 percent of the population. It is not for nothing that every election campaign the Kremlin tries to fill this void with all sorts of new creations such as the “Russian Socialist Party” or the “Rus” party, which no one remembers after voting and spending colossal election funds.
And therefore it is self-evident: the political force that manages to identify itself in the eyes of Russians with the Russian origin will dominate domestic politics not for years and decades, but for centuries. The Russian bridgehead in politics is free and the struggle for it - a sharp and tough struggle - lies ahead...
Where are we going and what do we want?
The permanent crisis of Russian society, which has lasted for two decades, has given very specific features to the “image of the future” that has been formed - although it continues to constantly change its appearance - in the Russian worldview. The traditional question “what to do?” does not lose its importance, nor its sharpness and pain.
And in particular, at the turn of the 21st century, one of the dominant features of the Russian “image of the future” became the feeling of a strong rollback, the collapse of everything and everyone into the darkest centuries of the past, backward historical movement.
“Russia is being thrown far into the past - into the wild capitalism of the 19th century, and this is being done ... by “democrats” and “reformers,” say 52 percent of Russians.
“We, especially in Moscow and other large cities (in markets, shops and simply in street retail outlets), have a situation that was never seen during the Golden Horde yoke of the 13th - 15th centuries: everything is in the hands of “guests” from the Caucasus - and try to argue with this,” said 26 percent of respondents during sociological soundings.
Another layer (26%) of the population perceives the present and future differently, but in the same emotional key: “Russia is moving towards the almost epic times of the 7th - 8th centuries, when the Khazar Kaganate took tribute from Rus', it is in this direction that the “oligarchs” are pushing the country.”
And someone evaluates historical prospects like this: “Back to the era feudal fragmentation(such as the 11th - 13th centuries), various regional leaders intend to lead us, say 17 percent of the population, who dream of turning their regions, territories and republics into something like personal (and then hereditary) inheritances, tearing Russia apart.”
The reaction to such a historical perspective has long been “flight syndrome,” i.e. an attempt to morally and psychologically break out of modernity, hide in a comfortable imaginary world, and go into “historical emigration.” Until the end of the 90s, very few people wanted to find themselves in a future that would be a consequence of the present - approximately 28 percent of the population. If many Russians had had a “time machine” in their hands, most would have made a different choice - gone into the past. For example, in the Soviet, especially Brezhnev, era (30 - 32% of preferences) or in pre-revolutionary Russia (13%), right up to Kievan and Muscovite Rus' or Peter's Russia.
And only at the beginning of the new century the situation changed somewhat. The relative majority, approximately 30–40 percent, of Russians and Russians came to the conclusion that they should remain in their own time, in their own historical space. Do not try to psychologically isolate yourself from it with dreams of leaving for other eras and realities, but fight for it with all your available strength.
The Russians began to inhabit the historical path that had fallen to them. However, this again required them to decide: how to live further, how to straighten their fate, which was “slipping” somewhere in the wrong direction?
And here Russian self-consciousness again runs up against the same wall of disbelief in the best. Yeltsin's collapse and Putin's stagnation are increasingly oppressing the nation's self-consciousness.
Even such a goal, which has received popular support, as the re-establishment of a union state, is now far from easy to achieve. Yes, from half to three quarters of the population would like to unite Russia, Belarus, Ukraine and Kazakhstan into a new Union. They sympathize, in every third case, with the pro-Russian positions of the inhabitants of Crimea, Transnistria, and Abkhazia. However, not many people believe in the reality of such a reunion. Just one in ten thinks all this can be done right now. Whereas less than half of Russians, and indeed all Russians, are convinced that if unification is achieved, it will not be soon. Half consider it almost impossible.
The reason is obvious: the slow but inexorable strangulation by the Russian authorities of the idea of a Russian-Belarusian unified state has seriously undermined faith in the restoration of the Union, almost depriving Russian self-awareness of one of the few supports for the future.
However, this kind of situation is not yet able to destroy what can be called the people's program for the revival of Russia, which, as sociological data say, is as follows:
- “End separatism in the country; introduce real equality of all territories, including Russian lands” (37% of demands).
- “Remove from the leadership of Russia all those who, while ruling it, served foreign, non-Russian and Russian interests, covering it up with words about “civilization” and “democracy” (27%).
- “Return to the people all the property that was taken from them by various cunning businessmen during the “privatization”; that Soviet power that was destroyed by the “democrats”; that culture that has been eradicated for many years” (21%).
Neither the notorious " universal human values“, neither “democratic” transformations, nor the increasing “regionalization” of the country, nor the fight against some “fascist red-browns” - none of this, in the opinion of most people (excluding about a quarter to a third of the population of Russia), has no place in the future.
The Russian question in Russia did not appear today or yesterday.
In one historical guise or another, it has emerged in a more or less politicized form for at least a millennium.
Rus' knew him back in the 12th - 13th centuries, when a wave of protest began to rise against such a “side” phenomenon of Christianization as Greek-Byzantine dominance. As a reaction to this foreign influence, then, under the shadow of the grand ducal palaces, under the auspices of the great princes, there was a partial revival of pagan rituals, symbols, and artistic images, which was interrupted by the Mongol-Tatar invasion, which was perceived, as the chronicles wrote, as a punishment “for our sins.” "
He was recognized by post-Petrine Russia, tormented by Bironovism, the response to which at the intellectual level was the development of Russian national ideology by Lomonosov, and at the highest state level - the personnel policy, so to speak, of Elizaveta Petrovna, who swept out foreign backbenchers from all the cracks of the state apparatus of that time.
And then - the even more consistent and strictly ideological line of Catherine the Great, who introduced Russian folk costume at court, surrounded herself with Russian statesmen and uncompromisingly pursued a course to restore the geopolitical integrity of Russia, lost since the time of the Golden Horde yoke: Crimea, Belarus, and Ukrainian lands were returned land.
The next step was taken in the spiritual, cultural sphere Pushkin, Lermontov, Tyutchev, who created the Russian language that is still alive, and the national literary and poetic tradition. Pushkin's tales alone, which capture traces of the Indo-European epic, are worth a lot here. As well as the concept of the historical destiny of Russia, on which Tyutchev worked so much.
Then came the Slavophiles, who provided a scientific basis for many of the developments of the past and managed to put the Russian question itself on contemporary intellectual soil, isolating it from the array of Russian social problems.
However, this issue was never resolved. And the period of global revolutionary upheavals so separated the Russian people and power that October 1917 broke out.
Finally, the Russian question was raised in the post-war years and was almost approved by J.V. Stalin as a symbol of the era: state symbols were restored, key historical figures rose from oblivion, communal principles were recreated in a socialist way in a collective farm village, Orthodoxy returned from disgrace...
This is the great historical tradition into which the Communist Party of the Russian Federation today fits, putting forward as its immediate task the rise of the national liberation movement in today's Russia. The intentions proclaimed by the Communist Party of the Russian Federation at the Tenth Congress, the program put forward here to fight for the national-state interests of Russians, all Russians, require communists to pay the most serious attention to the Russian mentality, and to the entire Russian, Russian history and culture in general.
Because this knowledge is now the most important weapon in the political struggle. “You can become a communist only when you enrich your memory with the knowledge of all the riches that humanity has produced,” this testament of V.I. Lenin is more relevant today than ever. Russian communists will be able to solve the Russian question in Russia only if they become an organic part of it, weaving Russian principles, culture, science and traditions into the country's communist movement.
Sergei Vasiltsov, Sergei Obukhov
The universal human need to be in the system of national coordinates: historical, spiritual values and geopolitical realities naturally follows from the objective category of “national interest”. For thousands of years, man has defended his right to life along with the right to the existence of his nation and state. In this sense, patriotism as a biological defense mechanism is the natural state of any individual. This is especially important to understand and take into account in work today, when the majority of the Nation is in apolitical suspended animation.
The concept of “patriotism” reflects a wide range of feelings and actions of citizens associated with their place of birth and permanent residence. This is love for the Fatherland, the desire to serve its interests, awareness of personal responsibility for its fate. However, all these definitions reflect the actions of the subject in relation to the object and do not express feedback. The concept of “State patriotism” allows, to a certain extent, to overcome this impoverished approach and lay the foundation for a system of values that can develop into the ideology of a new Russian statehood.
Even in ancient antiquity, they realized that patriotism on a sensory level is beautiful, but not sufficient to stimulate higher manifestations human spirit- self-sacrifice, heroism on a massive scale. Exactly at Ancient Greece and Rome, a combination of the concepts of Motherland and State was born, which became the basis for instilling in the citizens of Polis a conscious attitude in the interests of the entire civil collective, since Polis-Motherland acted as the guarantor of its rights and property. But during the crisis of Polis, the principle “where it is good, there is the homeland” was established, which contributed to the death of ancient civilization and statehood.
In the history of ancient Russian civilization within the framework of the Kyiv early feudal monarchy, which preserved significant manifestations of veche military democracy, one can trace an attitude towards the Russian Land of a state-patriotic nature. Kievan and especially Muscovite Rus' developed in unfavorable foreign policy conditions, experiencing in the 13th-15th centuries. along the entire border parameter there were more than 300 interventionist campaigns and 85 major battles. Ultra-high external pressure formed the state version of patriotism in the absence of civil society in the Greco-Roman sense. Here, religious and national factors came to the forefront, developing on the basis of the Slavic community, Orthodoxy, conciliarity and communalism.
The communal patriotic traditions of the Russian people suggested a preference for the harsh duty of defending the Fatherland over the more primitive satisfaction of material needs. The special scale of ethnic needs of the Russian nation logically explains the absence of a mercenary army in Rus', the indefinite service of nobles, the tradition of guerrilla warfare, high political discipline, and the lack of rationality in resisting invaders. The military bias of patriotic feelings was dominant in the mentality of the nation. The autocratic monarchy became in the eyes of the Russian people the equivalent of statehood and the Fatherland, loyalty to which became, as Bakunin put it, “theology of the state.”
A striking example of such patriotism was Don Cossacks. His military loyalty to duty and sovereign service, which became the dominant qualities, prevailed over ethnographic features. The very existence of the Cossacks was an immanent feature of Russian Eurasian civilization. The post-Petrine Europeanized elite, divorced from the traditional ways of Russian life, became the bearer of contradictory tendencies: the anti-national Norman theory of statehood and the Slavophile patriotic-protective ideology. In the same environment, during the reign of Catherine the Great, through the efforts of Radishchev, a revolutionary democratic tendency arose to combine patriotism with the struggle for social justice and the liberation of the peasantry. Beginning of the 19th century was marked by the emergence of the revolutionary reform movement of Decembrism, which tried to put this idea into practice. A characteristic feature of Decembrist patriotism was the recognition of the need for self-sacrifice for the sake of the revolutionary patriotic cause.
In the 30-40s of the 19th century. V. Belinsky and the Petrashevites continued this line, supplementing it with elements of utopian socialism, polemicizing with apologists of Slavophilism. Democratic revolutionaries of the 60s. focused attention on revolutionary transformative activities in the name of the Motherland, but taking into account the achievements of European civilization. At the same time, Herzen, Chernyshevsky, Dobrolyubov and others categorically emphasized their rejection of chauvinism, pan-Slavism, nationalism and had a negative attitude towards Russian interventions in Poland and Hungary. This generation of democrats advocated the friendship of peoples within the framework of Federal Russia - the “Union of Tribes from the Dnieper to the Pacific Ocean.” Sixties of the 19th century. rejected the liberal concept because it excluded the task of fighting for the liberation of the people from oppression and exploitation.
The defeat of populism and the beginning of counter-reforms meant a sharp narrowing of the influence of the revolutionary-democratic concept of patriotism and the development of the official concept of “Orthodoxy, autocracy, nationality.” Capitalizing on the statist spirit of the people, the degrading autocracy sought to solve purely conservative and protective tasks in order to prevent revolutionary explosions and social cataclysms.
Developed at the beginning of the 20th century. revolutionary parties and movements denied the statehood of patriotism, following the classic slogans of Marxism about the absence of a Fatherland among proletarians. However, during the First World War, some Marxists of the Menshevik social democratic trend moved away from class criteria and took national-patriotic, defencist positions, defined by Lenin as social chauvinism. During this period, the Bolsheviks raised the problem of patriotism in the context of solving the issue of revolutionary renewal of Russia and the whole world. IN AND. Lenin, in his article “On the National Pride of the Great Russians,” examined the connection between patriotism and internationalism in the light of the class approach. But unlike L.D. Trotsky, he never forgot about the existence of Great Russian national feelings and interests. During the Brest Peace period, V.I. Lenin emphasized that patriotism “is now turning to our side.” During civil war When 14 countries intervened in its course, the combination of revolutionary forces and state patriotism of the Russian peasantry and the old officers was clearly demonstrated.
All-Russian interest has always been higher for Russians than regional, local and even class ones. Spiritual plasticity, national tolerance, communalism and conciliarity did not allow either Great Russian chauvinism or absolutized supranational super-revolutionary internationalism to develop among the nation. Russia became the birthplace of socialist patriotism and internationalism, which included state patriotism as a core basis. The anthem of Russia’s geopolitical successor, the USSR, said: “The indestructible union of free republics has been united forever by Great Rus',” which quite accurately reflected the current situation. During the Great Patriotic War, it was the union of republics, state Soviet patriotism, and the conciliar power of the Russian people that became the sources of victory over the aggressor; the Red Banner, the historical flag of the Russian army and the banner of the Great October Revolution, became the symbol of Victory.
Of course, not everything was simple with the solution to the national question in the USSR. There are known facts of Russophobia, decossackization, pushing the world revolution, Stalin’s deportations of peoples and anti-Semitic campaigns. However, despite this, the Union of Peoples was real, vital, ensuring the development of national borderlands and the special role of the USSR as a superpower in the development of world civilization. A special historical community has developed in the USSR - the Soviet people, its own culture, method of production, communist spiritual values, which indisputably proves the existence of a special Soviet Subcivilization. Due to an unfavorable combination of negative, objective and subjective factors, the Soviet subcivilization entered a state of stagnation and gradual destruction. The communist elite betrayed its party, the Soviet people and exchanged power for property. Since the late 80s, the Soviet statehood has been undermined under the slogan that socialism is a “black hole” or the road to a civilizational dead end. Anti-communism became part of an anti-state ideology with elements of Russophobia. Historical literature proved that Rus' developed under the influence of eastern despotism and never had democracy, that Russian civilization did not exist as a special phenomenon of world history, etc.
The main alternative to liberal cosmopolitanism and pseudocentrism is the ideology of State patriotism, which rejects alignment with the West with its cult of consumerism and spiritual omnivorousness. State patriotism, synthesizing the cultural and historical ideals of the nation - conciliarity, community, complicity, striving for social justice. The new consolidating program for the development of the nation must include precisely the desire for ideals, even if they are not realizable. The main thing is an orientation towards spirituality, a cult of morality, and not unspiritual consumerism, exaggerated personal freedoms leading to violence, cruelty, debauchery, encouragement of anomalies, etc. Spiritual incentives and motives can form a reasonable structure of consumption in the name of the highest meaning of Human life. Only spiritual values can ensure real equality and freedom of all people, despite all their inevitable differences in abilities and wages. Only this can save humanity from environmental disaster.
The ideology of State patriotism organically summarizes and accumulates all the main features of Russian civilization: a multi-ethnic basis, the coincidence of interests of the Russian super-ethnic group and other ethnic groups, the specifics of the geopolitical situation, special relations between the authorities and the population. It is an adequate response to the challenge of modernity - reducing the severity of the contradictions between labor and capital and the aggravation of national and cultural contradictions. Having abandoned the outdated dogmas of various “isms” in the conditions of the formation of a new information civilization, the ideology of State patriotism will create conditions for the optimal assimilation by Russian civilization of all the best achievements of socialism and capitalism, Western and Eastern civilizations while maintaining its own identity - a synthesis of social and ethnic values. The commonality of the historical destinies of the peoples of Great Russia - the USSR - Russian civilization determines the pattern of formation of a new unified Slavic-Turkic state. Within the framework of this Russian Union, democracy, a diverse economy, a variety of forms of ownership, a revival of the ideal of social justice, spirituality and the priority of state interests will be ensured.
self-awareness people patriotism Cossacks