Definition of a nation. Nations of the world. People and nation. How did people of different nationalities appear (according to Darwin's theory)

History shows that the word form “Russian nationality” in relation to a specific ethnic group did not become commonly used in Russia even by the beginning of the twentieth century. You can give a lot of examples when famous Russian figures were actually of foreign blood. The writer Denis Fonvizin is a direct descendant of the German von Wiesen, the commander Mikhail Barclay de Tolly is also German, the ancestors of General Peter Bagration are Georgians. There is nothing even to say about the ancestors of the artist Isaac Levitan - and so everything is clear.

Even from school, many remember the phrase of Mayakovsky, who wanted to learn Russian only because Lenin spoke this language. Meanwhile, Ilyich himself did not consider himself a Russian at all, and there is numerous documentary evidence of this. By the way, it was V.I. Lenin who first in Russia came up with the idea of ​​​​introducing the column “nationality” in documents. In 1905, members of the RSDLP reported in questionnaires about their affiliation with a particular nation. Lenin in such “self-denunciations” wrote that he was a “Great Russian”: at that time, if it was necessary to emphasize nationality, the Russians called themselves “Great Russians” (according to the dictionary of Brockhaus and Efron - “Great Russians”) - the population of “Great Russia” ”, called by foreigners “Muscovy”, which has been constantly expanding its possessions since the 13th century.

And Lenin called one of his first works on the national question “On the National Pride of the Great Russians.” Although, as Ilyich’s biographers found out relatively recently, there were actually “Great Russian” blood in his pedigree - 25%.

By the way, in Europe, nationality as belonging to a certain ethnic group was a commonly used concept already in the 19th century. True, for foreigners it was equivalent to citizenship: the French lived in France, the Germans lived in Germany, etc. In the overwhelming majority foreign countries this identity has been preserved to this day.

The topic "Countries and Nationalities" is studied at the very beginning of the elementary level. If you open any textbook at this level, one of the first lessons will definitely touch on the topic of countries and nationalities. This is because using names different nationalities, it is convenient to practice the use of the verb to be.
From the very first lessons, students learn how to form the names of nationalities from the names of countries, but the list of words covered is usually small: a maximum of twenty of the most popular countries and nationalities. This is enough to get you started, but you will need more knowledge to further explore. In this article we will explain the basic rules by which the names of nationalities are formed, and also talk about various features use of these words.

First of all, please remember that names of countries, languages, nationalities in English are written with a capital letter.

An adjective can be formed from the name of any country using a specific suffix. For example:

Italy - Italy; Italian - Italian, Italian - Italian.

Do you speak Italian? - Do you speak Italian?
I like Italian food. - I love Italian food.
He is from Italy. He is Italian. - He's from Italy. He's Italian.

As you can see, the same word, derived from the name of a country, can be used in different ways. This adjective is the name of the language of this country and the name of the nationality. Many students, for example, forget about these derivative words and simply use the name of the country (Japan food, Spain singer, and so on). The name of a country cannot be an adjective, nor can it describe the nationality or language of the country, so do not make such mistakes.

Please note that the name of the nationality and the language of the country do not always coincide. For example, in Brazil (Brazil), although there are Brazilians (Brazilians), they speak Portuguese (Portugese). It is the same with Arab countries, where the nationality of the country does not coincide with the language (Arabic).

However, it is impossible to classify all suffixes according to any one criterion; there are always exceptions. Take the suffix -ESE as an example: it would seem to combine with the names of countries in Asia and Africa, but it also forms adjectives from the names of some countries in Europe and South America.

Let's look at the main suffixes that are used to form adjectives from country names:

As mentioned earlier, many adjectives that can be formed using suffixes serve as names for languages ​​spoken in a particular country. In addition, these adjectives, when combined with nouns, describe something characteristic of this country:

French literature - French literature
Japanese food - Japanese food
Mexican traditions - Mexican traditions
Egyptian culture - Egyptian history

To talk about nationalities in general, there are several ways in English, which we will now get acquainted with.

1. The + ADJECTIVE

From the article about you know that the can be combined with adjectives when the adjective denotes a group of people:

The Chinese are very traditional. - The Chinese are very traditional.
The Americans like fast food. - Americans love fast food.

Have you noticed that in the given examples the word Americans is used with the ending -S, while Сhinese is used without the ending? There are a few rules to remember about this:

If nationality-adjectives have endings -SH, -CH, -SS, -ESE, -I then they do not have a plural form (no -S is added to them):

the French - the French
the Swiss - the Swiss
the Japanese - the Japanese
the Scottish - the Scots
the Iraqi - Iraqis
the Israeli - the Israelis

Adjectives with endings -AN and some others have plural forms. These adjectives (unlike the above) can also act as nouns:

the Ukrainians - Ukrainians
the Brazilians - Brazilians
the Greeks - the Greeks
the Thais - residents of Thailand

2. ADJECTIVE + PEOPLE

Any nationality can be designated using the word people in combination with an adjective. The article the is not needed:

Chinese people - Chinese
Italian people - Italians
English people

3. Nouns.

Some nationalities have special nouns that do not match adjectives. These nouns can be used when talking about all representatives of a nationality:

Denmark - the Danes
Finland - the Finns
Great Britain - the British
Poland - the Poles
Scotland - the Scots
Spain - the Spaniards
Sweden - the Swedes
thе Netherlands - the Dutch
Turkey - the Turks

If you're talking about one person, then if this nationality has a noun, you can use it:

an American - American
an Italian - Italian
a Pole - Pole
a Turk - Turk
a Spaniard is Spanish
a Briton - British
a Swede - Swede

If there is no noun, or you want to clarify the gender of the person, then use the formula ADJECTIVE + MAN/ WOMAN/ BOY/ GIRL:

an English boy
a Chinese woman
a French man(can be written together: a Frenchman)
an English man(can be written together: an Englishman)

IN English there is a term demonym(from Greek demos- people and onym- Name). This term is intended to describe the people living in a certain area. These are the names of nationalities ethnic groups, residents of a particular area or a particular city. All the above adjectives and nouns derived from the names of countries are demonyms. Demonyms are formed mainly by suffixation:

London - Londoner - resident of London
Kiev - Kiev - resident of Kyiv
Rome - Roman - resident of Rome

In this article we will not provide a list of all nationalities and other demonyms. To begin with, you just need to know the names of the nationalities of large and frequently mentioned countries. If the need arises, you can easily find lists of all nationalities without exception on the Internet. The main thing is to remember general rules and constantly expand your knowledge. And don't forget to subscribe to our updates! Good luck to you!

Few people know what nationality is like distinguishing feature of every Russian, subject to mandatory mention in general civil documents, began to appear in passports only 85 years ago and existed in this capacity for only 65 years.

Until 1932, the legal status of Russians as a nation (as well as representatives of other nationalities too) was uncertain - in Rus', even with birth records, nationality did not matter; only the religion of the baby was written in church books.

Lenin considered himself a “Great Russian”

History shows that the word form “Russian nationality” in relation to a specific ethnic group did not become commonly used in Russia even by the beginning of the twentieth century. You can give a lot of examples when famous Russian figures were actually of foreign blood. The writer Denis Fonvizin is a direct descendant of the German von Wiesen, the commander Mikhail Barclay de Tolly is also German, the ancestors of General Peter Bagration are Georgians. There is nothing even to say about the ancestors of the artist Isaac Levitan - and so everything is clear.

Even from school, many remember the phrase of Mayakovsky, who wanted to learn Russian only because Lenin spoke this language. Meanwhile, Ilyich himself did not consider himself a Russian at all, and there is numerous documentary evidence of this. By the way, it was V.I. Lenin who first in Russia came up with the idea of ​​​​introducing the column “nationality” in documents. In 1905, members of the RSDLP reported in questionnaires about their affiliation with a particular nation. Lenin in such “self-denunciations” wrote that he was a “Great Russian”: at that time, if it was necessary to emphasize nationality, the Russians called themselves “Great Russians” (according to the dictionary of Brockhaus and Efron - “Great Russians”) - the population of “Great Russia” ”, called by foreigners “Muscovy”, which has been constantly expanding its possessions since the 13th century.

And Lenin called one of his first works on the national question “On the National Pride of the Great Russians.” Although, as Ilyich’s biographers found out relatively recently, there were actually “Great Russian” blood in his pedigree - 25%.

By the way, in Europe, nationality as belonging to a certain ethnic group was a commonly used concept already in the 19th century. True, for foreigners it was equivalent to citizenship: the French lived in France, the Germans lived in Germany, etc. In the overwhelming majority of foreign countries, this identity has been preserved to this day.

From Stalin to Yeltsin

For the first time, nationality as a legally formalized status criterion for a citizen of a country in Russia (more precisely, in the USSR) was established under Stalin in 1932. Then the so-called “fifth column” appeared in passports. From that time on, nationality for a long time became a factor on which the fate of its owner could depend. During the years of repression, Germans, Finns, and Poles were often sent to camps simply for belonging to a “suspicious” nation. After the war, the famous case of “rootless cosmopolitans” broke out, when Jews came under the pressure of “purges”.

The Constitution of the USSR did not single out Russians as representatives of a “special” nationality, although at all times they had a numerical superiority in the state (they still make up 80% of them in Russia today). The modern Constitution of the Russian Federation provides citizens with the right to independently choose their nationality.

In 1997, the first President of Russia, Boris Yeltsin, by his decree abolished the “fifth point”, and nationality in our country ceased to be a subject of law in relation to civil document flow. But it remained in criminal law, which today spells out responsibility for inciting ethnic hatred (extremism).

He who loves the country is Russian

Before the introduction of legal status for nationality in Russia, there was a multi-valued conceptual definition of “Russians”. This could be the ethnic group most numerous people countries. Tsar Peter I proposed that anyone who loves Russia should be considered Russian. The leader of the White Guard movement, Anton Denikin, held a similar opinion. The genius of Russian literature A.S. Pushkin, although he joked about his “Arap profile,” received the status of the greatest national Russian poet for his invaluable contribution to Russian culture during his lifetime. Just as a poet in Russia is more than a poet, so a Russian in our country is always a broader concept than just nationality and the fifth point in the passport.

Political terms are not ideologically neutral, but, on the contrary, are most often an instrument of actual political struggle or an expression of the system of power relations existing in society. T&P reviewed the works of the largest modern researchers political history, finding out what certain terms meant in different times and what is behind them now.

It is assumed that voters and citizens of a country understand exactly the language in which a politician or statesman speaks to them, and thus can understand what awaits them in the future or what they already have in the present. Political terms are then required to be objective and clear, bearing in mind that political language is, among other things, an important tool for political socialization and education. However, upon closer study, it turns out that the same words meant different, often opposite things, depending on who used them and at what time.

Nation

In classical Roman usage, which runs through the Middle Ages to the modern era, natio, as opposed to civitas, means a union of people based on a common origin, which initially has no political dimension.

Historian Alexey Miller points out that at the beginning of the 18th century, the word “nation” appears in various Russian documents as a borrowed word - most often in the meaning of ethnic community and state affiliation. The Great French Revolution introduced clear political content into the concept of nation, which was later transferred into Russian-language usage. The word “nation” evoked strong associations with national sovereignty and national representation formed after the French Revolution, therefore Uvarov in his famous triad (“Orthodoxy, Autocracy, Nationality”) used the semantically intersecting concept of “nationality”, linking the latter with the principle of conservatism and loyalty to power. In the 1840s, Belinsky wrote about the relationship between the concepts of nation and people, that the people denote only the lowest layer of the state, while the nation is “the totality of all classes.”

Ernest Gellner is one of the nation's first scholars to take a modernist approach to the study of this concept. Before industrialization, humanity lived in closed communities, the masses were engaged in manual labor, during the work they communicated in the same circle. In an agro-literate society, culture is the expression of an internal differentiated status system with its own complex, intertwined power relations. Cultural differences of each social group serve to disintegrate such a society. In an industrial society, there is already a need for a universal worker with his ability to move. Education, written culture, and a national language are gaining strength, uniting many separate communities within the state. Industrial society involves new ways of communication that do not depend on everyday communication within closed local communities. Labor ceases to be physical and becomes semantic. Thus, more universal mass information channels, through which standardized messages are transmitted, independent of the local context. This is a new, standardized culture that unites people.

“The aristocracy represented a kind of “nation” in the face of the court, that is, in fact, it was the only representative of that early form of the nation, access to which had not yet been gained by the broad masses of the population.”

At that time, only the state could take on the role of standardizing culture, so each individual culture sought to gain statehood. Gellner believes that nations began to emerge in the 19th century. Already by 1848, cultural and linguistic boundaries began to correlate with political ones, and the legitimacy of political power began to be determined by correlation with the concept of “nation”. In a new industrial society, constant economic growth becomes important, which, in turn, depends on the efficiency of each worker. In such a situation it is impossible to social structure, in which an individual’s position was determined not by his effectiveness as a worker, but by his origin.

According to Jürgen Habermas, the success of nation states in the 19th century is due to the fact that the tandem of bureaucracy and capitalism (the state needs taxes, capital needs legal guarantees) turned out to be the most effective means for social modernization. Feudal society was based on a system of privileges granted by the monarch, who needed taxes and regular army. The aristocracy represented a kind of “nation” in the face of the court, that is, in fact, it was the only representative of that early form of the nation, access to which had not yet been gained by the broad masses of the population. Subsequently, it was national consciousness that turned out to be a powerful stimulus for growth political activity masses, leading to the democratic transformation of society. On the other hand, in the process of the separation of church and state prepared by the thinkers of the Enlightenment, the need for a new legitimation of power arose.

In a pre-national state, a citizen's identity was determined only by submission to monarchical power. Now, to be a citizen did not mean to be a subject of a monarch, but, above all, to belong to a community of equal citizens. In the industrial era, new, non-class principles of social connections emerged. In order to push the country's population to maintain new social ties in the name of abstract rights and freedoms after the approval of a new type government structure, marked by the American and French revolutions, was inspired by the idea of ​​a nation with a single culture and history. Intellectuals - philosophers, writers, artists - begin to carefully construct romantic myths and traditions that correspond to the “spirit of the nation.”

In his work "The invention of tradition" Eric Hobsbawm convincingly shows how the need for a national myth was satisfied through the invention of traditions. Tradition gives any change the sanction of precedent in the past, expressing, first of all, the balance of power in the present (such as, for example, a claim to territory that historically supposedly belonged to ancestors). Thanks to tradition, these claims become perpetual, so tradition is required to be invariant (which distinguishes it from more flexible and changeable customs). As soon as certain practices lose their practical function, they turn into tradition. Tradition is created through a process of ritualization and formalization through repeated repetition and reference to the past. Modern symbols of Scotland - the kilt and the "national" music played on bagpipes, which are supposed to indicate something ancient, are in fact a product of modernity. The spread of Scottish kilts and clan tartans occurred after the union with England in 1707, and before that, in a still extremely undeveloped form, they were considered by most Scots to be an expression of the rudeness and backwardness of the Celtic highlanders (although even the highlanders did not find in them anything particularly ancient and distinctive for their cultures).

“Anderson views the emergence of a nation as a profound change in the picture of the world, in the perception of time and space. The nation becomes a new form of religious consciousness."

Until the end of the 17th century, in essence, there were no highlanders at all as a cultural community. The western part of Scotland was extremely close, culturally and economically, to Ireland and was, in fact, its colony. In the 18th-19th centuries, the rejection of Irish culture and the construction of a single Scottish nation took place, including through the artificial creation of a highland tradition. The folk epic of the Scottish Celts is created on the basis of Irish ballads, for which purpose James Macpherson specially invented the “Celtic Homer” Ossian in the middle of the 18th century (according to his idea, folk epic Celts was stolen by the Irish in the late Middle Ages). Spread in Germany, France and the USA in the 19th century national symbols- flags, memorable dates, public ceremonies, monuments - are part of that “social engineering” which, by inventing tradition, creates a nation.

Benedict Anderson argues that a nation is an “imagined community,” limited and sovereign, that emerges as the power of churches and dynasties wanes. It is imaginary because all members of a community will never be able to recognize each other, like, for example, residents of the same village. The image of community belongs precisely to the realm of imagination, without having any concrete, material expression. A nation is born with the destruction of three key ideas: firstly, about the sacredness of a special written language that gives access to ontological truth, secondly, about the naturalness of the organization of society around centers (monarchs, whose power is of divine origin) and, thirdly, a concept of time in which cosmology is inextricably linked with history, and the origin of people and the origin of the world are identical. A decisive role in the formation of the nation, according to Anderson, was played by what he calls “print capitalism,” when, thanks to the market boom, there was a widespread distribution of printed literature in national languages. It was capitalism, Anderson believes, that, like nothing else, contributed to the collection of related dialects into unified written languages.

Anderson views the emergence of a nation as a profound change in the picture of the world, in the perception of time and space. The nation becomes a new form of religious consciousness, having a historical extension in which the individual, classifying himself as a nation, acquires imaginary immortality. A nation is thought of as something that has no beginning or end, but remains in eternity. Language connects the past with the present and gives the nation the appearance of “naturalness.”

Example of modern usage:

“Thanks to the unifying role of the Russian people, centuries-old intercultural and interethnic interaction in historical territory Russian state A unique civilizational community has been formed - a multinational Russian nation, whose representatives consider Russia their Motherland. Russia was created as a unity of peoples, as a state, the system-forming core of which historically is the Russian people. The civilizational identity of Russia and the Russian nation is based on the preservation of Russian culture and language, the historical and cultural heritage of all the peoples of Russia.” Strategy of national policy of the Russian Federation until 2025.

References:

E. Gellner. Nations and nationalism

A. Miller. The Romanov Empire and nationalism

J. Habermas. Political works

E. Hobsbawm. The invention of tradition

B. Anderson. Imagined communities. Reflections on the origins and spread of nationalism.

Nation(from Latin “natio” - people) - 1) In the Western European tradition, initially, nation is a synonym for ethnicity. Further, the totality of subjects of one sovereign, citizens of one republic. With the advent of “nation`s state” (national state) - a set of subjects, citizens of the state (a historically established multi-ethnic community). Thus, the Spanish nation is ethnically composed of Spaniards, Catalans, and Basques. One common view is that nations are formed through the emergence of industrial societies. Another point of view is that N. can be recognized as an ethnos that created a national state or was the core of an empire. There is also a point of view that from the circle of ethnic groups that have national statehood, only those who have made a significant contribution to the process of formation of world cultures can be considered a nation. 2) B Eastern Europe and Asia, the dominant point of view is that a nation is an ethnic group, which may include foreign ethnic groups (according to L.N. Gumilyov - “Xenia”) that share basic national interests. In view of the above, nationalism in some cases means the priority of the interests of an ethnic group; in other cases - the interests of civil society and the nation.

The concept of a nation (from the Latin “natio”) for a long time was and was perceived as a synonym for the Greek word “ethnos”. However, in the era of the High Middle Ages in Europe, due to certain features of the development of Western European culture, it acquired a different sound and perception, becoming perceived as “compatriotism.” “For example, at the very famous University of Prague in Europe during the time of Jan Hus, there were officially four “nations” (four corporations of students and teachers): Czech, Polish, Bavarian and Saxon.”

Subsequently, the semantic load of this term in the West continued its evolution, simultaneously giving rise to two traditions of interpretation of this concept in science. The “Eastern” tradition and the “Western” tradition. Moreover, within them, as in the case of the categories “ethnicity” and “ethnicity”, there is no consensus by defining the essence of this phenomenon, but it is observed large number diverse points of view, often depending on the political, ideological, cultural, and personal preferences of the authors. As a result, there is great confusion in the interpretation and use of the term “nation”, as well as its relationship with the categories “ethnicity”, “people”, “nationalism” and others.

IN Western tradition (which we often call the Anglo-Roman, French or statist tradition), based on a formational approach to the process of socio-historical development, the nation is a phenomenon characteristic exclusively of New and Contemporary times. The emergence of nations as historical phenomenon associated with the formation of “nations states” (national states), as well as with the formation of capitalist relations and the emergence of the bourgeoisie. One common view is that nations are formed through the emergence of industrial societies. The formation of a nation, according to E. Gellner, is a direct result of the beginning of the modernization process, i.e. transition from a traditional agrarian society to an industrial and post-industrial society. Before the process of modernization began, nations as such did not exist.

According to the Western tradition of understanding the nation, it is the next link in the chain of development of human groups: clan - tribe - ethnicity - nation. Or in its Marxist-Leninist interpretation: clan - tribe - nationality (people) - nation. The concept of a nation in itself is a supra-class concept. A nation as a special human collective is a historically established multi-ethnic community - a collection of subjects, citizens of the state. For example, the Spanish nation is ethnically composed of Spaniards, Catalans, and Basques. Therefore, it is not surprising that it is in this understanding that the category “nation” migrated from the Anglo-Saxon system of law and firmly entered into use in the system of international law. When we talk about the United Nations (UN), we are talking about nations in the sense of states (“nation-states”).

The concept of “nation” in the Western tradition is in principle inseparable from the concept of “nation state”. In this tradition of interpreting the phenomenon of a nation, the main features of a nation are the presence of a single culture, national identity and statehood or the desire to acquire one. A person’s nationality is determined not by his ethnicity, but solely by his state and legal affiliation.

National self-awareness, in other words, the ability to recognize oneself as a member of a national collective, is a defining feature of a nation. It arises in modern times, when the usual forms of community of people (clans, workshops, communities) of a corporate nature collapse, a person is left alone with a rapidly changing world and chooses a new supra-class community - a nation. Nations emerge as a result of policies aimed at the coincidence of ethno-cultural and state borders. The political movement of self-affirmation of peoples with a common language and culture as a single whole is nationalism . Nationalism can be unifying (national movements in Germany and Italy in the 19th century) and disjunctive (national movements in Austria-Hungary in the 19th – 20th centuries).

Within the framework of this tradition of interpretation of the nation and nationalism, postmodern concepts of constructivism, which deny the natural and initially given essence of these phenomena, have become widespread (E. Gellner, B. Anderson, E. Hobsbawm and others).

Like an ethnos, a nation is considered by them as a social and intellectual “construct”, an artificial social education, a product of the purposeful activity of political elites (E. Gellner) or collective “imagination” (B. Anderson).

According to E. Gellner: “Nations as natural, God-established ways of classifying people, as some kind of primordial ... political destiny, are a myth.” A nation is a construct that creates nationalism: “It is nationalism that gives birth to nations, and not vice versa.”

Nationalism is “a political principle, the essence of which is that political and national units must coincide. Nationalistic feeling is the feeling of indignation caused by the violation of this principle, or the feeling of satisfaction caused by its implementation. A nationalist movement is a movement inspired by feelings of this kind."

B. Anderson is not so categorical in his conclusions and defines a nation as “an imaginary political community, and it is imagined as something inevitably limited, but at the same time sovereign.” "It imaginary for the members of even the smallest nation will never know, meet, or even hear of the majority of their fellow-nations, while the image of their community lives in the minds of each of them.

The nation is imagined limited, because even the largest of them, numbering, say, a billion living people, has finite, albeit moving boundaries, beyond which are other nations. No nation imagines itself to be commensurate with all humanity. Even the most messianically minded nationalists do not dream of the day when all members of the human race will join their nation, as was possible in some eras when, say, Christians could dream of an entirely Christian planet.

She's imagining sovereign, for this concept was born in an era when the Enlightenment and Revolution were destroying the legitimacy of the hierarchical dynastic state established by God. Reaching maturity at that stage human history, when even the most ardent adherents of any universal religion inevitably encountered living pluralism Such religions and the allomorphism between the ontological claims of each religion and the territory of its distribution, nations dream of being free and, if under the rule of God, then immediately. The pledge and symbol of this freedom is a sovereign state.
And finally, she is imagined as community, for, regardless of the actual inequality and exploitation that may exist in each nation, the nation is always understood as a deep, horizontal fellowship. Ultimately, it was this brotherhood that for two last centuries gives many millions of people the opportunity not so much to kill as to voluntarily die for such limited products of the imagination."

The concept of nation and nationalism in the Western tradition is an effective research tool public life Western world. However, it is not applicable in other regions. In this vein, the problems of discrepancy between theory and practice that arose among the Bolsheviks and Soviet scientists when trying to apply pro-Western Marxist theories on Russian soil, where there were simply no nations in the Western European sense, are typical. After coming to power, the Bolsheviks were forced to divide the ethnic groups living in the USSR into “nations” and “nationalities”, where nations were considered to be ethnic groups that, when carrying out administrative-territorial delimitation, were endowed with a status semblance of statehood (in the form of union and autonomous republics), and all other ethnic groups that do not have their own administrative-territorial units were considered nationalities. At the same time, the argument for the validity and expediency of endowing one or another ethnic group with a status similar to statehood was the far-fetched criterion of the presence or absence of an ethnic group of its own working class, as well as the level of urbanization.

In Soviet science, it was generally difficult to talk about any objectivity in defining and considering the essence of the “nation”, since it was completely dominated by the Marxist-Leninist ideology based on “progressive” and Eurocentric postulates and economic determinism, which automatically curtailed any debate on this issue and not “noticing” facts that contradict the theory. Therefore, it is not surprising that it dominated for a long time, in fact becoming official, without being subject to any critical analysis definition of “nation”, which was given in 1912 by I.V. Stalin in his work “Marxism and the National Question”. Analyzing the polemics of two prominent Marxist theorists Karl Kautsky and Otto Bauer, I.V. Stalin gave the following definition of a nation: “A nation is a historically established stable community of people that arose on the basis of a common language, territory, economic life and mental makeup, manifested in a common culture.” Characteristics Nations (not racial, not tribal, but a historically established and stable community of people) in his opinion are: “common language”; “common territory”; “commonality of economic life, economic connectedness”; "common mentality". And only the presence of all these characteristics taken together allows us to consider this or that community a nation.

Subsequently, almost none of the Soviet scientists dared to question the validity of this definition, although the indicated characteristics were, to one degree or another, inherent in other ethnic communities identified by Soviet scientists: tribe, as well as nationality. Stalin's signs could not explain the phenomenon, for example, of Jews and Gypsies realizing themselves as a nation (without a common territory and economy), as well as the Swiss (speaking three languages). However, everything was in the same vein already in the 80s of the 20th century in the Philosophical encyclopedic dictionary a definition of a nation similar to “Stalin’s” was given as “a historical community of people that takes shape during the formation of a common territory, economic ties, literary language, and certain features of culture and character.”

Within the framework of Soviet social sciences and humanities, in particular in the dualistic concept of the evolutionary-historical direction of primordialism, the nation as a type of “ethnosocial organism (ESO)” and socio-historical community was clearly tied to a certain socio-economic formation. In relation to the capitalist socio-economic formation, the category “bourgeois nation” was used; in relation to the socialist system - “socialist nation”. “A socialist nation is a new social community of people that has grown out of the nation or nationality of capitalist society in the process of the liquidation of capitalism and the victory of socialism; which retained, although they received a qualitatively new development, certain ethnic characteristics, but the entire structure of political, socio-economic and spiritual life was radically transformed on socialist international principles.”

Socialist nations were to be replaced by supranational, international communities, which was to happen in the era of mature communism.

Already in the post-Soviet period V.A. Tishkov is the main representative of constructivism in Russian science, interpreting the nation within the framework of this tradition, noted that one should abandon the understanding of the term “nation” in its ethnic meaning, using it exclusively within the framework of the Western tradition, in accordance with world legal and Western European political practice. The ethnic interpretation of the nation (as an ethno-nation), in his opinion, is a dangerous fruit of the creativity of politicians and can lead to acute ethnic conflicts, wars, and the collapse of states.

The nation, in his view, is “a political slogan and a means of mobilization, and not at all a scientific category,” “a phenomenon that simply does not exist, and makes judgments about persons and forces operating in social space on the basis of the proper criterion for a mythical definition.”

Within the framework of this tradition of interpreting the essence of the nation in Russian science and journalism, there are other points of view. Fundamentally disagreeing with the theses of constructivists and Marxists, a number of authors believe that an ethnic group that created a national state or was the core of an empire can be recognized as a nation. There is also a point of view that from the circle of ethnic groups that have national statehood, only those who have made a significant contribution to the process of formation of world cultures can be considered a nation. For example, S.P. Pykhtin interpreted the nation as “a qualitatively new community in the development of human self-organization.” In his opinion: “Humanity develops in forms that change in a certain sequence. Family, clan, tribe, people - these are the phases of this process, which belongs to natural nature all continents where it exists Homo species sapiens. Influenced by the political history of mankind folk form self-organization, which had dominated for several millennia, acquired a new quality. It first appeared only in the 17th-18th centuries AD. Unlike all other forms of self-organization, a nation is not a natural-historical, but political form, the external sign of which is the state."

“In general, a nation is an ethno-social, cultural-historical and spiritual community of people that emerged in the process of forming a state and accelerating a developed culture. The term "state" in this definition is the key element that distinguishes this type of community from the community called the people. The history of nature, of which human nature is a part, creates nations. When peoples enter into political relations, nations are formed. The modern ethnic map of the world includes up to 2000 peoples, political map there are less than 200 nations.” . Because of this: “We call the Russian nation a multi-ethnic community created by the Russian people and including all the numerous indigenous peoples integrated into the Russian spiritual, cultural and state tradition. Russians as a people, in turn, represent an ethnic community consisting of Great Russians, Little Russians, Belarusians and Rusyns.” .

Standing apart within this tradition of understanding the essence of a nation is the philosophical and historical concept of A.G. Dugin, in which he, making an analysis of the Marxist and postmodern approaches, calls for the pragmatic use of this term exclusively in the political and formal legal sense, as is customary in the West. He believes that: “Nation” is a political and legal phenomenon, almost completely coinciding with the concept of “citizenship”. Belonging to a nation is confirmed by the presence of a mandatory document indicating the fact of citizenship.”

In the opinion of A.G. Dugina: ““Nation” in the classical sense of this term means citizens united politically into one state. Not every state is a “nation-state”. Nation states (or nation states) are modern European-style states, most often secular and based on the political dominance of the bourgeoisie. Only to the citizens of such a modern secular (secular, non-religious) bourgeois state can we justifiably apply the definition of “nation”. In other cases, this will be an unauthorized transfer of one semantic complex to a completely different one.

We find signs of ethnos in all societies - archaic and modern, Western and Eastern, politically organized and living in communities. And the signs of a nation are found only in modern, Western (by type of organization) and politicized societies.”

“A nation is a purely political and modern phenomenon. In a nation, the main form of social differentiation is class (in the Marxist sense, i.e. based on the attitude to ownership of the means of production). A nation exists only under capitalism. The nation is inextricably linked with " modern state"and the ideology of the New Age. The nation is a European phenomenon."

"Eastern" the tradition of interpreting the phenomenon of nation and nationalism, in contrast to the Western tradition, is based not on Eurocentric, progressivist positions, but on polycentrism. This approach allows us to overcome the narrowness formational approach in its Marxist, neo-Marxist or postmodernist interpretations, where the experience of the development of Western European culture is taken as a basis and absolutized. Due to this, unfortunately, many researchers, as we have already seen, give the phenomena of nation and nationalism in their Western European understanding a global character and wrongfully apply them to research social processes other regions of the world, which leads to a distortion of the subject of research and causes fair rejection of the results of their research.

The position of polycentrism, on the basis of which stood such outstanding thinkers as F. Ratzel, N.Ya. Danilevsky, K.N. Leontyev, O. Spengler, L.N. Gumilyov and other authors suggest the presence on Earth of several cultural centers with their own unique appearance and originality of development (Middle East, India, China, Pacific Islands, Eastern Europe). All these cultural centers can be described by concepts developed by the “eastern” tradition of studying social life. For the analysis of the social life of Russia, it is also the “eastern” tradition of interpretation of the nation and nationalism that is more suitable, in which special role belongs to representatives of German and Russian philosophical and political science schools.

In the “eastern” (ethnic) tradition (common in Germany, Eastern Europe and Asia), the concept of nation is synonymous with the concept of ethnicity. A nation (or ethno-nation) is an ethnic group that may include other ethnic groups (according to L.N. Gumilyov - “Xenia”) that share basic national interests. In this tradition, one cannot do without understanding the ethnic nature of the nation, its natural essence, expressed in culture and national character.

Let us recall that, in accordance with the views of L.N. Gumilyov, ethnos is a stable human community historically formed on the basis of an original behavioral stereotype, a collective of people who have a common self-awareness, some inherent stereotype of behavior and contrast themselves with all other similar groups, based on the subconscious sympathy (antipathy) of people who recognize each other according to the principle “ "one's own - someone else's." Ethnicity is manifested in the actions of people and their relationships, which makes it possible to divide into “us” and “strangers”. The uniqueness of an ethnos is not in the language, not in the landscape of the territory it occupies, not in economic structures, but in the way of life and traditions of the people who make it up. Ethnic self-awareness exists throughout the entire historical life of mankind, becoming in the process of national construction the second plane of national self-awareness.

Each nation has its own unique spiritual image and its own special historical mission. A person’s nationality is determined not so much by his state-legal status as by his self-awareness, which has both an ethnic and a national component.

The emergence of this tradition of interpreting the phenomenon of the nation in Germany dates back to the end of the 18th century and is associated with the work of I. Herder and the German romantics. Not accepting the interpretation of a nation as a collection of subjects, citizens of a state (political nation), they form the idea of ​​a nation as an ethnic, natural community of people, expressing the “national spirit” (“Volksgeist”) and based on general culture, values, ideological characteristics and common origin.

The interpretation of the nation not in the sense of a political nation, but of an ethno-nation, inevitably led to a different understanding of nationalism than in the Western tradition. G. Cohn proposed to distinguish between Western (also known as political, civil, state, liberal nationalism, dominant in England, France and the USA) and Eastern (ethnic, cultural, organic, dominant in Germany and Russia) nationalisms. At the same time, many authors unjustifiably confuse ethnic nationalism with tribalism or ethno-separatism, which in our opinion is not entirely true. But this will be discussed in more detail in the next paragraph.

In the Russian philosophical and political science tradition, such famous thinkers as L.A. addressed the definition and understanding of the idea, the essence of the nation. Tikhomirov, V.S. Solovyov, N.A. Berdyaev, S.N. Bulgakov, P.B. Struve, I.A. Ilyin and many others. At the same time, the word nation was used by different authors as describing an ethnic community, an individual’s state affiliation, the form of government and the state itself, but always in close connection with its Spirit and Idea.

L.A. Tikhomirov, considered the nation as one of the four elements of the structure of the state and defined it as “the entire mass of individuals and groups whose joint residence gives rise to the idea of ​​​​supreme power, equally ruling over them. The state helps national unity, and in this sense contributes to the creation of a nation, but it should be noted that the state does not at all replace or abolish nations. All history is full of examples of a nation experiencing the complete collapse of a state and, after centuries, being able to create it again; in the same way, nations often change and transform government systems their. In general, the nation is the basis, with the weakness of which the state is also weak; a state that weakens a nation thereby proves its insolvency.”

S. Bulgakov wrote about the nation as a “living spiritual organism”, belonging to which “does not depend at all on our consciousness; it exists before him and besides him and even in spite of him. It is not only a product of our consciousness or our will; rather, on the contrary, this very consciousness of nationality and the will to it are the essence of its creation in the sense that in general, conscious and volitional life already presupposes a certain existential core of the personality as a nutritious and organic environment in which they arise and develop, of course, then gaining the ability to influence the personality itself.”

P.B. Struve believed that: “A nation is a spiritual unity created and supported by a community of spirit, culture, spiritual content, bequeathed by the past, living in the present and the future created in it.” “At the heart of a nation is always a cultural community in the past, present and future, a common cultural heritage, general cultural work, shared cultural aspirations."

A.V. Gulyga, analyzing the views of Russian philosophers on the essence of the nation, noted that: “A nation is an organic unity, of which a person feels himself a part from birth to death, outside of which he gets lost and becomes unprotected. A nation is a community of destiny and hope, metaphorically speaking. Berdyaev is right: “All attempts to rationally determine nationality lead to failure. The nature of nationality is indefinable by any rationally perceptible criteria. Neither race, nor territory, nor language, nor religion are characteristics that define nationality, although they all play one role or another in its definition. Nationality is a complex historical formation; it is formed as a result of a complex mixture of races and tribes, many redistributions of lands with which it connects its fate in the course of the spiritual and cultural process that creates its unique spiritual peak. And as a result of all historical and psychological research, an indecomposable and elusive residue remains, in which lies the whole secret of national individuality. Nationality is mysterious, mystical, irrational, like any individual existence.” The destruction of traditional foundations (a value system established over centuries) is destructive for the nation...

A nation is a community of sacred things... Nations are not going to merge, but there is no need to install additional partitions between them. Nationality is not a question of origin, but of behavior, not of “blood,” but of culture, of cultural stereotype, who became family. This is what the Germans call Wahlheimat. Everyone is free to choose their own nationality; they cannot be dragged into it or pushed out of it. You can live among Russians without accepting their “faith.” (Then you just don’t have to claim leadership, you can’t consider the people as a means, as material for manipulation, this causes protest and excesses). Complete acceptance of the culture of the people, merging with it, readiness to share the fate of the people, makes any “non-believer” Russian, as well as German, etc.

The Russian nation is multi-ethnic and has many roots. That's why it is so numerous. The Russian nation in general is not a relationship “by blood”; what is important here is not origin, but behavior, type of culture. You don’t have to be born Russian, it’s important to become one. But it is not at all necessary to become. There are many peoples in Russia, but Russians have always been distinguished by national tolerance; it was this that turned Russia into the powerful state that our country has been for centuries.” .

Extremely important within the framework of the Russian philosophical and political science tradition of considering the phenomenon of the nation are the concepts of “Spirit of the Nation”, “National Idea”.

“The spirit of a nation is the most subtle, deeply integrated in centuries of national history, ontological core of national self-awareness. The spirit of the nation defies verbal description (“ no one has ever seen a spirit"), but it is he who enters as an unconditional generating principle into the entire national idea, national ideology and national-historical action, defining what is called national character, being the most fundamental constant of national existence. Where the national spirit is alive, the nation is alive." The spirit of a nation is formed at the dawn of its formation. “The basis and beginning of it is a complex of religious ideas and beliefs, which, refracted into specific historical conditions, and creates the image of the nation, its specific features, the scale of its historical potential (passionarity).” . But since “spirit is a substance inexpressible in words, then the only verbal disclosure of the concept of historical passionarity turns out to be national idea." . "The concept passionarity national spirit is manifested primarily in the content of its national idea. Those peoples and civilizations that possess and preserve their fundamental spiritual and ideological foundations are the most historically stable (India, China, countries of the Islamic world). And those peoples who were unable to preserve their national idea or did not find ideological forms for it adequate to national history disappeared from the historical field or are on the verge of national degeneration (the peoples of Africa, Western Europe, and now Russia). Briefly, this thesis can be formulated as follows: there is an idea - there is passionarity, there is no idea - there is no passionarity .» .

Without taking into account the concepts of “Spirit of the Nation” and “National Idea”, which additionally reveal the essence of the nation (ethno-nation) in the “eastern” tradition of its interpretation, the category of “nation” fades, loses its internal content, dooming itself to spiritual degeneration. In this connection, the words of the song of Hieromonk Roman (Matyushin) come to mind:

“Without God, a nation is a crowd,

United by vice

Either blind or stupid

Or what’s even worse - she’s cruel.

And let anyone ascend the throne,

Speaking in a high syllable.

The crowd will remain a crowd

Until he turns to God!” .

It should be noted that within the framework of the modern Russian school of political science, a number of works have appeared where the authors mean by the category “nation” a superethnos, trying to reconcile the Western and “Eastern” traditions of interpreting the phenomenon of nation and nationalism. For example, historian D.M. Volodikhin writes: “I equate the concepts of “superethnos” and “nation.” From this point of view, a superethnos can be either multiethnic (it can have at least 10 or 20 ethnic groups) or monoethnic. Thus, a nation can be either multi-ethnic or mono-ethnic. Another thing is that a nation is always and invariably built around the everyday, linguistic and cultural preferences of one ethnic group. A superethnos, that is, a nation, is not a fusion of heterogeneous elements into a motley unity that is forever frozen in its inviolability. A nation, for all the universality of its religious super-value and high culture, nevertheless has the language, history and everyday priorities of one ethnic group. And attached to them are some inclusions from the history of life of other ethnic groups that became part of the nation. The presenter. Predominant. At some point in national genesis, it is undividedly dominant. In a word, an ethnos-builder.” .

The works of I.A. can rightly be considered the pinnacle of the creative heritage of the Russian philosophical and political science school. Ilyin, in which he gives a philosophical and legal interpretation of the essence of the nation and a special, different from the Western, interpretation of the phenomenon of nationalism.