Globalization and National Identity Transformation Processes in Russia: Towards Difference between the Concepts of ‘Ethnos' and ‘Nation' in Contemporary Russian Socio-political Thought
Globalization and informatization processes affect accelerating dynamics of historical consciousness transformation and radically change social identity. Globalization blurs and even erases previously clear boundaries between cultures; it actualizes the problems of nation and ethnos as social constructs and real phenomena. This aspect is complicated by the fact that, as study object, it is lying at the confluence of most of humanitarian subjects. In my article, I represent an attempt to examine concept of ‘nation' as a main subject matter. Using conceptual, discursive, and comparative analysis, I try to identify differences between the concepts of ‘ethnos' and ‘nation' in terms of community of interest and ideals. I believe that the essence of the nation in its modern sense has, first, a civil-political character, unlike an ethnos that is based on blood relations. In case of USSR, Soviet identity had institutional features of national-civic one, as it did not formally imply binding to the ethnic group. At the same time, Soviet identity was partially layered onto ethno-belonging, and partially replaced it, possessing certain ethno-characteristics (population, working community, etc.). We can say that this concept combined national and ethnic characteristics. If in the Soviet era the emphasis was on internationalism, then after the Perestroika, the focus shifted to the understanding of Russia as a nation-state, one of the tasks of which was an attempt to reincorporate the Russians of CIS states. At the moment, ethnic and confessional identities fill the place of Soviet social and cultural identity. The socio-cultural features of new Russian identity are determined, first of all, by its instability and incompleteness of its formation process. When discussing the problem of post-Soviet socio-political identity emerging in modern Russia, I stress events at Manezhnaya Square in Moscow in December 2010, which I consider as a ‘new Kronstadt mutiny.' Participants of these events were no longer Soviet, but not Russian youth groups, and this is an indicator of the failure of national identity building in Russia in the early 2000s. For centuries, the national Russian state identity is based on both Russian language as the basis of communication and culture and domestic history as the basis of national identity. On how these fundamentals will be perceived by the younger generation of Russians, its future will be formed even practically regardless of economic collisions. Based on these ideas, I conclude that (i) younger generation play the main role in modernization of the political space; (ii) the main factors in such modernization are identity and patriotism, and it is the task of the younger generation of Russians to maintain a priority attitude towards Russia in either forms, since these are the most important forms of social relations.