Ethno-cultural potential and multi-ethnicity (Russian dimension)

Russian ethnology and Western anthropology differ by time of their origin (XVIII and XIX centuries, respectively) and by the main theme: a chief protagonist of Russian ethnography is the particular people, as far as that of Western anthropology is the universal person. Even in USSR, when after the "ethno-boom" of 1920s, the ethnography has been degraded into "subsidiary historical discipline" and pushed to study primordial communism and domestic culture, the ethnographers persistently developed a thematic field of "ethnogenesis and ethnic history." Up to a day the ethnicity remains the leading theme of Russian ethnology marking its practical orientation. In XX century the "national question" was the powerful driver of political and social reforms. Not accidentally, the USSR was created as unit of peoples, and its Supreme Council was consisted of two chambers, Council of Union and Council of Nationalities. As the West relies on multiparty system, the Russia/USSR relies on multiethnic one, and ethnic motives serves as counterbalance to political centrism. In balancing central power and ethnicity a fluctuation can be traced, even statistically: according to censuses, the number of peoples was growing in periods of political crises and decreasing in periods of centralism peaks. For understanding the "anatomy of multi-ethnicity" a method of anthropology of movement seems to be efficient, since it focuses on motives of behaviors and scenarios of interactions of ethnic communities and their leaders, rather than on static pictures. Interior complexity of Russian community, being multifaceted by emergence, provided their bending toward interethnic alliances in a role of intermediary-folk. In analysis of Russians' and other Russia's peoples' relationship a notion of ethno-сenosis (partly borrowed from ecology) could be applied; it designates a complex community, in which peoples and their groups maintain their self-being and specific spatial and functional niches. These groups differ from each other by the experience of eco-social adaptations, strategies of ethnic behavior and ethno-cultural potential. The peoples play their parts in ethno-cenosis depending on distribution, number, solidarity, cultural-economic profile, religious tradition, linguistic behavior and other features. These roles could change and upgrade, but they identify and provide the people's self-being in social environment. For each people ethnically distinguishable behavior in dimensions of kinship, sex, power, language, religion, economy, everyday life, ethics, aesthetics is significant, as well as the mutual adaptation of theses peculiarities is important for multi-ethnic community.

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