Ethnical identity of Karachais and Balkars: things in common and in particular

National consciousness of big and small peoples occupies one of the main places among the major factors of public progress. It is thatspiritual motive power which consolidates intellectual possibilities and political will of each nation, directing its political, public and civilactivity in the channel of solving the most actual and significant economic, political, spiritual and moral problems, satisfying fundamentalnational interests.Study of ethnic character of the people in whole and in the separate components which make up its identification should beplaced in the basis of the concept of stabilization of society. There are all various possibilities and sides of any kind of activity coded in theethnic character of separate individuals and the people in whole. The above-mentioned concerns the general theoretical sphere. The situationin details looks absolutely neglected. Even in the basic content of life of karachai and balkar people there are different components, senses,values, the archetypes. Their system unity has not been the subject of integral scientific study so far. This places these issues in the class ofsocially significant and actual problems in scientific and theoretical sense. Study of different manifestations of spirituality was always a vitaltopic for history, ethnology and sociology. For this reason the research of national character, its specific manifestations, forms, kinds, presentativenorms and types of making social institutes is an actual problem in several aspects. First, the comprehension of ethnic character and itsseparate structural elements demands the search for new traditional categories and restoration of basic ones such as national spirit, nationalwill, public spirit, collective consciousness, soul of the people, national mentality, etc. These categories display complex unity of social andpsychological, figurative, conceptual, spiritual, intellectual and other phenomena which are hard to define. To a certain extent the discursivecontext of ethnic character concept supplements the category number in the analysis and definition of these system phenomena. Secondly,recent humanities (history, sociology, psychology, etc.) have approached the new period in their development. First of all they have come tocomprehend the fact that isolationist - especially psychological, or especially social - approaches have settled the heuristic potential. Thirdly,a characteristic sign of modern development of the people is the strengthening of the role of ethical factor in political and cultural processes,activization of people's will to defend their national and cultural traditions. Industrialization, urbanization, growth of influence of mass-mediaon the members of society seems not to reduce the role of ethnic identification in public processes. On the contrary, the ethnic element getsenough great value as it influences functioning of social mechanisms and distribution of public resources.Value orientations of the person areformed in a certain social environment on a certain piece of historical development of society. For this reason, transformational changeswhich take place in different planes of life of the modern society, predetermine complex features of its representatives of different generationsand influence their value orientations. The system of priorities for representatives of each generation of the people is defined accordingto the stage features. One of the main tasks of the present work is the realization of an integrated estimation of ethnic priorities by variousgenerations of karachai and balkar people.

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