The Idea of the Russian Nation in the Social and Political Thought of Russia in the second half of the XIX century: the Problem of National Identity

The article sets research tasks within the project «Problems of national identity in the social and political thought of Russia in the second half of the XIX century». The purpose of this study is to determine the impact of perceptions of the Russian nation on the nature and content of the concepts and projects to solve the national question that were proposed by supporters of various vectors of social and political thought, and to identify the main areas of their adjustment under the influence of specific historical circumstances. The prevalent in modern science modernist idea of a state constituted by a nation meaning that only a state created and backed by a nation can be historically successful, does not quite fit into the realities of nation-building processes occurring in the multi-ethnic Russian Empire. At the same time here, within the framework of competing national projects purposefully implemented by various social and political actors, a number of identities was being formed. Each of the subjects relied on a certain potential, political, cultural and intellectual resources that emerged in the course of social, political, ethnic processes in Russia's historical space. As such subjects an imperial state and national elites of peoples of the Russian Empire, including that of Russian, should be considered. Here, the special nature of the relationship between the imperial state and the Russian national elite should be taken into account. As a working hypothesis the determining character of Russian national identity has been defined with regards to the so-called «national question» within which not only important identification markers were established, but also the question of the role of the Russian nation in the history of mankind, its present and future, was being dealt with. One of the most important issues as to the national identity was the definition of the Russian nation. Depending on what ethnic or political content it was filled with, the format of the national state system of Russia, the principles of national policy and international relations were defined. Traditionally in Russia, closely connected with the issue of national identity,is the notion of civi-lizational identity To a certain degree, the civilizational identity constituted the first step towards the definition of the features and essence of Russian identity by Russian intellectuals. The debate between Westerners and Slavophiles identified the first markers of Russian identity as Europe or non-Europe. But then, in the process of developing and deepening Russian identification discourse, it went on in the framework of national model, within the dichotomy of ethnic and political national identity.

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