Centre - regions relations in the context of national identity formation in Russia (historiographic aspect)

The collapse of the USSR and creation of a new state - theRussian Federation - put an issue of formation of a new national identity on agenda. The answer to the question who we are - russkiye(Russians) or rossiyane (citizens of Russia) is complicated by a number of factors, for example, the multinational character of the countryspopulation, regional disproportions and difficult and contradictory legacy of the Soviet epoch. During the Soviet period a new category of populationsidentification was introduced - Soviet people. So, forming a new national identification faces problems of methodological characterand a lack of terminology adequate to modern reality. The Russian Federation found itself in a unique situation in the 1990s, when several ofglobal processes influenced on the course of its development. Among such processes are the territorial changes; Russias entering the globalisingworld. Since 1990s Russian leaders, trying to overcome these difficulties and prevent further split of the society, have been searching for anidea that would unite representatives of different ethnic groups and religions as the base for forming the national identity. In the article on thebasis of Russian and foreign historiographies of this question, the connection of the problem of searching the national identity with the relationsof the regions and the federal authorities in the Russian Federation is described. The author of the article proves that the situation of dividing thepopulation according to the scheme centre-periphery threatens to aggravate social conflicts and political instability (and, as a consequence, thelasting deceleration of the processes of the jural society formation in the country). Thus, Russian and foreign experts state the failure of the Russianauthorities in proposing a national idea uniting the multinational and multiethnic population. Only the idea (or ideas) and countrys identificationbased on it (them) on a national, not regional, scale would help solve a number of domestic and international tasks. The author of thearticle concludes that excessive centralisation of power threatens to the dynamic development of regions and growth of opposition in regions. Inthe course of such events the attempts of federal government to form the national identity could fail.

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