Council on Interethnic Relations discussed, among other things, the development of the so-called “law on Russian nation". Russian President Vladimir Putin gave corresponding instructions.

The order itself sounds cautious, and this is correct, since we are talking about extremely complex matter. The assertive comments of the author of this initiative, head of the RANEPA department Vyacheslav Mikhailov, that appeared on the Internet, however, alarmed me. It is clear that since he voiced such an initiative, his personal vision of this problem should be completely clear. But he speaks as if the fact that he was appointed head of the relevant expert group automatically means that this particular vision should prevail. I don’t think that would be good for the business, and here’s why.

At one time, a famous historian, student of Lev Gumilyov and simply a wise man Vladimir Makhnach said that one of the key mistakes of the communists in the USSR was a superficial attitude towards national politics. He consistently criticized the Soviet leadership for neglecting the enormous heritage of Russian thought in the field of national identity, and insisted on respect for the people's principles.

He considered the formula “a new multinational community - the Soviet people” to be the quintessence of amateurism in the field of science about ethnic groups, emphasizing that the correct formulation from a scientific point of view would be “a multinational (multi-ethnic) community - the Soviet nation” and it would put a lot in its place.

The Soviet nation existed at least since 1941, and with all the recognition of the greatest contribution to the victory of the Russian, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Kazakh and any other people of the USSR, it won the Great Patriotic War exactly she. It would be strange, however, to consider that it was not a socio-political, but an ethnic community.

By the 1980s, the foundations of this nation were significantly undermined as a result of external influences and internal decay, and it was unable to maintain the unity of the country. In turn, the Russian people, as a community both ethnic and cultural-historical, were not endowed with the proper status and resources in the USSR to carry out the mission of “holding” on the territory of the entire country.

There were no unified political nations in any of the newly independent states. Therefore, in all of them there was a potential for interethnic conflicts. Somewhere they found an intermediate solution, somewhere they found no solution at all and, judging by a number of signs, they are unlikely to find one if the political circumstances in general in the territory former USSR will remain unchanged.

Developing the right formula for national unity, based on respect for the identity of all the peoples inhabiting our country, will not be easy.

Here, first of all, it is necessary to overcome the narrow understanding of nationalism, which transforms it into chauvinism and ethno-radicalism. But we must also overcome the primitively understood internationalism, whose supporters reduce the essence of this concept to a prefix, forgetting that the main meaning of any word is concentrated in the root.

Without love for your people, without respect for their traditions, there will be no love for other peoples inhabiting your country, no respect for their traditions. Accordingly, it will not work and sincere love to the country as a whole, respect for the political nation as a community of citizens of one state, but children different nations. National identity and patriotism are not contradictory, but complementary phenomena.

During the existence of our country in the form of the USSR, the emphasis was on the socio-political basis of national unity. Complete denationalization, however, did not happen, and could not have happened, since ethnicity is not so much a cultural-historical and social category as a natural one.

There are, of course, among Russian citizens those who are for last decades under the influence of globalist ideas, he isolated himself from his ethnicity, but such people are in the minority. People always have a desire to maintain the unshakable foundations of their existence, and national self-awareness and paternal tradition are one of the most important in this regard.

So, national unity in our country, as I see it, is already being formed and will continue to be formed in many stages, that is, not by uniting individual representatives of the various peoples inhabiting it into some kind of non-national community (such a community would be a chimera), but on an interethnic basis.

All ethnic groups in our country are equal, and it would be inappropriate to talk about any special position or special privileges for one of them. At the same time, due to objective reasons, some ethnic groups are endowed with special responsibility. Here I do not mean the desire to take on this responsibility - many can and should want to do this - but the ability to carry out this responsibility on a national scale.

In this capacity of a “core ethnic group” (the definition I took from the book by Vladimir Makhnach and Sergei Elishev “Politics. Basic Concepts”) I see the Russian people. And I stand on this position not because I am Russian myself, but simply by objectively taking in both the centuries-old history of our country and its modernity.

In saying this, I want to emphasize once again: the conversation about the “core ethnic group” is not a conversation about special rights and a special position in common system, but about special responsibilities, about cultural and historical duty, if you like.

Evaluating from the point of view of what has been said new initiative in area national policy, her the positive side I will say that the question of developing a law was not raised to the “Russian people”. As a Russian person, I would never agree with this. Russian and Russian are simply different categories; you cannot replace one with the other, just as you cannot replace the Russian language with the “Russian” language. By the way, Mikhail Lomonosov tried to do this together with Catherine II, and during the period of active imperial construction, but nothing worked out for them. The history of the long-suffering 20th century clearly shows: the less Russian there was left in a Russian, the closer we stood to the edge of the cultural and historical abyss.

In principle, it would be correct to make a new approach to improving the strategy and legislative framework state national policy.

At the same time, some comments made following the Council meeting are alarming. Among them I include, for example, the idea of ​​“the need to close the unity of civil-political and ethnic nations” and thereby “reach the level of the European legal field,” as well as the thesis about the possibility of “managing interethnic relations.”

And, of course, as is clear from what I said above, I categorically cannot agree with the interpretation of the concept of “Russian nation” as an ethnic concept. It needs to be considered purely in the civil-political and cultural-historical planes. Otherwise, the cause of interethnic harmony in our country will be seriously damaged.

Someone may say: “Why is it that a non-specialist undertakes to evaluate such an important legislative initiative”? I will answer. I really don't have a scientific degree.

But, firstly, I have twenty-five years of service in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, ten of which I was substantively involved in international and interethnic relations in the post-Soviet space, and the subsequent decade of participation in Russian domestic political life taught me a lot. And secondly, I am the future subject of this law. Not an object, I emphasize this again, but a subject. I have to live by it, I have to reap its fruits. Therefore, what he will be like for me, and for all of us, should be not indifferent.

The law “On the unity of the Russian nation and the management of interethnic relations”, which is currently being developed, will be renamed, writes Kommersant. This decision was made by the working group preparing the concept of the bill due to “society’s unwillingness to accept the idea of ​​a single nation.”

The document may be called “On the Fundamentals of State National Policy.” “It’s calmer this way. It turned out that society is not very prepared to perceive such a concept as a single nation uniting all nationalities. Considering that the president also proposed translating the strategy of state national policy into the language of law, we decided to change its name,” explained the head of the working group, former Minister of Nationalities Affairs, academician.

The bill, according to him, will spell out the conceptual apparatus, the mechanism for delimiting powers between the federal, regional and local authorities, a system for monitoring ethno-confessional relations in the constituent entities of the Russian Federation, state policy towards small and indigenous peoples, and the principles of ethnological examination of bills. He noted that a special section will most likely be devoted to the Russian nation.

The working group will present the new concept in a month.

Another former minister of nationalities said that the working group is still studying the proposals of experts. One of the working options for the name of the bill, he noted, is “On the fundamentals of state national policy in the Russian Federation.” The main thing, in his opinion, is “to consolidate once again at the legislative level the ideas of the state national policy strategy that have entered real life.”

In December 2016, the first deputy chairman of the Committee on Education and Science destroyed the mental unity of Russia. As an example, he gave Far East, where distinguished students are sent not to Moscow, but to Seoul ( South Korea). “It’s already a mentality that they don’t live in Russia,” he noted.

On November 3, the Duma Committee on Nationalities began to develop the concept of a law on the Russian nation, the creation of which was initiated by the President of Russia. The head of state suggested that the basis for the law could be a development strategy national relations in Russia.

In October, Putin made the unity of the people a key condition for preserving the statehood and independence of Russia, as well as the existence of the country as “a single and native home for all the peoples who inhabit it.”

According to the 2010 All-Russian Population Census, about 200 different nationalities live in Russia, with almost 80 percent of citizens being Russian.

November 4 is the day of the so-called national unity. Probably by this day, the President approved the idea of ​​​​adopting a law on the Russian nation and classified this task as something that absolutely needs to be implemented.

TOLERANCE OR FRIENDSHIP OF PEOPLES?

I don’t presume to judge whether such a law is needed and what should be written in it. But it is absolutely necessary to strengthen and maintain friendly relations between the peoples inhabiting our land. Not all phenomena of life can be regulated by law: some are regulated by morality, everyday customs and habits, some by religious beliefs. Take such a global and eternal issue - the relationship between men and women. Do we need a special law for this? I personally think it’s not necessary, but there may probably be other opinions. The law is not needed, but correct and reasonable education is necessary. The same is true with interethnic relations.

In general, interethnic relations have much in common with relations between men and women. While there were no feminists, men and women considered themselves friends, tried to the best of their ability to please each other, but feminists appeared - and now women immediately felt oppressed and powerless. You see, they are not allowed into some higher positions, they are not allowed to do this and that, for which they must immediately enter into battle with the oppressors. I think the less talk about it, the more sense. Otherwise, people, out of their weakness, like to attribute their own failures to some infernal force: it’s not me who is a fool, but “pigish male chauvinism” is to blame. Something similar exists in relations between peoples.

“As a result, almost 80% of the country’s citizens - I note this with satisfaction - consider relations between people different nationalities friendly or normal,” Putin cited statistics, adding, not without pride, that a few years ago there were only 55% of these people.

It seems to me that the Soviet concept of “friendship of peoples” needs to be reintroduced. This is not tolerance, that is, tolerance, but friendship. You can tolerate something disgusting, but you can only be friends with someone you like. Friendship of peoples is mutual interest, curiosity, learning languages. We have vast experience in this matter. In the Soviet Union, the entire atmosphere of life was permeated with the friendship of peoples. The child read (or rather, they read to him) fairy tales of the peoples of the USSR, he looked at the pictures and saw how beautiful the folk clothes of different peoples were, he was told where they live, what they do. There was sympathy and interest. It continued at school. The anthologies have always contained a certain number of poems and stories by writers from the republics of the USSR and simply different peoples of our country. The best poets translated them. At VDNKh, the child saw the “Friendship of Peoples” fountain (by the way, very much appreciated by Italian tourists for some reason), and gradually the idea of ​​​​friendship of peoples entered his consciousness. It took special effort to destroy it.

The idea of ​​friendship among peoples lived among ordinary people until the very end of the USSR. I remember well how in the summer of 1991 I was in Azerbaijan on a business trip, and fully experienced this sincere friendship. No one could even imagine that in six months we would become strangers to each other.

WHO IS GUILTY?

This idea was destroyed in the old proven way: they explained to the weak little man that another people was to blame for his unsightly life. In general, the easiest way to “buy” a person is to tell him that he, a) deserves more and b) this more was taken away from him by such and such, and if it weren’t for him, wow, how would you live.

These conversations should be resolutely blocked. Is this censorship? Well, yes, she is the one. And without it, governing the state is impossible, no matter what the progressives mutter, who in the overwhelming majority have not even managed a kiosk in an underground passage in their lives.

Under Soviet rule (under Brezhnev), the idea of ​​a new historical community arose - the Soviet people. Good idea, uniting. It seems to me that it should be reintroduced into circulation - in the form of the “Russian people”. It seems to me that there is no need to emphasize the word “multinational”. Yes, the Constitution says “We, a multinational people Russian Federation..." But this doesn’t seem promising to me; on the contrary, we must emphasize unity. It seems to me that we need to talk about the “Russian nation” - about the unity of all the peoples inhabiting Russia. Subsequently, perhaps, instead of “Russian” they will say “Russian”, as ALL subjects of the Russian Tsar were once called, but this is a matter for the future. For now - “Russian nation”. The Russian nation consists of many peoples. We love them, respect them, study their past and present. As, indeed, we study local history, the local history of all the edges and regions of our common country. Why, for example, don’t they broadcast songs of the peoples of Russia on the radio, but always play foreign pop music or whatever it’s called?

What position should you strive for? It seems to me like this. We are all Russian. But everyone has some small homeland. “Small Motherland” - this concept needs to be revived and cultivated. This is the place where you were born, where your ancestors are, your roots, dear graves, etc. Or maybe you were not born there, but the roots are there. And such diversity creates our strength, our beauty, our wealth. It is curious that the famous publicist A. Wasserman calls Odessa his small homeland, and considers himself Russian. This is correct and reasonable.

But to start broadcasting this idea right off the bat (we are all Russian, but everyone has their own small homeland) is, in my opinion, premature. This idea needs to be introduced gradually. The main thing is to understand which direction we are going. We need to learn from our Western “partners” about the gradual introduction of ideas. Imagine, thirty or fifty years ago, someone would have declared in France or Germany that homosexuality is the norm. Look, you could even get a black eye under your eye. And now - nothing, they implemented it. Graduality, steadyness and a firm understanding of which direction we are going - this is how ideas are introduced into the minds.

The idea of ​​friendship between peoples is a living and necessary idea. We need to return to her. But not just return, but adapt it to the new reality. And skillfully and steadily broadcast.

WHO ARE THE RUSSIANS?

But the matter does not end there. As soon as they started talking about the law on the Russian nation, supporters of the special protection of the Russian people immediately perked up. He, as many believe, is the most oppressed and powerless, and therefore needs special protection.

So I would like to start by discussing: who are the Russians?

Residents of the Russian Federation? The so-called “Russian-speaking”? Those who are NOT Jews and NOT “chuchiki”? Racially pure Slavs without admixture... by the way, who is admixed? - Finno-Ugric, Mongol-Tatars, and so on, little by little - all sorts of Polovtsians, Pechenegs or “ancient Ukrainians”... In general, it is not easy to establish a criterion.

There are two approaches to establishing belonging to a nation, let’s call it conventionally German and Latin.

Germanic gravitates towards animal science: it is based on race, breed, heredity, anthropological types, reaching to the measurements of the skull... Hitler and his minions did not invent anything - they simply took to the last extreme what was in the air and what the German genius always gravitated towards - to the doctrine of the inequality of peoples. This idea is originally English. As for Nazism, the Englishman will outdo the German in this matter. In the colonies, the British firmly isolated themselves from the local population and treated the colonized peoples like cattle. The French separated much less, and the Portuguese simply mixed together.

All the ideas of Nazism, together with the practice of rationally maintaining the smaller livestock needed by the owners of life - all this was developed and tested by the British in the colonies. The idea expressed by Thatcher in its inescapable simplicity that Russia does not need such a large population is a very Anglo-Saxon idea. The German Nazis differ from the Anglo-Saxon ones only in that the Germans trumpeted this loudly and theorized scientifically. However, let’s leave this fascinating question: it’s off topic today.

The second approach to establishing belonging to a nation is Latin. The French and Italians gravitate towards him. The name, of course, is conditional: this approach is characteristic not only of Latin peoples.

What is this approach? It's simple. The criterion of a nation or race is a sense of self, a cultural tradition - nothing more. (Note for the sake of curiosity: in the Latin tradition, “race” often refers to what we would rather call a language family: Latin, Germanic, Slavic.... By the way, in Romance (Latin) languages, the breed of dogs is also called the word “race”: race in French , raza in Spanish, razza in Italian).

Let's try to understand how the Latin mind perceives race and nation? Let's turn to authoritative primary sources. Here is a venerable author in this sense - Mussolini. The founder of fascism, and fascism, we are taught, is racism. Here's what the founder thought about race:

"Race! It is a feeling, not a reality: ninety-five percent, at least, is a feeling. Nothing will ever make me believe that biologically pure races exist today. Funnily enough, not one of those who proclaimed the “greatness” of the Teutonic race was German. Gobineau was a Frenchman, Huston Chamberlain was an Englishman, Woltmann was a Jew, Lapouge was a Frenchman.” Reasonable, right?

In The Doctrine of Fascism, the official text (it was written for the Italian Encyclopedia), Mussolini formulates:

“A nation is not a race, or a specific geographical locality, but a group lasting in history, that is, a multitude united by one idea, which is the will to existence and domination, that is, self-consciousness, and therefore personality.” (The translation is clumsy, but the meaning is clear).

A SENSE OF COMMON DESTINY

That is, the criterion of a nation is subjective and psychological.

As you feel, so it is. It is a sense of shared history and shared culture. Common fate. That is why, despite all the difficulty of “mentally” establishing nationality, it is very easy to establish it “by feeling.” Theoretically it’s not simple, but in practice it’s simpler than steamed turnips. There are a lot of people who confidently and without doubt say about themselves: I am Russian. (Or, respectively, “I am French,” “I am German,” etc.). On what basis? Yes, not at all. Based on feeling. They are Russians, and that’s all. For example, I am like this. Although I have ¼ confirmed Ukrainian blood. Or my husband. Half of him is of Ukrainian blood, and half of the other half is Belarusian. That is, Russian blood, it turns out, is no more than a quarter. And since his surname is characteristic of Poland, then, one might think, he has a Polish one; and since the famous Jewish Pale of Settlement passed through Belarus, maybe the Jewish Pale of Settlement too... And all together - Russian. IN former time There was such a humorous saying in Russia: “Dad is a Turk, mom is a Greek, and I am a Russian person.” Very correct, that's exactly what it is. Or rather, this MAYBE is normal. If a person feels culturally and morally-psychologically Russian, then he is Russian.

Here I would like to remember my Western Ukrainian ancestors. My great-grandfather was from Volyn from the village of Gorodok, and took his wife from near Poltava. My grandmother was born in 1898. was born there. My great-grandfather was an estate manager, a peasant. The landowner noticed that the manager's girl was smart and advised her to study further, after the parochial school, which most people then graduated from. She was sent first to Warsaw to a gymnasium (Warsaw was psychologically the closest Big city for the then Volyn), and then to Moscow, where she graduated from high school. Then she entered the Besstuzhev courses, which she did not have time to complete: the revolution interfered. So, I remember, at the end of my grandmother’s life, my friends sometimes asked her: “Lukia Grigorievna, are you Ukrainian by nationality?” To this, my grandmother invariably answered: “Girls, there is no such nationality - Ukrainian. The Bolsheviks invented this. We are all Russian. Only some are Great Russians, others are Little Russians, and some are Belarusians. And together they are all Russians.” My ancestors spoke Polish better than Russian (my great-grandmother did not really learn to speak Russian until the end of her days). However, after the revolution they proved their “Russianness” by deeds. Volyn then went to Poland, and they did not want to stay there, and left for central Russia - to Tula. They felt that they would be deprived Orthodox faith, they will spread Catholicism, and so they left. These are the Russian people.

Not only language, not only faith, not both at once, not everyday habits, not culture, but something that cannot be reduced to any of these factors determines national identity. Some feeling, spirit.

SMALL AND BIG HOMELAND

Can there be two or more of these feelings? Is it possible to be Russian and at the same time a Komi-Zyryan or Gorno-Altaian? In my opinion, nothing prevents this. Mountain Altai is your small homeland, where your ancestors, customs, fairy tales, language are. But at the same time, you are Russian, the great Russian culture is your culture, and the great Russian people are your people. Moreover, different nationalities were once included in Russia not by force of arms, not conquered, but they themselves joined because they were threatened by other countries and peoples. Remember, from Lermontov, from “Mtsyri”:

About the glory of the past - and about that
How, depressed by my crown,

Such and such a king in such and such a year
He handed over his people to Russia.

And God's grace came down
To Georgia! - she was blooming
Since then, in the shade of their gardens,

Without fear of enemies
Beyond friendly bayonets.

Russians have never been an oppressor and exploiter for foreigners. He was the elder brother: he himself is undernourished, but I will feed the younger ones.

Abroad, we are all Russians, and this is the natural truth. They don't understand the details. In the same way, in the Trans-Baikal Military District, a guy from Noginsk is called “Muscovite”. At home we can be Bashkirs or Buryats. A nice Buryat couple worked for us. Cultural Russian Muscovites. But they did not want to lose their culture and read Buryat fairy tales to their six-year-old son before bed. And that's great! This is the same “blooming complexity” that Konstantin Leontiev once spoke about. Small and large languages ​​and cultures are precious colored threads from which the carpet of great Russian culture is woven. But in general we are Russians. Your own dishes, your own songs, fairy tales, customs - all this is beautiful and interesting, all this needs to be encouraged and cultivated. As well as Russian customs, songs and fairy tales. At the school near Moscow where my daughter studied, there was a subject called “folk culture,” which was taught by a great enthusiast of this matter. She taught children, among other things, to sculpt from clay, they studied customs, folk rituals... Songs, fairy tales, proverbs - this is the natural “place” where a person’s “small” ethnic identification lives. Speaking Komi, Avar or Ukrainian on topics of everyday life, customs, speaking it in everyday life is normal and wonderful. Talking about “big” life - about politics, about science, technology, about general life - is artificial and unproductive. Yes, in fact, this is actually what happens.

In the language of Bolshevik discussions a century ago on national question this approach was called “cultural autonomy.” It seems natural and fruitful to me. Stalin, an expert on the national question, called himself a “Russian of Georgian origin.” This formula seems very simple and correct to me. We have a big Motherland: Russia, and according to it we are all Russians. And there is a small homeland that we love and appreciate. But everything has its place. Very simple and fruitful! He does not forget his roots, does not deny, does not overcome, does not cling to something big, powerful and prestigious. It remains what it is, but at the same time retains its living roots. In the end, Bulat Okudzhava (by the way, also Russian of Georgian origin) considered “Arbatism” his nationality. And Arbat, by the way, is a Turkic word, from the Horde, no less.

I was in Kyiv three years ago. I noticed a curious circumstance: all the inscriptions and advertisements are in Ukrainian. But the announcements that citizens themselves write on a printer or by hand are entirely in Russian. Near the Universitet metro station there are many advertisements offering diplomas, drawings, coursework - these are ALL in Russian. Maybe something has changed now...

In general, our Ukrainian brothers prefer to talk about serious things in Russian. Here is the famous video of Yulia Tymoshenko, where she proposes to kill Muscovites atomic bomb. Everyone clucks around this very bomb and does not notice the most interesting thing: they speak in RUSSIAN! Both interlocutors are Ukrainians, they speak among themselves, without the need to be understood by anyone else (in this case, it would be better to speak directly in English, as Saakashvili once did), and these national figures communicate in Russian language.

The highly respected 19th-century philologist and philosopher Afanasy (sorry, Opanas) Potebnya, a true crest, Little Russian landowner, folklorist, true collector of Ukrainian folk art, said that writing about science in Ukrainian is like carrying firewood to the forest. This is an empty matter, unnecessary. It’s funny that a long time ago, back in the 80s, I happened to buy in Kyiv a collection of philological articles dedicated to Potebnya on the occasion of some anniversary, the so-called. "Potebnyansky reading". So there, almost all modern articles were in Ukrainian and Belarusian, only Potebnya himself was in Russian. And no one noticed the humor of the situation.

In the USSR, ethnic self-expression was not only not hindered, on the contrary, this side of life was emphasized. Alphabets were created for unwritten languages, and children were forced to learn literature in this language. My Soviet Ukrainian friends preferred to send their children to Russian schools: they taught Ukrainian, but studied subjects in Russian. What about Ukraine? It was the same story in the Baltic states.

Where did this come from? After and during the revolution new government I didn’t feel confident enough and tried to rely on any movements and popular feelings. So they tried to please the nationalists by proclaiming the notorious “right of nations to self-determination.”

After the war, it probably could have been done single state. (I don’t say “unitary” on purpose, because I don’t want to go into details). But either they didn’t get around to it, or it wasn’t easy to do. After the war, Stalin was in fact an autocratic monarch, but an autocratic monarch can only do so much. Only someone who has never led any organization imagines that the top person can do everything. Not everyone! And the larger and more complex the organization, the more the first person, as they say nowadays, has a corridor of opportunities.

It seems to me that Russia has not yet spoken its word in history. And if she is destined to say it, then it will be best to do it with that simple and natural approach to the national question, which I tried to outline above with cursory strokes.

Law on the Russian nation: will they look for “pure Slavs” in the Russian Federation - publicist

1.11.2016 18:54

It is clear why this bill will be about the Russian nation, and not about the Russians: Chechens do not consider themselves Russians, neither do Tatars, nor Bashkirs. The law on the Russian nation would blow up Russia. I cannot understand why this law on the Russian nation is needed. Because in the best case, it will not make things worse, that is, it will not create new national tension. But why do something that, in extreme cases, will not make things worse, I don’t understand.

However, against the backdrop of other meaningless matters with which the authorities are trying to distract society, this fits into the context of such a game, a general imitation, when the Russian leadership is engaged in some kind of nonsense. Either Syria, then, no offense to you, Ukraine, the “Donetsk Republic”, then endless butting heads with America... It all looks like a constant desire to distract people from real pressing problems, very simple and very unpleasant. The problem of Russia is not what its inhabitants are called, but that their standard of living is falling, that housing and communal services are expensive... Instead, they are engaged in either foreign affairs, or PR, or wars for history, or inventing some kind of laws about the Russian nation .

Ukraine, Belarus or Kazakhstan have nothing to do with it - we're talking about about the Russian nation. Naturally, this is a purely internal law. Firstly, when Putin said that the Ukrainian people do not exist, he, of course, said that Ukrainians belong to the Russian people, in the context of a sentimental Slavic-Russian brotherhood. Secondly, these are just words, just PR. Because passing a law, a legally binding document, according to which people would be divided according to ethnicity is 100% Nazism. Moreover, in this case I use “Nazism” not as a curse or accusation, but simply as a legal statement. Because if this is the law, and not a shout at a pre-election or some other meeting, then it is necessary to introduce criteria for what “Russian”, “Slavs”, “brotherhood” are. We need to buy calipers, measure skulls... Now, however, genetic analysis is enough.

That is, the law on the Russian nation would be one hundred percent Nazi law. Since Putin absolutely does not want to fall into the category of Nazis, there is no such law in Russia and cannot be by definition. We can only talk about citizens of the Russian Federation, which has nothing to do with their ethnicity or race. There is no problem of ethnic inequality in Russia; there is no such problem at the state level. There are ethnic prejudices. They were, are and will be. But these are people’s personal prejudices: they can’t stand Caucasians, and there are still plenty of anti-Semites. No law can remove this. De facto, there are now no government restrictions or privileges for small nations in Russia.

There are quite noisy Russian nationalists - Nazis, simply put. Again, not in terms of swearing, but in terms of statements. Those who believe that the citizens of the country are nonsense, but ethnicity is important. But the authorities always treat them condescendingly: they press them individually, separately, work hard, but try not to touch upon the ideology itself, so as not to offend the majority of the population. Naturally, the law on the Russian nation will be extremely unpleasant for these people, and a conflict may occur between nationalists and the government. Nationalists consider Putin their leader in Russia, and they are largely disappointed with him. We are disappointed that the same speech about the Slavs and Russians remained empty words. But since they have no other leader, they treat Putin well.

Illustration copyright AFP Image caption What exactly the final version of the law will look like is still not very clear

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday supported the idea of ​​developing a law on the Russian nation. In his opinion, the law could come from a strategy for the development of interethnic relations in Russia.

This was expressed by the head of the Federal Agency for National Affairs Igor Barinov and the head of the department Russian Academy National economy and civil service Vyacheslav Mikhailov at a meeting of the Council on Interethnic Relations in Astrakhan.

Russia has already developed a “Strategy of State National Policy”, adopted four years ago.

Article 3 of the Russian Constitution states that “the bearer of sovereignty and the only source of power in the Russian Federation is its multinational people.” Paragraph 2 of Article 19 notes that the state guarantees equality of rights and freedoms of man and citizen, regardless of nationality.

Vyacheslav Mikhailov's abstract comments about the need to include in the law “all innovations related to interethnic relations” did not greatly clarify the initiative, opening up wide scope for interpretation.

Alla Semenysheva, Advisor to the Head of the Federal Agency for Nationalities:

There is nothing particularly worth being afraid of; this is an already existing strategy of national policy. Vyacheslav Mikhailov’s proposal for the name of the law is his personal proposal, he is the developer of the formulation “Russian nation”, and everyone latched on to it, but the point is not in the name, but in the need to adopt a sectoral law, since such a law exists both in the field of education and in others.

This topic has been discussed for more than a year in the professional community. The rules of law in the field of state national policy are determined by more than a dozen laws and decrees, but there is, for example, no specific body that would be responsible for the sociocultural adaptation of migrants. Of course, the law should give greater powers to the authorities state power, it is necessary to establish a structural vertical in the sphere of state national policy.

We have a state program according to which we have been working and living since 2014, but we need to go further and consolidate the conceptual apparatus, delineate powers between government bodies different levels. In the state national policy strategy, paragraph 12 says that diversity national composition is the property of the Russian nation, and the Russian nation is a civic identity. And this does not cancel national identity, but goes in parallel with it - you can be a Chukchi and a Russian at the same time. The name of the law is a secondary matter, but all experts say that the need for its adoption is ripe.

Work on the law has not yet begun; we are talking about a document that does not exist. The law is not written in two days.

Based on this clarification, the BBC Russian Service asked experts whether such a law is needed at the moment and in principle, and also what the Russian nation is in general.

Egor Kholmogorov, nationalist publicist:

A law on a certain “Russian nation” is no more needed than a district police officer’s order to rename me Yuri or Igor. This is an absolutely senseless idea, which is lobbied by Mr. Barinov: someone wants to build a highway, railway and to have government contracts, so here too - we are only talking about nation-building.

This will not lead to anything good; it is written in our constitution that Russia is multinational country, where there are many nations, and among them is the Russian one, which created this state, and there are others who, with varying degrees of voluntariness, became part of it, there are certain relationships between them: national autonomies, and processes of assimilation, and, unfortunately, manifestations separatism, when Russians were killed in the 90s, and now they are being gently squeezed out of some regions.

Illustration copyright AFP Image caption Representatives of several dozen nationalities live in Russia

And now the only thing on which the state can be built is that the absolute majority of residents of the absolute majority of regions are Russian, be it the former German Kaliningrad or the once Japanese Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk. In fact, it is proposed: let's put everything into one pot, declare it the Russian nation and let's build it. But it is not clear on what basis to build it - purely logically, it must be built on a Russian basis, as on the basis of the majority of the population, and if on some kind of neutral basis, then there is a danger that the Russians will be artificially separated from their roots.

There is a danger that other peoples will not want to turn into Russians, and Russians will be forced to follow this comb. But Tatarstan, for example, can reduce the hours of the Russian language in schools and force students to study Tatar language Russian residents and talk about the great Genghis Khan. That is, nothing but chaos in interethnic relations, this stupid project will not work.

For me, as a Russian nationalist, there are many problems in the existing concept of national harmony, but it has one obvious advantage - it does not question the existence of the Russian nation. But the concept of the Russian nation presupposes this denial; the title already excludes any agreement for a person of nationalist sentiments.

From a purely hardware point of view, this concept is a colossal setup, when for the last two years the president has been wearing the laurel wreath of the conqueror of Crimea and the winner of ISIS, and here he says something that inevitably turns a lot of people away from him.

Alexey Chesnakov, director of the Center for Political Conjuncture:

Approaching presidential elections. For a significant part of conservatives and conservationists, the Russian people’s theme is a favorite one. Putin acts electorally competently. He "cements" his supporters.

Kirill Martynov, Candidate of Philosophy, Associate Professor at the School of Philosophy at the National Research University Higher School of Economics:

This very construction by the author of the concept is a paraphrase of a similar construction of Soviet times, when the Khrushchev-Brezhnev nomenklatura was concerned with imposing “imaginary communities” and securing their existence. Now this has become relevant due to the non-trivial situation before the presidential campaign: on the one hand, the ratings are still high, on the other, the economic situation in the country continues to deteriorate, and it is not very clear how to mobilize the electorate if everything goes according to plan and the president can easily do without this human support.

One of the theses that slipped through Putin’s comments is to organize a “year of national unity,” and it can be assumed that this will coincide with the election year, and if so, then funding may be allocated for this, and this will become one of the points of the presidential campaign.

Illustration copyright Getty Images Image caption Under Leonid Brezhnev, the definition was fixed in law " Soviet people"

If we take funding out of the equation, I think that the law has practically no real content - maybe this is a question of delimiting cultural policy in national republics, this old problem and one of the reasons why these ideas were torpedoed earlier: either you give an ethnic interpretation of the Russian nation, and then it is defined as Orthodox with the priority of the Russian ethnic group, or you give a civil interpretation of the Russian nation, then you return to the constitution with its words about a multinational people and you have no room for maneuver - it cannot be said that Russian culture can have priority over other cultures, since we have a multinational people.

Nations cannot be fixed by decree from above. What we encountered in modern history, is formally the reverse process. [The initiative] sounds absurd: it is a social contract in reverse, as if it is not the nation that creates the state, but the state that forges the nation.

I am somewhat wary of the idea of ​​a nation, since it is easy to move from a political nation to an ethnic one, overplay the rhetoric and start fighting for the “purity of our ranks.” In Russia, unfortunately, there is no political nation, and perhaps in modern world it’s too late to form them, but Russia has not done the work that they did European states, some countries outside Europe, the United States.

This political nation did not materialize for us for two reasons. Firstly, the borders of the Federation do not coincide with the borders of the “Russian World”, which is generally unclear where it ends. Without being a nationalist, it is clear that outside the Russian Federation - including in Central Asia there was a problem of the Russian diaspora and nothing was done for this part of the political nation - it’s not a matter of ethnicity, but of cultural background.

Illustration copyright Reuters Image caption The definition of a nation by some thinkers comes down to an ethnic component

On the other hand, within Russia itself there is a huge number of diasporas that other residents do not consider as their own. There is a high level of xenophobia, especially towards people from the Caucasus when they come to central part Russia: when renting out an apartment, many people require renters to be of Slavic ethnicity. The situation is even worse with the peoples in the east of the country - the Buryats, Tuvans, and partly the Yakuts, who are constantly subjected to discrimination at the everyday level, despite the third article of the constitution and the Russian passport.

But the main problem- the Russian nation does not see itself as a political institution in isolation from the state, in the form of what is called civil society - a key agent of the nation. If it is considered hostile and alien, then a political nation does not exist. This manifested itself well on, which for many people became, for various reasons, an unnecessary thing. And the instrument with which one can organize a nation is unclear, since in the modern world the state cannot do this, and the procedure itself looks the opposite.