The National Identity of Modern Russia: The Search for a Model and The Risks of Constructive Formation

Abstract

In the context of the actualization of the identity discourse, caused by the ongo­ing changes in the structure of the modern world order, as well as the processes of mediatization of political practices of identity construction, the task of theo­retical and methodological research of the problem of national identity (NI), which has become the mainstream of political science, has come to an important place in the socio-humanitarian field. NI of Russia today is in the sphere of inter­ests not only of representatives of the social and humanitarian sciences, but also of political journalism, as well as current politicians and publicists, who widely use the term NI in such different contexts that this concept is sometimes not just blurred, but loses its scientific status. The construction of the sought-after model of scientific research, as an important ideological and mobilization resource, is today one of the practical goals of public policy, which poses not only the task of philosophical and methodological reflection on the scientific concept, but also the identification of existing risks in the implementation of one or another model of scientific research. The scientific novelty of the article lies in the study of models of national identity of Russia and the determination of the risks of its constructive formation. The article shows that in the promising model of NI, as a necessary condition for the formation of the spiritual unity of the nation, two main levels are interconnected: cultural-historical (culture and common past as a symbolic unifying resource) and civil-political (civil unity, solidarity), the dia­lectic of which plays an important role both in the process of understanding the dilemmas associated with the process of discursive construction of NI, and in the political practice of its use in the Russian Federation.