To Be or Not to Be Russian?

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Contents

Preface to the English Edition.......................................................................................vContents.............................................................................................................ixChapter 1 What Is National Consciousness?............................................................................1Chapter 2 From Ilya of Murom to RNU: Russian National Consciousness Formation and Development........................11Chapter 3 Christ's People or Asiopeans? Aspects and Extremes of the Russian National Self-Esteem.....................97Chapter 4 How to Be Russian? Criteria of Russianness.................................................................133About the Authors....................................................................................................169References...........................................................................................................171Index................................................................................................................177

Chapter One

Dear reader, let us have a heart-to-heart talk on the affairs so routine and trivial that they all too often escape our awareness. Yet they have entered our life, they are imperceptibly in it, and they rather conspicuously and considerably determine the life quality. One example is home. The word itself seems so simple and habitual. Most just have a home, and some don't. Saying home, we actually mean not a definite living space that is—alas!—owned by far not by every citizen of the Russian Federation, but rather a nook where your soul and body can find peace and rest (for a while at least) and gain safety (be it even half absolute and half permanent).

Now let us imagine we do not have a nook of the kind—just don't have it. No one is waiting for us, there is no shelter to protect us from natural disasters and storms of life, and nobody needs or loves us. How fearful, is it not? Moreover, the very concept of home, as we have seen, is not at all limited to some space, place, or other folks who share it with us. It also embraces our feelings linked with it. Put it otherwise, it includes our self-sentiment. And, for the latter, much depends on whom and how we realize our own selves, on the way we feel at this home and who we are in our own eyes and in the eyes of our household.

Besides, we all have a still larger home—our Mother Earth—where we were all born and now coexist with other people. How often do you, dear reader, feel you are an earthling, a member of the mankind? The earth is so large and so diverse! It means that we, its inhabitants, are diverse too. In order to feel greater specificity, to come nearer to ourselves, let us define a narrower perceptual field and remember, in particular, that we are Eurasians. It is still hard to feel that we are therefore linked with all the achievements of the human culture and wisdom, all those superb and magnificent things created in Europe and Asia. It would be a bit easier to understand that the problems typical for our continent are common for all of us. Many suddenly realized that Chernobyl is not so far away as they had thought and Chechnya is much closer than they would like it to be. How far is, at first thought, France from Iraq? Yet how soon they might find common problems and troubles! It is still easier to realize you are a resident and a citizen of a definite country, say, Russia. Great is Mother Russia, yet how fast spread are various rumors across its vast expanses, especially those fabrications that ruin the quiet and calm life, distressing and frightening us.

Russia may also be diverse and various in its manifestations. Whom and how do you picture yourself in this land? This definite question has so many definite answers. We shall pick out just one alternative. The majority of those inhabiting the earth refer themselves to a definite nationality and a definite ethnic group. This is the first manifestation of national consciousness. According to the last population census, most residents of Russia (115.87 million people, or 79.8 percent of all the citizens) consider themselves ethnic Russians and acknowledge themselves as a part of the Russian people.

Let us try to figure out what it means to be Russian. The answer is not at all easy to find as it needs mental efforts and time. So is it worth answering? Perhaps we should simply forget it and concentrate on our vital daily problems? Yet each day we, generally speaking, are challenged by questions: where to live, whom to live with, how to live, what for to live, etc. We may be absorbed in getting daily bread without thinking of our national and ethnic background. For what reason do we store our brain with immaterial and irrelevant things? However, the experience of so many people shows that once we find ourselves in the active interethnic communication zone or leave Russia (i.e., get into the international communication zone), the outside world readily reflects our ethnic and national peculiarities, hinting at our national identity. Furthermore, our life greatly depends on how and where we can actualize our inclinations and strivings, which all, to some extent, depend on our ethnic and national backgrounds. Thus, our successful self-actualization demands that we try to discover the hidden us and realize our inner peculiarities and contradictions (which are perhaps inherent in each person), including those defined by the nationality.

Before we proceed, we have to decide on the meanings we attach to the concepts of ethnos and nation. The importance of it is in the fact that modern science shows considerable discord in the questions of these concepts' origin and use. The authors of this investigation generally agree with those who view ethnos as a settled human community formed during a definite historical period at a definite territory. Its members are united not only by their proximity of blood but also at mental and spiritual levels. So this commonness is partially apprehended yet partially remains unconscious. Sure enough, its value varies from person to person. This depends on the person himself, his or her development level, living and upbringing conditions, and, on the other hand, the peculiarities of the ethnic community. Representatives of some ethnic groups perceive their ethnic links with other people as something as real as any other outer world phenomenon (e.g., the river on whose banks they reside). Touching the Russian people, whose national consciousness we are investigating, the situation here is far from simple. However, we'll speak of this later.

Under a nation, we mean a community envisaging not just an ethnic but also a social aspect in its development. The deciding part in the formation of a nation is performed by economic and centripetal political developments of interethnic contacts regulated by the state—like defense from the common enemy. If there is someone these days who doubts his ethnic background, then the national identity—which is, by the way, regulated by the state and expressed, among other things, through citizenship—is already a legally fixed reality.

Basing on the earliest extant annals dating to the mid-fourteenth century, we may say that by that time the idea of unity of the Russian ethnos had already...