Problem of Quasi-Civilization Projects in the Context of Nation-Building Tasks in Russian Federation

Abstract

Quasi-civilization projects are a kind of ideological subversive activity, including those inspired from the outside, based on the dual loyalty of a part of Russians and aimed, ultimately, at the secession of some territories or even the collapse of Russia. National identity carries a huge political and social burden, is an overlapping identity, which is larger and wider than ethnic and confessional identity. Collective myths and their generally accepted interpretations in society become the foundation of principles that are designed to explain the fairness and expediency of cohabitation of political nation members. However, at the same time, this collective mythology can become the object of manipulations aimed at undermining national unity. A quasi-civilizational project can be understood as a complex of slogans and ideas about the possibility of a new state successful development on the territory of the actual state and at the expense of its territory and population. We are talking, first of all, about the denial of the existing project of a civic nation and the desire to create some new one in its place. This phenomenon became possible in the information society, since it does not grow out of really existing national liberation movements, but is a simulacrum of the national struggle. Such projects are present in the nationalist intellectual groups of some peoples of Russia, are fueled by the corresponding historical mythology and, as a rule, are closely monitored and worked out by foreign special services. If the idea of a Russian civic nation implies a supra-ethnic community, then the described quasi-civilization projects are dominated not by integration, but by segregation attitudes.