National Identity of Russians and Civilizational Identity of Russia (Political and Legal Analysis)

Abstract

The article reveals the significance and relevance of the formation of the civilizational identity of Russia, the absence of which is due to the split nature of the public, including legal, consciousness of Russians. Overcoming this split requires a targeted state policy, which should be based on a philosophical and legal understanding of this issue. The author pays main attention to only one aspect of this complex issue, associated with the development of a clearer conceptual apparatus by clarifying such concepts as the national and ethnocultural identity of Russians, the civilizational and socio-cultural identity of Russia. The thesis is substantiated that the civilizational identity of a country claiming the status of a state-civilization presupposes not only a common history and close mentality of its citizens, based on the basic unity of socio-cultural values  (otherwise this concept does not go beyond the socio-cultural identity), but also a common understanding of the prospects for civilizational development, i.e. the presence of an independent project for the future. In relation to Russia, such a project for the future should be built in the direction of a synthesis of the Western understanding of justice as the equality of people in their freedom and the Eastern concept of the justice of social life based on the communal and fraternal nature of interaction between people.