N.A. Berdyaev and the search for national identity in contemporary Russia

The paper analyzes theoretical search for a new Russian national identity (NI) in the context of globalization. It shows that today nationalism increasingly appears as a subject of analysis for representatives of the social and humanitarian disciplines. Therefore, the problem of the Russian NI formation is considered not only in the aspect of political practices and declarations by the politicians, but also in its philosophical and methodological foundations. The paper criticizes an approach, according to which NI is reduced to its civil-political component. It substantiates a model of the NI two-level structure, where cultural-ethnic identity is the basic level, over which the civil-political level is constructed further. Importance of taking into account the ethnic component in the context of the Russian population multinational composition is demonstrated. An attempt is made to turn to ideological heritage of N. Berdyaev, who defended the priority significance of the “Russian soul geography” in the process of reproducing the Russian civilizational identity. The paper substantiates that the domestic tradition of studying nationalism is almost forgotten by the social scientists, but it contains a relevant heuristic potential that could be used in developing a theoretical model of the new Russian national identity.

EDN MDOXHK

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