Цивилизационная идентичность: социокультурный феномен или геополитический конструкт?

Abstract

The article reveals the dual nature of civilizational identity, which is manifested in the fact that it reflects the objective socio-cultural reality of the living space of the indi­vidual and society and, at the same time, can act as an cognitive construct which is used to achieve geopolitical goals. To substantiate this position, the author consistently solves problems that correspond to the main thematic blocks of the study. The first block deals with theoretical and methodological issues that arise in the study of the relationship be­tween civilizational and geopolitical processes in an interdisciplinary subject field. The methodology uses the theoretical provisions of the civilizational approach, critical geopolitics and constructivism. In the second block, the traditional East – West di­chotomy for Russian culture is considered through the prism of the key idea of the study. The author comes to the conclusion that the constituent elements of the paired concept of “East – West” are very vague in terms of their exact description, binding to specific countries and peoples and have a historically temporary character. In addition, the East – West dichotomy has a different refraction in the worldview of different generations, de­pending on historical experience or “collective fate”, according to the terminology of K. Manheim. Using the example of ancient civilizational processes in the Crimea, the geopolitical status of Chersonesos, which can be attributed to the “West” in its Hellenic sense, and the Bosporan Kingdom, where two civilizational elements – Hellenic and Ira­nian-intersect, is compared. It is concluded that Crimea is a meeting place of East and West, which can be applied to Russia as a whole, from the point of view of intercivi­lizational mutual influences that form the Russian cultural code, ready for periodic iden­tity change. The results of the study confirm the hypothesis formulated at the beginning of the article. It is concluded that the civilizational identity is characterized by a dual na­ture – on the one hand, it reflects the objective socio-cultural reality of the living space of the individual and society. On the other hand, civilizational identity is subject to con­struction, which makes it easier to use it as a tool for achieving geopolitical goals.