Development of a Common Russian Identity as the Basis for a Single Civil Nation, Given the Multicultural Academic Environment in North-Caucasus

Abstract

The task of shaping a civil nation, requires the support of the University pedagogic community, to develop innovative technologies that would allow for an educational effect on young people’s personalities, taking into account the specificity of the three sides of their identity – Russian (civil and civilizational), ethnic (ethnic-confessional), and regional. In the traditional North Caucasian societies where the family network and the religion make up for the personality basics that will be maintained through life, the ethnic (ethnic-confessional) identity presents a crucial factor for socialization.The level of the regional identity – a second part of the civil identity – reveals different degrees of development in different parts of Russia. In the North Caucasus many Russians, including ethnic Russians, as well members of Diasporas identify themselves as North Caucasians regardless of their specific ethnic and confessional group. From here we could state that, the regional factor of the civil identity, along with the ethnic-confessional “profile” is an important condition for shaping a common Russian identity.A contemporary variant of the Russian identity does not act as a fully valid integrating origin for developing a common Russian identity. The multicultural Russian society needs a deeper level of integration involving not just supra-ethnic and supra-confessional nature of the respective identity, but also socio-cultural unity based on common values. Such unity may only be due to civilizational identity that implies a deep penetration into the area of national cultures, into the system of vitally important values that lie within the “responsibility zone” of the ethnic and the confessional identities.