Development trajectories of the border regions in the context of social and cultural identity and civilizational patterns of Russia

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the key features and trends of development of the Russian border regions in the context of social and cultural identity of Russia. The main concepts of the Russian civilization are compared. It is shown that the symbiotic nature of the Russian cultural space predetermines the necessity of the multi-vector external positioning of Russia in global processes. The typological diversity of Russian borders and borderlands creates favorable prerequisites for the successful interaction of Russia with different cultural worlds. Three vast culture areas of the Russian borderlands are selected for case studies: Western borderlands of Russia; the Mountainous North Caucasus; the South Siberian Turkic-Mongolian belt. The Western Russian borderlands are important links in the intra-European limitrophe, connecting Russia with the rest of Europe. Although the intensification of geopolitical and geo-economic turbulence in the 2010’s–2020’s sharply increased the barrier functions of the state border in the European part of the country, the Western borderlands of Russia, due to their geographical location and accumulated historical inertia, retain a huge potential for restoring close cross-border cooperation with European countries. The North Caucasian regions of Islam and the South Siberian regions of Buddhism, being integral parts of the Russian Federation as a state, culturally and geographically at the same time act as parts of vast contact zones connecting Russia with neighboring, belonging to other cultural realms. The key problem of the North Caucasian and South Siberian borderlands of Russia is the need for accelerated and effective modernization of these cultural areas. This is especially true for the republics of Southern Siberia, which retain many elements of archaic ways of life.