The Patriotic Education Policy Within the Framework of Belarus and Russia Union State: The Potential for Institutionalization

Patriotic issues have been becoming now the focus of socio-political discussions and management practices. Multilayered challenges and determinants of world political development actualize the interrelation of internal and external tasks corresponding to ensuring national security, identity formation and achieving national consolidation. Patriotic education is gaining fundamental importance as one of the main directions on this path. Its constitution as an autonomous sphere of state policy implies the need to improve the previously established mechanisms and regulatory framework. Additional opportunities and tools are also available in the sphere of integration cooperation between the Russian Federation and its closest ally, the Republic of Belarus. The basis is a set of pro-integration factors that stimulate the humanitarian dimension. The institutionalization of the patriotic education policy is considered as a dynamic process of formalization and ordering of the corresponding expectations and intentions, clothed in the norms of national law and integration institutions. The normative and organizational elements characterizing its state and potential within the Union State are analyzed. The incompleteness of legislative institutionalization in the domestic dimension and the absence of specific integration regulations in this area are emphasized, which follows, among other things, from the institutional design peculiarities of the participating countries and the amorphous model of Russian - Belarusian integration, which does not have clear conceptual parameters and methodological foundations. The creation of a union system of patriotic education largely depends on the improvement of the overall integration system, including by deepening its institutionalization and the introduction of integration law.