CULTURAL MODEL OF THE RUSSIAN IDENTITY: AXIOLOGY, SEMANTICS AND COMMUNICATIVE POTENTIAL

The article presents empirical data of the project aimed at the study of the migration situation in Russia. The authors describe the current value system of the Russians and hierarchy of its basic life attitudes relying on both mass survey and expert estimates on the situation in Moscow and the Moscow Region. The article provides a sociological description of the content and levels of the system of values that are most important for the Russians; identifies its structuring function for the Russians’ mass consciousness. Before focusing on the identity of the Moscow Region’s natives (as it is perceived by the Russians), the authors consider the social-cultural situation in the metropolitan agglomeration. The quantitative sociological study relied on a wide set of criteria to study the identity, which included both the respondents’ value system and their personal life attitudes. The authors believe that the cultural model of Russian identity is capable of ensuring a broader and more diverse field of social relations for a peaceful and constructive ethnic interaction of the Russians with other nations than the ethnic model. However, the cultural model of Russian identity differs from the Western model of multicultural and multiconfessional society, which has already proved its inefficiency under the contemporary crisis conditions. The value landscape of the Moscow Region’s Russian population reflects both the necessity to preserve the Russian character’s traditional features and a desire for values of civil society. The sociological data allow authors to argue that today the ethnic identity of the Russians interacts with the strengthening civic identity on the basis of relevant values and ideas and goals that unite the nation. The article aims at better understanding of the Russians’ ethnic identity and of the communicative potential of the cultural model of identity.