Oriental Studies (Apr 2018)
Ethnic Diversity in the Genesis of Russia as a State-Civilization
Abstract
The article explores the role of ethnic diversity in the genesis of the Russian civilization. It also notes that the process of the civilization’s formation was accompanied by defining the boarders of other civilizations. West boarders were forming under the influence of economic factors which made Russia a center of world capitalistic superstructure in Western Europe. Southern boarders became a center of powerful military and political force made up of Muslim Turkish and Persian civilizations. However, the possibility of expansion to the northeast remained open. The expansion of Slavic people beyond the East European Plain contributed to the formation of Russian ethnicity being separated from the Old-Russian ethnos in the post-Mongol period. By exploring natural, climatic and landscape zones which geographically differed from the East European Plain, the Russian people absorbed previously existing forms of inter-ethnic integration beyond historical center of ethno genesis including social body of Finn and Ugric ethnic groups of forest and taiga zones, Turkic and Mongol people of steppe, circumpolar people of tundra. Northeast Eurasia becomes a geopolitical niche of Russian ethnos and other ethnicities of subcontinental macroregion while southeast becomes a mental region of the Russian civilization. The economic specialization of each of the designated ethnic groups like agriculturists (Eastern Slavic people), farmers (Turkic and Mongol nomadic people as well as Northern ethnic groups) and hunters (Finn and Ugric ethnic groups) aggravated the need of stable interethnic interactions formation. Common history of wars and migration and the need of mutual efforts coordination with the aim to ensure safe development of the communities made it possible to establish common social institutions, including the state as the most influential in the political sense.
