National Consciousness of the Russia’s Citizens after the 2014’th

Abstract

The author applies to the data of sociological research in order to explore the dynamics of the judgments of the Russia’s citizens about the basic foundations of civil identity. The author concludes that the events of the post-Soviet history could not provide the Russian society with new reasons for unification into a political nation. However, as the sociological data demonstrates, the request for the basis either for the national solidarity or for collective pride is obvious. Such a request forces citizens to look for examples of solidarity in the relatively distant past. First of all, they look for the solidarity’s examples in the Soviet historical heritage. The events of the Soviet history are the key markers of national pride and the basic foundations of the Russia’s civil nation.The re-unification of Russia with Crimea in 2014 coincided with the request of the Russian society to search for the glorious reasons for collective pride. So the author notes that many Russia’s citizens perceive Crimean Peninsula as "a place of memory" (the category that was offered by Pierre Nora). The history of the region, primarily in its interpretation that one could find in the official Russian discourse, is inextricably associated with the history of the Russian state. On the other hand, Crimea by itself symbolizes the Soviet past, and many citizens of Russia conceive its accession as a vague prototype of the return of the USSR. So the mass jubilation over the annexation of Crimea, that one could see in Russia, comes not from the mass revanchist sentiments of citizens, but from their desire to "link" symbolically the Russia’s present with the glorious Soviet past.

Keywords

• identity
• political nation
• pride
• crimea
• "place of memory”