What are the nationalities: the search for a definition

In Soviet historiosophy and aesthetics there is such a term as the nationality. This is not an unambiguous word that requires clarification and definition. About what nationalities are and how the understanding of this term has developed in academic circles, we will talk below.

First mention

As it is believed, for the first time the term "nationality" was used in the letter of P. Vyazemsky, which he wrote while in Warsaw, A. Turgenev. In the courtyard was then 1819. Since that time, disputes about what the nationalities are, have not abated. First of all, it concerned history, but it also affected literature and other spheres of human activity and science. In 1832, the famous formula "Orthodoxy, autocracy, nationality" appears. This happened with the light hand of S. Uvarov, who recognized one of the main categories of philosophy in the word of interest.

Socialist Realism

As an ideological concept, endowed with aesthetic functions, the term entered into the formula of socialist realism. It sounded like this: "Ideology, party spirit, nationality". But this was much later, and we'll talk about this later. In general, until the middle of the nineteenth century, thinkers who tried to answer the question of what a nation is, the definition was most often found in national categories. Thus, the concepts of "nationality" and "nationality" were often perceived as synonymous and interchangeable.

Polish Tradition

But, in addition to the above, there were other interpretations both within Russia and beyond its borders. So, consonant Polish term narodowość was used in two ideological meanings. The first was sustained in the spirit of the Enlightenment and implied the identity of the nation-state. The second was associated more with Romanticism and included the concept of the personality of the people-culture.

The Russian alternative

In Russia, there were, albeit rare, alternative options for answering the question: "What are the nationalities?" For example, the term could be understood as the personification of the common people, as the personality of the people from the lower estates, as opposed to the intelligentsia and the nobility brought up along the lines of Western European culture.

Further development before the revolution

Gradually, the definition of what is nationality has become increasingly nationalistic and even chauvinist coloring. If in the middle of the nineteenth century and a little later this term could still be understood as the definition of an original culture without reference to nationality, then in the years immediately preceding the coup of 1917, under the influence of the ideas of positivism, the use of this word was a sign of bad taste and backwardness. And in the mind it was more and more identified with nationalist ideas.

The Soviet period

What is the national character in the history of the USSR is unambiguously impossible to say, because the content of this word was radically transformed several times in Soviet ideology. Initially, they all wanted to disown him, as from a relic of monarchism. The term again became relevant after 1934, when at the XVII Congress of the Bolsheviks the end of the class struggle was declared and the category "class" was ceded to a more general "Soviet people". Accordingly, instead of class, they began to talk about the people. By the end of the 1930s, this word had become firmly rooted in Soviet everyday life and had such a powerful ideological significance that any attempts to challenge or reject it were perceived as anti-Soviet activities. On the other hand, there was no clear definition, which made it possible to unequivocally indicate what a nationality is. In literature, for example, it was pointed out among other things that such writers as Pushkin and Tolstoy "created the people" and this was a manifestation of the people. Someone said that writers express a nationality in spite of their class nature. Still others believed that this word hides a principled democracy. Again, definitions with notes of nationalism sounded. For example, G. Pospelov tried to find out what nations and nationalities are like. He wrote that this term should be understood as "an objective national progressive content". Another version of the definition is based on an attempt to identify the nationality and party spirit. But the further after Stalin, the more clearly became the realization in the USSR of precisely the national identity in its connection with the people.

Russia in the post-Soviet period

The category of nationality was also perceived by thinkers in the post-Soviet period of Russia. But, as in the Soviet era, there is no unanimity among them. On the one hand, the people are equated with Orthodoxy, trying to revive the values of the famous formula, wanting to restore the monarchy. On the other hand, the people are also closely associated with national identity, conducting an equals sign between them. These two tendencies are similar in one, namely, that they postulate the superiority of the socium, the collective over the individual, over the individuality. It is a relic of both the Soviet and imperial system, and to this day it is not yet alive.

N. Lysenko expressed the opinion that a more objective explanation of what the nationality is will be given in the future, since this term will invariably be preserved as a cogitative category and an integral part of the future, only emerging ideology of the state. Today, in his opinion, it is possible and necessary to confine ourselves to a very conditional and vague definition of the nationality as an all-roundness. But still, the mainstream remains the intuitive correlation between nationality and nationality, in which the collectivist "we" prevail over the individual "I".