Synthesis of Ethnic and Civil as a Basis for the Russian Identity

The authors consider the concept of Russian identity and review some key social and philo-sophical approaches to the definitions of identity focusing on the contemporary Russian sociological in-terpretations of the structure and content of national identity. The authors acknowledge the complexity and multidimensional nature of national identity, and believe that it develops in history and proves a certain level of national consciousness. The article considers the today’s Russians’ self-identification under the macro-social processes in the Russian society in the crisis period of 2014-2016. Based on the results of the national sociological monitoring surveys conducted by the Institute of Sociology of the Russian Acade-my of Sciences the authors identify the Russians’ priorities in the sphere of inter-ethnic and confessional relations in the form of sociological diagnostics. The data of the sociological surveys prove that the identity issues are still among the key problems of the Russian society considering the resources for national con-solidation as determined by the status of the Russian identity and by its structure as depending on the stability of civil and ethnic components combination. Today, Russia has to preserve and to renew its self-identification, to construct the Russian national-civil identity as a synthesis of ethnic and civil components. Thus, the state has to develop the so-called “identity policy” as one of the most important ways to strengthen its key political decisions and legislation and to support the spiritual-psychological climate of the society.