People community on the nation life culture sustainable. Marxism and the national question. "The Theory of the Nation" by I. Stalin and its influence

2.1. Stalin's definition of the term "nation"

The definition that has become practically generally accepted in the science of the USSR and the post-Soviet Russian Federation nation as a social phenomenon gave I.V. Stalin in Marxism and the National Question. Let us give the full section I of the named work, entitled "Nation", and not just the very wording of the Stalinist definition of this term, since the wording is the result - imprinted in the text-dialectical procedure of cognition: asking questions and finding answers to them in real life , and everyone needs to master dialectics in order to become free.

“What is a nation?

A nation is, first of all, a community, a certain community of people.

This community is not racial or tribal. The current Italian nation was formed from the Romans, Germans, Etruscans, Greeks, Arabs, etc. The French nation was made up of Gauls, Romans, Britons, Germans, and so on. The same must be said of the English, Germans, and others who have formed into a nation from people of various races and tribes.

So, the nation is not racial or tribal, but historical community of people .

On the other hand, there is no doubt that the great states of Cyrus or Alexander could not be called nations, although they were formed historically, formed from different tribes and races. These were not nations, but random and loosely connected conglomerates of groups that broke up and united depending on the success or defeat of one or another conqueror.

So, the nation is not a random and ephemeral conglomerate, but stable community of people .

But not every stable community creates a nation. Austria and Russia are also stable communities, however, no one calls them nations. What is the difference between a national community and a state community? By the way, by the fact that a national community is inconceivable without a common language, while a common language is not necessary for a state. The Czech nation in Austria and the Polish nation in Russia would be impossible without a common language for each of them, while the integrity of Russia and Austria is not hindered by the existence within them of a number of languages. We are talking, of course, about vernacular languages, and not about official clerical ones.

So - common language as one of the characteristic features of the nation.

This, of course, does not mean that different nations always and everywhere speak different languages, or that all speakers of the same language necessarily constitute one nation. Common language for each nation, but not necessarily different languages ​​for different nations! There is no nation that speaks different languages ​​at once, but this does not mean that there cannot be two nations speaking the same language! The English and North Americans speak the same language, and yet they do not constitute one nation. The same must be said about the Norwegians and Danes, the British and the Irish.

But why, for example, the British and North Americans do not constitute one nation, despite the common language?

First of all, because they do not live together, but in different territories. A nation is formed only as a result of long and regular communication, as a result of the joint life of people from generation to generation. A long life together is impossible without a common territory. The British and Americans used to inhabit the same territory, England, and constituted one nation. Then one part of the English moved out of England to a new territory, to America, and here, in the new territory, over time, formed a new North American nation. Different territories led to the formation of different nations.

So, community of territory as one of the characteristic features of the nation.

But that is not all. The commonality of a territory does not in itself constitute a nation. This requires, in addition, an internal economic connection, uniting the individual parts of the nation into a single whole. There is no such connection between England and North America, and therefore they constitute two distinct nations. But the North Americans themselves would not deserve the name of a nation if the individual corners of North America were not linked together into an economic whole through the division of labor between them, the development of communications, and so on.

Take at least the Georgians. Georgians of pre-reform times lived on a common territory and spoke the same language, however, they did not, strictly speaking, constitute one nation, for they, divided into a number of principalities torn apart from each other, could not live a common economic life, for centuries they led among themselves wars and ruined each other, setting Persians and Turks against each other. The ephemeral and accidental unification of the principalities, which some successful king sometimes managed to carry out, at best captured only the superficial administrative sphere, quickly breaking up against the whims of the princes and the indifference of the peasants. Yes, it could not be otherwise with the economic fragmentation of Georgia ... Georgia, as a nation, appeared only in the second half of the 19th century, when the fall of serfdom and the growth of the economic life of the country, the development of communications and the emergence of capitalism established the division of labor between the regions of Georgia, completely shattered economic isolation principalities and tied them into one whole.

The same must be said about other nations that have passed the stage of feudalism and developed capitalism.

So, community of economic life, economic coherence, as one of the characteristic features of the nation.

But that's not all. In addition to all that has been said, it is also necessary to take into account the peculiarities of the spiritual appearance of people united in a nation. Nations differ from each other not only in the conditions of their life, but also in their spiritual appearance, expressed in the peculiarities of their national culture. If England, North America and Ireland, who speak the same language, nevertheless constitute three different nations, then the peculiar mental warehouse that has been developed in them from generation to generation as a result of unequal conditions of existence plays a significant role in this.

Of course, the psychic warehouse itself, or - as it is called otherwise - “national character”, is something elusive for the observer, but since it is expressed in the uniqueness of culture, a common nation, it is perceptible and cannot be ignored.

Needless to say, the “national character” does not represent something given once and for all, but changes along with the conditions of life, but, since it exists at every given moment, it leaves its stamp on the physiognomy of the nation.

So, community of mind, affecting the community of culture, as one of the characteristic features of the nation.

Thus, we have exhausted all the signs of a nation.

A nation is a historically established, stable community of people that has arisen on the basis of a common language, territory, economic life, and mental make-up, manifested in a common culture.

At the same time, it goes without saying that a nation, like any historical phenomenon, is subject to the law of change, has its own history, beginning and end.

It must be emphasized that none of these signs, taken separately, is sufficient to define a nation. Moreover, the absence of at least one of these signs is enough for a nation to cease to be a nation.

It is possible to imagine people with a common “national character” and yet it cannot be said that they constitute one nation if they are economically divided, live in different territories, speak different languages, etc. These are, for example, Russian, Galician, American, Georgian and mountain jews, not constituting, in our opinion, a single nation.

One can imagine people with a common territory and economic life, and yet they will not constitute one nation without a common language and "national character". Such, for example, are the Germans and Latvians in the Baltic region.

Finally, Norwegians and Danes speak the same language, but they do not constitute one nation due to the absence of other signs.

Only the presence of all the signs taken together gives us a nation.

It may seem that "national character" is not one of the signs, but only essential feature of the nation, and all other features are, in fact, conditions development of the nation, and not its signs. This point of view is supported, for example, by the well-known Social-Democrats in Austria. theorists of the national question R. Springer and, especially, O. Bauer

Consider their theory of the nation.

According to Springer, "a nation is a union of people who think alike and speak alike." This is “a cultural community of a group of modern people, not connected with the“ earth ”(our italics).

So - the “union” of people who think and speak the same way, no matter how they are divided from each other, no matter where they live.

“What is a nation? he asks. - Is there a common language that unites people into a nation? But the English and the Irish ... speak the same language, without, however, representing a single people; Jews do not have a common language at all and nevertheless constitute a nation” .

So what is a nation?

“A nation is a relative community of character” .

But what is character, in this case, national character?

National character is “the sum of features that distinguish people of one nationality from people of another nationality, a complex of physical and spiritual qualities that distinguishes one nation from another” .

Bauer, of course, knows that the national character does not fall from the sky, and therefore he adds:

“The character of people is determined by nothing else than their fate”, which ... “a nation is nothing but a community of fate”, which in turn is determined by “the conditions in which people produce the means of their life and distribute the products of their labor” .

Thus, we have arrived at the most "complete", as Bauer puts it, definition of a nation.

“A nation is the totality of people connected in a common character on the basis of a common fate” .

So, a community of national character on the basis of a community of fate, taken without the obligatory connection with a community of territory, language, and economic life.

But what then remains of the nation? What kind of national community can be discussed among people who are economically separated from each other, living in different territories and speaking different languages ​​from generation to generation?

Bauer speaks of the Jews as a nation, although “they do not have a common language at all”, but what kind of “common destiny” and national connection can there be, for example, Georgian, Dagestan, Russian and American Jews, completely cut off from each other friend living in different territories and speaking different languages?

The mentioned Jews, no doubt, live a common economic and political life with Georgians, Dagestanis, Russians and Americans, in a common cultural atmosphere with them; this cannot but impose its stamp on their national character; if they have anything in common, it is religion, a common origin, and some vestiges of a national character. All this is certain. But how can one seriously say that ossified religious rites and weathered psychological remnants influence the “fate” of the said Jews more than the living socio-economic and cultural environment surrounding them? But only under such an assumption can one speak of the Jews in general as a single nation.

How then does the nation of Bauer differ from the mystical and self-sufficing "national spirit" of the Spiritualists?

Bauer draws an impenetrable line between the "distinguishing feature" of the nation (national character) and the "conditions" of their life, tearing them apart. But what is a national character if not a reflection of the conditions of life, if not a bunch of impressions received from the environment? How can one confine oneself to a single national character, isolating and separating it from the soil that gave birth to it?

Then, how, in fact, did the English nation differ from the North American one at the end of the 18th and at the beginning of the 19th century, when North America was still called “New England”? Certainly not a national character: for the North Americans came from England, they took with them to America, in addition to the English language, also the English national character and, of course, could not lose it so quickly, although under the influence of new conditions they must have developed its own special character. And yet, despite their greater or lesser commonality of character, they already then constituted a nation distinct from England!

Obviously, “New England”, as a nation, differed then from England, as a nation, not in a special national character, or not so much in a national character, as in a special environment from England, living conditions.

Thus, it is clear that in reality there is no single distinguishing feature of a nation. There is only a sum of signs, of which, when comparing nations, one sign stands out more clearly (national character), then another (language), then a third (territory, economic conditions). A nation is a combination of all the features taken together.

Bauer's point of view, identifying the nation with the national character, tears the nation from the soil and turns it into some kind of invisible, self-sufficient force. It turns out not a nation, alive and active, but something mystical, elusive and beyond the grave. For, I repeat, what kind of a Jewish nation is this, for example, consisting of Georgian, Dagestan, Russian, American and other Jews, whose members do not understand each other (they speak different languages), live in different parts of the globe, never meet each other they will see, they will never act together, neither in peacetime, nor in wartime ?!

No, it is not for such paper "nations" that the Social-Democrats draw up their national program. It can reckon only with real nations, acting and moving, and therefore forcing them to reckon with themselves.

Bauer obviously mixes nation, being a historical category, with tribe, which is an ethnographic category.

However, Bauer himself seems to feel the weakness of his position. Declaring decisively at the beginning of his book about the Jews as a nation, Bauer at the end of the book corrects himself by stating that “capitalist society does not allow them (the Jews) to survive as a nation at all”, assimilating them with other nations. The reason, it turns out, is that "the Jews do not have a closed colonization area", while such an area exists, for example, among the Czechs, who, according to Bauer, should be preserved as a nation. In short: the reason is the lack of territory.

By reasoning in this way, Bauer wanted to prove that national autonomy could not be the demand of the Jewish workers, but he inadvertently overturned his own theory, which denies the community of territory, as one of the signs of a nation.

But Bauer goes further. At the beginning of his book, he emphatically states that “the Jews have no general language and nevertheless constitute a nation. But before he got to page one hundred and thirteen, he changed the front, declaring just as emphatically: “it is certain that no nation is possible without a common language”(our italics).

Bauer here wanted to prove that “language is the most important tool of human communication”, but at the same time he accidentally proved what he did not intend to prove, namely: the inconsistency of his own theory of the nation, which denies the importance of the common language.

This is how a theory sewn with idealistic threads refutes itself” (I.V. Stalin. Works, vol. 2, Moscow, 1946, pp. 292 - 303).

In the full text of the above section of the article the definition of a nation given by I.V. Stalin appears as having a basis in the historical process, and not just as a declarative definition of the term, which expresses subjectivism, which can be opposed to another subjectivism with claims to the ultimate truth. This is the merit of the definition of I.V. Stalin, and this is what distinguishes it from other definitions of the term “nation”.

The Stalinist definition of a nation was an official scientific definition in the USSR and in post-Stalin times, although, citing this definition or stylistically reworking it, I.V. she, like all other works of I.V. Stalin, was not reprinted and was withdrawn from public access in libraries). Actually, the very same signs of a nation that I.V. Stalin gives in his definition are also given in the modern school textbook "social science" edited by L.N. Bogolyubov (vol. 2, "Man and Society" - a textbook for 10 - 11 classes, M., "Prosveshchenie", ed. 8, 2003), although they are not summarized in a strict definition of the term "nation": the historical nature of the formation of nations (p. 316, paragraph 2), language (ibid., p. 316, paragraph 3), community of territory and economic coherence (ibid., p. 316, paragraph 5), community of culture (ibid., pp. 316, 317), in which the national character is expressed and reproduced in the continuity of generations ( although the textbook leaves the question of the national character and national psychology in silence).

But in the work of I.V. Stalin “Marxism and the national question”, due to various objective and subjective reasons, topics are not considered, an adequate understanding of which is necessary for the harmonization of national relations in multinational societies:

• what is culture in general and national culture specifically;
• the formation of national cultures;
• the interaction of nations, the emergence and development of diasporas and their impact on the life of the indigenous population in the areas where the diasporas have penetrated;
• implementation of the full function of management in the life of peoples, as an aggregate of the national population in the area of ​​the formation of its culture and diasporas outside this area;
• detachment of the diasporas from the region where ethnic cultures were formed and the replacement of the population that once gave rise to the diasporas with an ethnically different population belonging to other nations and diasporas;
• the existence of diasporas that have lost the territories of the formation of their national cultures;
• the formation of a universal culture, which will have to integrate all the multinational humanity in its historical past;
• problems of the biological basis of national cultures, the genetic core of the nation and its originality, which distinguishes peoples in a statistical sense on purely biological grounds from each other;
• nation and civilization;
• egregorial processes in the life of nations, diasporas and in national interaction.
• Along with this, it should be noted that the definition of a nation as a social, historically conditioned phenomenon, given by I.V. Stalin, distinguishes the nation from the people as a social organism, passing throughout history through various forms of organizing the life of a culturally unique (national) society in one or another regional civilization. This difference between the phenomena “nation” and “people” is also visible in the text of the work, in particular, when in the above fragment I.V. nation in the sense that this term was defined by I.V. Stalin. But I.V. Stalin does not give a definition of how a nation differs from a tribe or a people, as a result of which a nation, a people, an ethnic group, even in the scientific lexicon, are perceived as synonyms - almost complete equivalents, not to mention the everyday understanding of these words in wide sections of society .

The lack of adequate coverage of the problems mentioned above by the sociological science of the USSR is one of the reasons why the process of the formation of a new historical community, called the "Soviet people", was interrupted, and national conflicts in the purposeful destruction of the USSR by foreign political forces played an important role. And this is one of the threats to the territorial integrity of post-Soviet Russia and the well-being of its peoples.

Round one: definition of the nation.

The first participant in the fight, Joseph Stalin: A nation is a historically established, stable community of people that has arisen on the basis of a common language, territory, economic life, and mental make-up, manifested in a common culture.

Noting the simply amazing brevity and capacity of the Stalinist definition of the nation, I still venture to say: it should be even shorter! The words "manifested in the community of culture" are superfluous! Here is the usual tautological attempt to define, "define" one unknown concept (in this case, "mental warehouse") through another, even less well-known, through a simply vague concept (in this case, "culture").
Stalin did not know and could not know that, at the level of a brilliant conjecture, he had already found an exceptionally successful formulation of "mental warehouse." Applied in 1913, even a century later, it is head and shoulders above expressions like “national character”, “national mentality”, “mentality”, “national self-consciousness”, “national identity”, “national code of conduct”, “national idea” ... ALL invented post-Stalin formulations of the psychic side of the nation reflect, at best, only one of the aspects of the psyche. So, the opponent Konstantin Pozdnyakov singles out only national self-consciousness. And Stalin's formulation includes whole layers of the psyche. These are, for example, the features (apperceptions) of perception, and the features of behavior, habits, psychological attitudes of thinking, the specifics of processing concepts through language as a second signal system, and features of the emotional sphere. As is known, in 1913 the physiology of higher nervous activity was only just approaching the development of the concepts of the conditioned reflex, the second signal system. Freud had not yet drawn attention to the layers of the unconscious in the human psyche. Behaviorists have not yet appeared and have not treated behavior as a manifestation of the mental principle. And Stalin had already found a formulation that included all this.
With this formulation, Stalin, as it were, prepared in advance an ideal repository for the fruits of knowledge in the field of national psychology. True, Soviet, Russian, and especially Russian authors today, in fact, have nothing to fill this wonderful repository with. Except as rottenness in the form of gag, fantastic assumptions, conjectures and "imperial" pacifiers.
As a result, in Russia they practically do not know not only the topic of the mental make-up of the nation, but also do not understand HOW to approach this topic. Anyone who starts a conversation about the mental traits of a particular nation always falls under the suspicion that he wants to scold some nation, belittle someone, and push someone out. The fact that an Englishman, by virtue of the peculiarities of verbal forms, perceives time and any event and state differently than a Russian, will be perceived by many in Russia as an attempt either on the English or on the Russians. That out of a hundred people there are hardly two with the same thoughts and feelings when listening to the same Beethoven symphony - we in Russia can still understand this. And that's what thought"I've got" is not exactly the same thought that "I (have)" - this seems suspicious to us.
However, instead of Soviet, instead of Russian and instead of Russian authors, Stalin's vault is gradually filled with benign fruits due to the efforts of foreign researchers: Herbert Hahn "On the genius of Europe", Keith Fox "Watching the British" ...
So, the strongest features of this definition of Stalin and the Stalinist style of written speech in general are brevity and intelligibility. But from the standpoint of the 21st century, this definition needs to be REDUCED, it is necessary to remove from it an extra "definition" - the word "manifested in the community of culture." It is necessary not to replace a little-known term with a vague and vague term, but to delve into the concept of “the mental make-up of a nation”. It is necessary to study, to know this mental warehouse and to see an amazing and beautiful palette of reflections of the world by different nations.

The third participant in the fight Konstantin Pozdnyakov: In general, Stalin's definition does not contradict the System of ethnic categories, but organically fills it. But for almost a hundred years, Stalin's definition could not but become outdated.
Read the chart from left to right: ascending from object to subject, from abstract to concrete, from separate to general, from basic to main. Or, conversely, descend from right to left: from subject to object, and so on. At the core, everything is very simple: material-spiritual, basis-superstructure. But it is unique in the turnover of the dialectical method: there is no escape into the Porfiry tree with an infinite number of branches and processes. The system expands and collapses. It is both an ontology and a method.
Let's free the definitions from the concrete historical burden! The nation is the consciousness of nationality. Civil society is an institution of expression of will. The state is an apparatus of violence.

Round two: community of economic life.

The first participant in the fight, Joseph Stalin: The commonality of the territory in itself does not give a nation. This requires, in addition, an internal economic connection that unites the individual parts of the nation into one whole ...
Take at least the Georgians. The Georgians of pre-reform times lived on a common territory and spoke the same language, however, they did not, strictly speaking, constitute one nation, for they, divided into a number of principalities torn apart from each other, could not live a common economic life, for centuries they led among themselves wars and ruined each other, setting Persians and Turks against each other. The ephemeral and accidental unification of the principalities, which some successful king sometimes managed to carry out, at best captured only the superficial administrative sphere, quickly breaking up against the whims of the princes and the indifference of the peasants. Yes, it could not be otherwise with the economic fragmentation of Georgia. Georgia, as a nation, appeared only in the second half XIX century, when the fall of serfdom and the growth of the economic life of the country, the development of communications and the emergence of capitalism established the division of labor between the regions of Georgia, completely shook the economic isolation of the principalities and tied them into one whole.

The second participant in the fight Vladimir Sidorov: The words “community of economic life” as a sign of the NATION, sounded in 1913 from the lips of a professional revolutionary and Marxist, were a rather risky act for Stalin. This is how the bewildered faces of the members of the Marxist circle are seen: “Community of economic life? With such a clear division into classes? With such glaring class differences? What are you talking about, Koba?!” - It is clear that Stalin simply could not help but reduce the "economic community" to the exchange of goods. And thus he could not but come to the conclusion that nations are formed only with the development of commodity economy and capitalism.
Today we have the right and the opportunity to think: the commonality of WHAT was meant? What does "economic life" mean? Is it only economic LINKS? This is getting "daily bread". This is the production, distribution, consumption of labor products - material and spiritual. Plus, this is the relationship between people in obtaining "daily bread." And all this is “economic life”.
Looking now from these positions at different peoples, we will immediately notice huge differences between them in the matter of obtaining "daily bread", in the methods of "economic life" themselves. Some peoples were sedentary, others were nomadic. Some were engaged in agriculture, others in cattle breeding. Some had to deal with winter and cold, others had to deal with the scorching sun. Some lived in the valleys, others in the mountains. Some near the seas, others in the depths of the continents. The palette of differences between peoples in terms of the way of economic life is no less than in the amazing game of landscapes of Mother Earth. Moreover, these differences in a given territory affect all the inhabitants of this territory in the same way. Winter affects the wardrobe of even a peasant, even a prince. The leader of a nomadic people, even if he is Genghis Khan, will not have to deal with the construction of eternal and monumental buildings in his "Rome", he will have to follow his fellow tribesmen in using portable housing, even changing his residence.
If we understand the wording "economic life" in this way, then there is no rigid link to the commodity economy, to the "common market", to the development of capitalism. And the historical boundaries of the emergence of nations can be significantly pushed back into the past. True, in many cases you can't put off much, since the formation of a common language was very often tied precisely to the development of economic ties. Who will understand the Norwegian rigsmols, landsmols and dialects? Who can say exactly when the Norwegian nation was born? And was she born or WHO was born centuries after the terrible plague that almost destroyed it? - It is possible and necessary to answer such questions taking into account the specifics. But already without necessarily pushing the nation into the Procrustean bed of purely capitalist relationships. Perhaps the discord between the Georgian princes described by Stalin is even more noticeable in the history of Poland. But this is not a reason to deny the existence of the Poles as a nation in the 19th, 18th, 17th… centuries.
What does such an interpretation of the Stalinist formulation "community of economic life" give? - It makes it possible to build states without stupid pretensions to the national uniformity of citizens. It enables the correct drawing of boundaries within federations and unions. And I must say that in the Stalinist USSR such boundaries were drawn very competently, based precisely on the broad understanding of the "community of economic life." That is, in practice, the theoretician Stalin proceeded from the interpretation that I have outlined.

It seems that in Russia the nation had already taken shape at the beginning of the 17th century. Think: what a force, a monad, whose emanation or eidos returned the statehood of Russia, if not a nation - the consciousness of nationality, together with civil society (sic!): Prince Pozharsky and CITIZEN MININ with the people's militia restored Russian statehood. We look at the diagram: the state = 0%, civil society = 100% - an exception to the rule, today the Russian nation = the state 70% + civil society 30% (EDRA has 70% in the State Duma). case (at the beginning of the 17th century) it was clearly not a nation. Yes, they restored Russian statehood and instead of forming a bicameral parliament, freedom of religion and private ownership of the means of production, they handed all power to the autocratic monarch! Where did you see at that time at least one institution inherent in the nation?
The people's militia in the strictly historical sense was not a civil society, it was a civil society without citizens and without civil liberties! With this approach, it is possible to create mathematical models, analyze, study, compare, at first glance, completely different national organisms, it will be possible to predict, and not guess on coffee grounds. To use categories without dogmatism, without clichés about a vicious method, and then it would never occur to anyone to say that the nation in Russia at the beginning of the 17th century was exactly the same as the European nations of the New Age. I am for historicism!

Round three: statehood, origin, religion.

The first participant in the fight, Joseph Stalin: …………….

The second participant in the fight Vladimir Sidorov: Stalin's silence, indicated here by dots, is worth a lot. The theoretician who defines is like the sculptor who said, "I just take a stone and remove all unnecessary from it." The genius of Stalin's majestic silence is that he cut off from the essential features of the nation:

A sign of the presence or absence of a state - and thus left the "imperials" and nationalists without work (no matter how much they cling to the name of a politician popular among the people);

A sign of origin - and thus stood in opposition to the racists, the Nazis and the fascists (no matter how much they cling to the name of the most popular commander and leader in our time);

A sign of religion - and thereby freed the nation from the indispensable belonging to the clientele of one or another religious hierarchy (no matter how much these hierarchies now cling to the name of Stalin, popular among the people, no matter how much they credit him retroactively in their advertising "portfolio").

What did Stalin say with his silence? He said that the descendant of the African Pushkin is Russian! That a native of a Jewish family, Levitan, is Russian! He said directly to himself that Stalin was Russian. Because he strictly followed his definition. If a person thinks in Russian, if he lives on the territory of the Russian people, if his daily bread comes from the Russian people, if he, along with the language, has acquired the features of the mental make-up of the Russian people, then he is Russian. Yes, in this case, this Russian was born by the Georgian people. And many more Russians will be born by other peoples, and many representatives of other nations will be born Russians. And all of us, successfully remaining different nations, will continue to carry the fire of human civilization.

The third participant in the fight Konstantin Pozdnyakov: Our disagreements with the position of I.V. Stalin:

1. Mistakenly considered the point of view about the trinity of Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians as opportunism.

2. In his definition of a nation, there is no factor about a common ethnic origin.

3. He noted the economic factor - "production of things", but says nothing about demography - about "production of people". Today it is very important - Russia is dying out. Consequently, Stalin did not fully understand the true nature of the nationality-nation as an organism.

4. He denied the state as a sign of the nation on a formal legal principle, although in practice he built the Russian nation from above through a unitary state.

5. He himself was the bearer of Russian national statehood and thus hindered the development of civil society.

Round four:

This round is in the comments that any visitor to the Journal can make. I urge you to discuss sharply, but not "hit below the belt." And let your arguments be either light or weighty. Either funny or serious. Healing and deadly. They don't die in this ring, everyone finds his own in it.

Before turning to the consideration of the problems that social science was obliged to elucidate after the publication of the cited work of I.V. Stalin, but did not elucidate for almost 100 years, let us turn to the Stalinist definition of a nation in order to clarify some of the omissions hidden in it. This is necessary so that the ambiguity of their understanding ceases to be an obstacle to the harmonization of national relations in the country and in the world.

First of all, the question of community of economic life, economic coherence of the nation.

I.V. Stalin gave the definition of a nation in that historical period of the development of global civilization, when all the nations historically formed by that time were characterized by the quality of economic self-sufficiency in the sense that the products produced by the nation itself prevailed in the spectrum of products consumed by them. The volume of interethnic product exchange was insignificant in relation to the volume of the gross national product produced by the nation itself, and interethnic product exchange played any significant role in shaping the quality of life of only national "elites" (the ruling and richest layer of national crowd-"elitist" societies) and not the vast majority of the people who make up the nation. In other words, not only territorial and linguistic, but organizational and technological (economic) separation of nations from each other took place.

Due to the fact that the nation was at that time self-sufficient in terms of production and consumption of products and interethnic product exchange did not have any noticeable effect on the quality of life of the vast majority of its representatives, behind the words of Stalin's definition of the commonality of economic life, the economic connectivity of the nation is the fact that the nation, at the expense of its own human resources, supported the entire range of professions necessary for the development of its gross national product at the level of organizational and technological development it had achieved.

Today, the vast majority of nations that existed in the historical period when I.V. Stalin defined this phenomenon have lost the quality of economic self-sufficiency in the above sense: a fair share of their product is intended for export, and at the heart of their own production and consumption there is a fair share of imports of those types of products that are not produced in the national economy either at all, or are not produced in the required quantities; along with this, national economies participate in a number of projects implemented by the joint efforts of several nations, the fruits of which their participants share (examples of such projects are the production of European Airbus airliners, European Space Agency programs, the international space station, etc.).

The foregoing concerns the production and consumption of both intermediate and investment products consumed in technological processes, and the final product - products intended for consumption outside the sphere of commodity production - in households, the state and public organizations. Those. the quality of life of the overwhelming majority of the population, at least in developed countries, is now determined by the participation of their economies in the world economy of mankind, both in terms of production, and in terms of consumption of intermediate, investment and final products.

As a consequence, nations ceased to support the full range of professions required to produce products according to their spectrum of consumption.

The economic isolation of nations is a thing of the past. Due to this circumstance, the essence of the phenomenon of the community of the economic life of the nation, its economic coherence has changed. This does not mean that:

Nations, in the sense that this term was defined by I.V. Stalin, ceased to exist and bourgeois liberalism is right, according to the ideas of which “national identity” is a private matter of every individual, which does not have any significance for organizing the life of society in a state under provided that all adult individuals are brought up in the spirit of the notorious "tolerance" and "political correctness" and the only problem is how to instill this “tolerance” and “political correctness” in every individual in a “multicultural society”;

Or the Stalinist definition can be given to oblivion, as it has not stood the test of time, and in the national policy of the state - to rely on the definitions of the nation by O. Bauer, R. Springer, T. Herzl, on the "ethnos" of L.N. Gumilyov, on some either other definitions or, abandoning definitions and disputes in essence solvency each of them, to build a national policy on the basis of vague feelings of difference and originality of both people and cultures.

In fact, the global economic changes that took place in the 20th century mean that the Stalinist definition of a nation was not entirely accurate from the very beginning, and this is a consequence of the fact that it expresses a Marxist worldview, which is characterized by:

· in life to see only matter in various “forms of its movement”, but not to see the objectivity of information and the algorithms of its transformation in natural and social processes (and, accordingly, not to have a terminological apparatus for an adequate description of this component of life);

Distinguish between "mental labor" and "physical labor", but do not distinguish managerial labor and labor is directly productive, subordinated to some external control in relation to it(and, accordingly, not to have an adequate theory of control behind the soul - quite general in the sense of the universality of its application);

interpret all social phenomena on the basis of the statement about the determining role of the class struggle over the realization in society of the right of ownership of the means of production and the product produced in public association of labor(i.e. the class struggle is the locomotive of history, and everything else in the life of society is its expression and consequences; violence is the “midwife of history”, helping to give birth to something new in the life of society, when the old, which previously dominated without alternative, opposes its birth) .

In addition, let's pay attention: Stalin's definition of the nation refers to the process - to the sustainable existence of the nation in the continuity of generations, but not to the period of the formation of the nation as a historically stable community of people, and not to the period of degradation of the nation under the influence of various reasons, which can end with the disappearance of the nation, its division into several related nations or nationalities that have not formed into a nation, the revival of the nation in some new quality.

The stable existence of a nation in the succession of generations means that it - as a whole - is in some way self-governing. The self-government of society (management of it) is multifaceted, and only one of its aspects is the economic life of the established nation, which can proceed either in the mode of more or less pronounced economic isolation from other nations (as it was at the time of writing by I.V. Stalin work "Marxism and the national question"), or in the absence of economic isolation from other nations (as is the case now in most cases). Wherein:

The self-government of human society in its development implies that the satisfaction of the physiological and everyday needs of people is not the meaning of their existence (this limits the range of interests only of the lumpen), but a means of translating the common meaning of life (ideals) for a group of people into real life.

And this semantic community, if it exists, is expressed in the self-government of the nation as a single social organism, regardless of the intensity of communication between the representatives of the nation living at opposite ends of the territory occupied by it, and regardless of the product exchange between remote regions.

If this the meaning of life, which goes beyond the satisfaction of physiological and everyday needs, there is, that is, a nation - even under the condition that people living in different parts of the territory occupied by it, only know about the existence of each other and do not have any economic or other visible ties with each other.

· If this meaning is absent, then in the presence of all other signs of a nation, there is a collection of individuals who speak the same language, have (still) a common territory, the same customs and other elements of culture, but there is no nation. In this case, there is a pseudo-national lumpen, who is doomed either to acquire this kind of meaning in life, or perish into historical non-existence, becoming "ethnographic raw material" for the formation of other nations or dying out in the process of degradation. During periods of social crises, the proportion of lumpen in the population increases, and this poses a great danger to society and its prospects.

The presence of this kind of meaning of life (ideals), in the presence of other signs of a nation, preserves the nation even in modern conditions, when not only the economic isolation of nations from each other is a thing of the past, but the general cultural isolation of a nation from each other is gradually becoming a thing of the past in the process of forming a single culture. humanity: “The measure of a people is not what it is, but what<он> considers beautiful and true, about which<он>sighs"(F.M. Dostoevsky).

Those. the community of the economic life of the nation, its economic coherence is only one of the faces commonality for the established nation its sphere of government, in which a certain meaning is realized in the life of many people who make up a nation, and objectively common to all of them, even if they cannot express it; it is enough that they feel its presence in life, and one way or another, contribute to its implementation (that is, that they are actively involved in its implementation in terms of information and algorithms).

The sphere of management differs from other spheres of the life of society in that it localizes professional managerial work in relation to all other spheres of activity of society (although the boundaries of the spheres of activity are subjectively determined to some extent, but they still exist, since they are based on the objectivity of social statistics of employment population by certain activities). I.e:

One of the signs of a nation is not the commonality of economic life (as I.V. Stalin realized), but the commonality for the historically established nation of the meaning of life, which goes beyond the satisfaction of the physiological and everyday needs of the people who make up the nation, which is expressed in the unity for the nation of the sphere of governance carried out on a professional basis, and in particular - generates the economic coherence of the nation.

This professional managerial work can cover both some particulars in the life of a national society, and the management of affairs of public importance as a whole, locally and on a scale of the whole society. In the presence of other signs of a nation, given in the Stalinist definition, and the understanding that the commonality of economic life is only one of the expressions of the commonality of the sphere of government for the nation, isolation and development in management a field that includes the management on a professional basis of affairs of public importance as a whole, locally and throughout the national society, leads to the emergence of statehood.

Statehood it's a management subculture on a professional basis matters of general public importance locally and throughout society.

Those. statehood is only one of the components of the sphere of management, but not the sphere of management as a whole, since the sphere of management also includes the management of product exchange (i.e. trade), the management of collective production and other activities outside the state apparatus and its bodies.

State it is statehood in the indicated sense, plus the territory and water area to which the jurisdiction of this statehood extends, plus the population living in the territory subject to statehood.

The formation of statehood on a homogeneous national basis leads to a widespread identification of the nation and its national state, which is typical for Western sociology, which was formed on the historical experience of Europe.

The influence of this sociology on political life in the Russian Federation is expressed in the stupid transfer of its terminology by “scientists” and politicians to Russian reality, which also manifested itself at the State Council on December 27, 2010, from whose materials we began this work by quoting. As a result of such a stupid imitation of "advanced countries" in a multi-national RF, "politicians" call Russia a "nation", they want someone to express a "national idea", and when someone expresses a certain "national idea", then his accused of nationalism, xenophobia, separatism; “politicians” want to get their hands on a “national security strategy”, “national development strategy”, but do not think about the need for Russia strategies for the safe development of a multinational society; Russians become in their opinion a “multinational Russian nation”, and the official science of the Russian Federation “unscientificizes” this and other nonsense, neglecting the norms of expressing meaning through the Russian language and thereby stupefying both themselves and those who rely on the opinions of such “scientists”.

But contrary to this nonsense, statehood can also develop on a multinational basis, serving the life of many nations that either have not developed their own national statehood, or those whose national statehood has to some extent limited sovereignty, since a number of tasks in the life of such a national society are solved common to several nations statehood, multinational in terms of the composition of the people working in it, whose power extends to the regions of formation and dominance of several national cultures.

The statehood of Russia is a multinational statehood common to all peoples living in it. And in this capacity, it has been developing for several centuries: at least, starting from the capture of Kazan by Ivan the Terrible and the entry of Tatarstan into Russia. It is clear that to identify such a multinational state with a nation-state, which type of state prevails in Europe, is stupidity or malicious intent. Moreover, it is stupidity or malicious intent to try to manage social life in such a state on the basis of social patterns identified in the life of nation-states.

And in relation to such statehood, on the territory subject to it, there are no “national minorities” oppressed by the statehood of a certain “titular nation” or the statehood of a corporation of “titular nations”, since access to work in it is determined not by origin from representatives of this or that people, but by business qualities and political intentions of the applicants.

According to this understanding of statehood and the state, a historically established stable nation can have a common sphere of government, which includes those of its representatives who manage collective activities in the field of production, trade, etc., but not have their own statehood.

original language and cultural in general a community that has developed in any territory, if there are several separate areas of management carried out on a professional basis in the regions of this territory, this is:

either the process of becoming a nation from several nationalities, each of which has its own somewhat specific sphere of government(in the case of erasing the borders that separate regions in the sphere of public self-government on the basis of the meaning of life that unites people, which goes beyond the satisfaction of their physiological and everyday needs, and the linguistic community that ensures mutual understanding without interpreters);

either a process of national disunity leading to:

Ø to the formation of several kindred nations;

Ø either to the assimilation of failed nations or seceded nationalities by other established nations;

Ø either to ethnic cleansing in the territory developed for their own needs by any established nations.

In all other respects, the Stalinist definition of the social phenomenon "nation" satisfies the needs of understanding national relationships. given that, that there is an adequate vision of those phenomena that stand behind the words “culture” and “national character” (or “mental warehouse”) included in it. In view of the foregoing, we can give the following definition of the social phenomenon "nation":

Nation there is a historically established stable community of people that has arisen on the basis of a commonality: 1) language, 2) territory, 3) the meaning of life, expressed in the unity and integrity of the sphere of public self-government, carried out on a professional basis, 4) a mental warehouse (national character), manifested 5 ) in a culture that unites people and is reproduced on its basis in the continuity of generations. Only the presence of all the signs taken together gives us a nation.

A people is more than a nation.

People this is a nation living in the area of ​​domination of its national culture (or culturally close peoples that have not formed into a nation), plus national diasporas, i.e. carriers of the corresponding national culture living in areas dominated by other national cultures. At the same time, diasporas may lose their linguistic commonality with the population of the area of ​​dominance of their national culture, while retaining cultural identity with them in other aspects.

But history knows more generalities than national ones. If the same meaning of life is the ideal of different peoples with linguistic and cultural originality, and they somehow work to ensure that these ideals are put into practice, then there is a community of peoples of a supranational order. This is a civilizational community. It informally unites many peoples, even if their ideals have not yet become a reality in life. Let's repeat it again: "The measure of a people is not what it is, but what it considers beautiful and true"(F.M. Dostoevsky), i.e. essence of the people - its ideals.

With this view, the foreseeable history of mankind is the history of regional civilizations, each of which is characterized by certain life ideals that distinguish it from other regional civilizations. The West (Europe outside the borders of Russia, Belarus, Ukraine; North America, Australia) is a set of nation-states belonging to one of the regional civilizations of the planet. Russia-Rus is another regional civilization of many nations, living in a common state for them all. According to the 2002 census, about 85% of Russians identified themselves as Russians, and the Russian language in this regional civilization is one of its backbone factors.

The latter has been reflected in the language itself since ancient times. The word "Russian" in ancient texts is in most cases the definition of the land (Russian land), and not the people living on this land. As an ethnonym, it began to be used only in the last few centuries. And grammatically, it is an adjective, which distinguishes it from other ethnonyms, which, without exception, in Russian are nouns. Those. the word "Russian" characterizes not a national community, but a civilizational one. And therefore it is organically applicable to the Slavs, and to the Tatars, and to the Georgians, and to the Kalmyks, and to representatives of other peoples of our regional civilization, as well as to many representatives of other regional civilizations who came to Russia. We distinguish between our nationalities while we remain within Russia, but as soon as we go abroad, then for foreigners we are all Russians; even Ukrainians and Belarusians living in separate states after the collapse of the USSR have not ceased to be part of the Russian civilizational multinational community and are perceived outside the territory of the USSR as Russians.

Accordingly, in terms of the development of supranational public institutions, civilization-the West lags behind civilization-Russia by 400 years, since the creation of the European Union, which marked the beginning of the formation of a common supranational statehood with a unified credit and financial system and legislation, with a common system of educational and other standards, etc. , this is a repetition of what was initiated in Russia back in the days of Ivan the Terrible.

And because of this objective historical civilizational difference, philosophy (and above all, political philosophy), born on the ideals and life experience of Western nation-states, is inevitably doomed to mistakes when the recipes generated by it are tried to be applied to identifying and resolving problems in Russia. An example of this is the attempt to build socialism on the ideological basis of "ghostism". An example of this is the liberal reforms in post-Soviet Russia.

And from the difference in the meaning of life of the regional civilizations of the West and Russia, the well-known words of F.I. Tyutchev, a poet-philosopher, a diplomat, who received an education of a pan-European character (i.e. Western), and expressing the Russian spirit through feelings and unconscious levels of the psyche, which is characterized by ideas that are not always expressible in the terminology of Western science: “One cannot understand Russia with the mind, / One cannot measure it with a common yardstick, / She has become special-/ One can only believe in Russia.” For the same reason, the vast majority of assessments of Russia and its prospects by the West (as well as by the East) are absurd, since they come from other civilizational ideals elevated to the rank of an uncontested absolute.

Similar information.

Nations, diasporas, individuals, multinational culture - multinational society

Stalin's definition of the term "nation"

The definition that has become practically generally accepted in the science of the USSR and the post-Soviet Russian Federation nation as a social phenomenon gave I.V. Stalin, Marxism and the National Question. Let us give the full section I of the named work, entitled "Nation", and not just the very wording of the Stalinist definition of this term, since the wording is the result - imprinted in the text-dialectical procedure of cognition: asking questions and finding answers to them in real life , and everyone needs to master dialectics in order to become free.

“What is a nation?

A nation is, first of all, a community, a certain community of people.

This community is not racial or tribal. The current Italian nation was formed from the Romans, Germans, Etruscans, Greeks, Arabs, etc. The French nation was made up of Gauls, Romans, Britons, Germans, and so on. The same must be said of the English, Germans, and others who have formed into a nation from people of various races and tribes.

So, the nation is not racial or tribal, but historical community of people.

On the other hand, there is no doubt that the great states of Cyrus or Alexander could not be called nations, although they were formed historically, formed from different tribes and races. These were not nations, but random and loosely connected conglomerates of groups that broke up and united depending on the success or defeat of one or another conqueror.

So, the nation is not a random and ephemeral conglomerate, but stable community of people.

But not every stable community creates a nation. Austria and Russia are also stable communities, however, no one calls them nations. What is the difference between a national community and a state community? By the way, by the fact that a national community is inconceivable without a common language, while a common language is not necessary for a state. The Czech nation in Austria and the Polish nation in Russia would be impossible without a common language for each of them, while the integrity of Russia and Austria is not hindered by the existence within them of a number of languages. We are talking, of course, about vernacular languages, and not about official clerical ones.

So - common language as one of the characteristic features of the nation.

This, of course, does not mean that different nations always and everywhere speak different languages, or that all speakers of the same language necessarily constitute one nation. Common language for each nation, but not necessarily different languages ​​for different nations! There is no nation that speaks different languages ​​at once, but this does not mean that there cannot be two nations speaking the same language! The English and North Americans speak the same language, and yet they do not constitute one nation. The same must be said about the Norwegians and Danes, the British and the Irish.

But why, for example, the British and North Americans do not constitute one nation, despite the common language?

First of all, because they do not live together, but in different territories. A nation is formed only as a result of long and regular communication, as a result of the joint life of people from generation to generation. A long life together is impossible without a common territory. The British and Americans used to inhabit the same territory, England, and constituted one nation. Then one part of the English moved out of England to a new territory, to America, and here, in the new territory, over time, formed a new North American nation. Different territories led to the formation of different nations.

So, community of territory as one of the characteristic features of the nation.

But that is not all. The commonality of a territory does not in itself constitute a nation. This requires, in addition, an internal economic connection, uniting the individual parts of the nation into a single whole. There is no such connection between England and North America, and therefore they constitute two distinct nations. But the North Americans themselves would not deserve the name of a nation if the individual corners of North America were not linked together into an economic whole through the division of labor between them, the development of communications, and so on.

Take at least the Georgians. Georgians of pre-reform times lived on a common territory and spoke the same language, however, they did not, strictly speaking, constitute one nation, for they, divided into a number of principalities torn apart from each other, could not live a common economic life, for centuries they led among themselves wars and ruined each other, setting Persians and Turks against each other. The ephemeral and accidental unification of the principalities, which some successful king sometimes managed to carry out, at best captured only the superficial administrative sphere, quickly breaking up against the whims of the princes and the indifference of the peasants. Yes, it could not be otherwise with the economic fragmentation of Georgia ... Georgia, as a nation, appeared only in the second half of the 19th century, when the fall of serfdom and the growth of the economic life of the country, the development of communications and the emergence of capitalism established the division of labor between the regions of Georgia, completely shattered economic isolation principalities and tied them into one whole.

The same must be said about other nations that have passed the stage of feudalism and developed capitalism.

So, community of economic life, economic coherence, as one of the characteristic features of the nation.

But that's not all. In addition to all that has been said, it is also necessary to take into account the peculiarities of the spiritual appearance of people united in a nation. Nations differ from each other not only in the conditions of their life, but also in their spiritual appearance, expressed in the peculiarities of their national culture. If England, North America and Ireland, who speak the same language, nevertheless constitute three different nations, then the peculiar mental warehouse that has been developed in them from generation to generation as a result of unequal conditions of existence plays a significant role in this.

Of course, the psychic warehouse itself, or - as it is called otherwise - “national character”, is something elusive for the observer, but since it is expressed in the uniqueness of culture, a common nation, it is perceptible and cannot be ignored.

Needless to say, the “national character” does not represent something given once and for all, but changes along with the conditions of life, but, since it exists at every given moment, it leaves its stamp on the physiognomy of the nation.

So, community of mind, affecting the community of culture, as one of the characteristic features of the nation.

Thus, we have exhausted all the signs of a nation.