Olga Nagornyuk

Brief and accessible: what is a nation

The term “nation” is often used as a synonym for the words “people”, “ethnic group”, “nationality”. Is it correct? Is it possible to put an equal sign between all the listed words? To answer this question, you must first understand what a nation is.

Definition of the term

If we asked a resident Ancient Rome to define what a nation is, he would say: it is a tribe or people. After all, this is precisely the meaning of the Latin word “natio”, which sounds in the Russian version as “nation”. It should be noted that since ancient times the meaning attached to the concept of “nation” has undergone changes, and today it is not identical to the meanings of the words “people” and “ethnic group”.

Historians believe that nations began to emerge only in modern times, with the birth of capitalism. Scientists call a nation a historically established community of people who have their own statehood and are united by living in the same territory, a common language, culture and national identity. A nation without sovereign statehood is a people, or ethnic group.

Let us explain using the example of the USA. The American nation is one of the youngest. It has all the above characteristics: its representatives live on the territory of a country that is a sovereign state, speak English language and recognize themselves as Americans. However, within the nation there is a separate community - the Indians, who are deprived of statehood, and therefore cannot be called a nation, but only an ethnic group or people.

Nation: distinctive features

There are several criteria by which individuals are united into a nation. However, some of these factors may be absent, but the nation does not cease to be a nation.

1. Common territory of residence and the presence of state sovereignty. But what about the Soviet Union, you ask? It turns out there was a Soviet nation? No, it was not, because in the case of the USSR, all the other components that turn a people into a nation were absent: the inhabitants of the country, which occupied a sixth of the landmass, spoke different languages, belonged to different cultures and each identified themselves with their own nation: Lithuanian, Kazakh, Armenian, Ukrainian, etc.
2. Unity of language. It is generally accepted that representatives of one nation should speak common language. But there are exceptions to this rule. For example, the Swiss, who speak four languages, but at the same time, without a doubt, remain a nation.
3. United culture, history, religion and way of life. Russia with its diversity of national cultures, different ways of life (compare the customs of the Evenks and Russians) and different paths of historical development (for example, when capitalism was already developing in the west of the Russian Empire, feudalism was just emerging in the east) does not fit into this template.
4. National identity. Every representative of a nation must recognize himself as part of it. Let's take the Americans, for example. In fact, they are the result of a mixture of many peoples: the British, the French, the Mexicans, the Indians, the Eskimos and the inhabitants of Africa. However, they were able to create a strong national idea and rally the nation around it. But the Soviet Union failed to do this; as a result, this country disappeared from the world map.

Historians call the oldest nations Latin American, and the youngest include Vietnamese and Cambodian.

Nation, ethnicity, people, nationality

Having found out what a nation is, let's determine its differences from other similar concepts. We have already written above: a nation without statehood becomes a people, or an ethnic group. The lack of a unified national identity leads to the same result. Residents of the former USSR did not identify themselves with the concept of “Soviet people,” so the attempt to artificially create a nation failed.

Now about what nationality is. In fact, this is the name given to a person's ethnic origin. By birth, we all have some kind of nationality, determined by the ethnicity of our parents: Jews, Ukrainians, Russians, Tajiks. By moving to another country, adopting its cultural and spiritual values, assimilating with the local population, beginning to think and act like the indigenous people, we become part of another nation, although formally we remain representatives of the nationality inherited from our ancestors.

We tried to briefly and clearly explain what a nation is. In fact, it doesn’t matter what nation you belong to, what country you live in and what language you speak. The main thing is to always and everywhere remain human.

Take it for yourself and tell your friends!

Read also on our website:

show more

Political terms are not ideologically neutral, but, on the contrary, are most often an instrument of actual political struggle or an expression of the system of power relations existing in society. T&P reviewed the works of major modern researchers of political history, finding out what certain terms meant at different times and what stands behind them now.

It is assumed that voters and citizens of a country understand exactly the language in which a politician or statesman speaks to them, and thus can understand what awaits them in the future or what they already have in the present. Political terms are then required to be objective and clear, bearing in mind that political language is, among other things, an important tool for political socialization and education. However, upon closer study, it turns out that the same words meant different, often opposite things, depending on who used them and at what time.

Nation

In classical Roman usage, which runs through the Middle Ages to the modern era, natio, as opposed to civitas, means a union of people based on a common origin, which initially has no political dimension.

Historian Alexey Miller points out that at the beginning of the 18th century, the word “nation” appears in various Russian documents as a borrowed word - most often in the meaning of ethnic community and state affiliation. The Great French Revolution introduced clear political content into the concept of nation, which was later transferred into Russian-language usage. The word “nation” evoked strong associations with national sovereignty and national representation formed after the French Revolution, therefore Uvarov in his famous triad (“Orthodoxy, Autocracy, Nationality”) used the semantically intersecting concept of “nationality”, linking the latter with the principle of conservatism and loyalty to power. In the 1840s, Belinsky wrote about the relationship between the concepts of nation and people, that the people denote only the lowest layer of the state, while the nation is “the totality of all classes.”

Ernest Gellner is one of the nation's first scholars to take a modernist approach to the study of this concept. Before industrialization, humanity lived in closed communities, the masses were engaged in manual labor, and while working they communicated in the same circle. In an agro-literate society, culture is the expression of an internal differentiated status system with its own complex, intertwined power relations. The cultural differences of each social group serve to disintegrate in such a society. In an industrial society, there is already a need for a universal worker with his ability to move. Education, written culture, and a national language are gaining strength, uniting many separate communities within the state. Industrial society involves new ways of communication that do not depend on everyday communication within closed local communities. Labor ceases to be physical and becomes semantic. Thus, more universal mass information channels are emerging through which standardized messages are transmitted, independent of the local context. This is a new, standardized culture that unites people.

“The aristocracy represented a kind of “nation” in the face of the court, that is, in fact, it was the only representative of that early form of nation, access to which had not yet been gained by the broad masses of the population.”

At that time, only the state could take on the role of standardizing culture, so each individual culture sought to gain statehood. Gellner believes that nations began to emerge in the 19th century. Already by 1848, cultural and linguistic boundaries began to correlate with political ones, and the legitimacy of political power began to be determined by correlation with the concept of “nation”. In the new industrial society, constant the economic growth, which, in turn, depends on the efficiency of each employee. In such a situation, the old social structure in which the position of an individual was determined not by his effectiveness as a worker, but by origin, is impossible.

According to Jürgen Habermas, the success of nation states in the 19th century is due to the fact that the tandem of bureaucracy and capitalism (the state needs taxes, capital needs legal guarantees) turned out to be the most effective means for social modernization. Feudal society was based on a system of privileges granted by the monarch, who needed taxes and a regular army. The aristocracy represented a kind of “nation” in front of the court, that is, in fact, it was the only representative of that early form of the nation, access to which had not yet been gained by the broad masses of the population. Subsequently, it was national consciousness that turned out to be a powerful stimulus for the growth of political activity of the masses, which led to the democratic transformation of society. On the other hand, in the process of the separation of church and state prepared by the thinkers of the Enlightenment, the need for a new legitimation of power arose.

In a pre-national state, a citizen's identity was determined only by submission to monarchical power. Now, to be a citizen did not mean to be a subject of a monarch, but, above all, to belong to a community of equal citizens. In the industrial era, new, non-class principles of social connections emerged. In order to push the country's population to maintain new social ties in the name of abstract rights and freedoms after the establishment of a new type of government, marked by the American and French revolutions, the idea of ​​a nation with a single culture and history was used. Intellectuals - philosophers, writers, artists - begin to carefully construct romantic myths and traditions that correspond to the “spirit of the nation.”

In his work "The invention of tradition" Eric Hobsbawm convincingly shows how the need for a national myth was satisfied through the invention of traditions. Tradition gives any change the sanction of precedent in the past, expressing, first of all, the balance of power in the present (such as, for example, a claim to territory that historically supposedly belonged to ancestors). Thanks to tradition, these claims become perpetual, so tradition is required to be invariant (which distinguishes it from more flexible and changeable customs). As soon as certain practices lose their practical function, they turn into tradition. Tradition is created through a process of ritualization and formalization through repeated repetition and reference to the past. Modern symbols of Scotland - the kilt and the "national" music played on bagpipes, which are supposed to indicate something ancient, are in fact a product of modernity. The spread of Scottish kilts and clan tartans occurred after the union with England in 1707, and before that, in a still extremely undeveloped form, they were considered by most Scots to be an expression of the rudeness and backwardness of the Celtic highlanders (although even the highlanders did not find in them anything particularly ancient and distinctive for their culture).

“Anderson views the emergence of a nation as a profound change in the picture of the world, in the perception of time and space. The nation becomes a new form of religious consciousness."

Until the end of the 17th century, in essence, the highlanders did not exist as a cultural community. The western part of Scotland was extremely close, culturally and economically, to Ireland and was, in fact, its colony. In the 18th-19th centuries, the rejection of Irish culture and the construction of a single Scottish nation took place, including through the artificial creation of a highland tradition. The folk epic of the Scottish Celts is created on the basis of Irish ballads, for which purpose James Macpherson specially invented the “Celtic Homer” Ossian in the mid-18th century (according to his idea, the folk epic of the Celts was stolen by the Irish in the late Middle Ages). National symbols that spread in Germany, France and the USA in the 19th century are flags, memorable dates, public ceremonies, monuments - are part of that “social engineering” which, by inventing tradition, creates a nation.

Benedict Anderson argues that a nation is an “imagined community,” limited and sovereign, that emerges as the power of churches and dynasties wanes. It is imaginary because all members of a community will never be able to recognize each other, like, for example, residents of the same village. The image of community belongs precisely to the realm of imagination, without having any concrete, material expression. A nation is born with the destruction of three key ideas: firstly, about the sacredness of a special written language that gives access to ontological truth, secondly, about the naturalness of the organization of society around centers (monarchs, whose power is of divine origin) and, thirdly, a concept of time in which cosmology is inextricably linked with history, and the origin of people and the origin of the world are identical. A decisive role in the formation of the nation, according to Anderson, was played by what he calls “print capitalism,” when, thanks to the market boom, there was a widespread distribution of printed literature in national languages. It was capitalism, Anderson believes, that, like nothing else, contributed to the collection of related dialects into unified written languages.

Anderson views the emergence of a nation as a profound change in the picture of the world, in the perception of time and space. The nation becomes a new form of religious consciousness, having a historical extension in which the individual, classifying himself as a nation, acquires imaginary immortality. A nation is thought of as something that has no beginning or end, but remains in eternity. Language connects the past with the present and gives the nation the appearance of “naturalness.”

Example of modern usage:

“Thanks to the unifying role of the Russian people, centuries-old intercultural and interethnic interaction, a unique civilizational community has been formed on the historical territory of the Russian state - a multinational Russian nation, whose representatives consider Russia their Motherland. Russia was created as a unity of peoples, as a state, the system-forming core of which historically is the Russian people. The civilizational identity of Russia and the Russian nation is based on the preservation of Russian culture and language, the historical and cultural heritage of all peoples of Russia.” Strategy of national policy of the Russian Federation until 2025.

Bibliography:

E. Gellner. Nations and nationalism

A. Miller. The Romanov Empire and nationalism

J. Habermas. Political works

E. Hobsbawm. The invention of tradition

B. Anderson. Imagined communities. Reflections on the origins and spread of nationalism.

The idea of ​​a nation is so familiar that few people even think about analyzing it or questioning it - it is simply is accepted as something with a distinction between “liberal” and “ethnic” taken for granted. Meanwhile, the term “nation” is applied with equal success to very different phenomena - to a state, a country, an ethnic group, and even a race. The United Nations, for example, is completely misnamed because it is an organization of states, not national communities. What then are characteristic features nation? What distinguishes a nation from other social groups, from other forms of community of people?

“The forms of the universal are historically changeable. The unity of the tribe was based on tradition. The unity of the people has a religious basis. The nation is united through the state. The emergence of ideology marks the moment of nation formation. “Nationogenesis” is the essence of any ideology, and not necessarily nationalism,” notes V. B. Pastukhov. Consequently, not only the concept of “state” has changed historically, but also the concept of “nation”. It is impossible to define a nation based on objective factors alone

In ancient times it meant “common descent” and was synonymous with the concept gens - “tribe”. “In classical Roman usage, natio, like gens, served as the opposite of civitas. In this sense, nations were originally communities of people of the same origin, not yet united in the political form of a state, but connected by a common settlement, a common language, customs and traditions,” writes J. Habermas.

In the Middle Ages, a nation began to be called local communities united by a linguistic and/or professional community, and during the time of M. Luther, the term “nation” was sometimes used to designate a community of all classes in the state. This concept was used in relation to guilds, corporations, unions within the walls of European universities, feudal estates, masses of people and groups, based on common culture and history. “In all cases,” writes K. Verdery, “it served as a selection tool - one that unites some people into a common mass, who must be distinguished from others who exist side by side with these first; but the criteria used in this selection ... such as the transfer of craft skills, aristocratic privileges, civic responsibility and cultural-historical community - varied depending on time and context.” The word “nation” initially did not apply to the entire population of a particular region, but only to those groups that developed a sense of identity based on a common language, history, and beliefs, and began to act on this basis. Thus, in M. Montaigne’s “Essays,” the word nation serves to designate a community bound by common morals and customs.

Since the 15th century. the term "nation" was used increasingly by the aristocracy for political purposes. The political concept of "nation" also included only those who had opportunity to participate in political life . It had a serious influence on the process of formation of the national state. The struggle for participation in the construction of such a state often took the form of confrontation between the monarch and the privileged classes, which were often united within the framework of an estate parliament. These classes often presented themselves as defenders of the “nation” (in the political sense of the term) before the court. The meaning of the word "nation" in the 18th century. I. Kant accurately expressed, who also defined the differences between the concepts of “nation” and “people”: “The word “people” (populus) is understood as a multitude of people united in a particular locality, since they form one whole. This is a multitude or part of it, which, due to a common origin, recognizes itself as united into one civil whole is called a nation (gens), and that part that excludes itself from these laws (the wild crowd in this people) is called the mob (vulgus), the illegal association of which is called a crowd (agree per turbas); this is behavior that deprives them of the dignity of citizens."

However, already at J.-J. Rousseau's concept of nation appears as a synonym for the concept of “state” (Etat), and a nation is mainly understood as “a people having a constitution.” At the end of the 18th century. the struggle for the recognition of nations expanded and deepened, also involving the unprivileged classes. The independently enlightened middle classes (bourgeois) demanded that the political community be included in the “nation,” and this caused complications of an anti-monarchical and anti-aristocratic nature. “The democratic transformation of the Adelsnation, the nation of the nobility, into the Volksnation, the nation of the people, implied profound changes in the mentality of the population as a whole. This process began with the work of scientists and intellectuals. Their nationalist propaganda stimulated political mobilization among the urban educated middle classes even before modern idea nation received a wider response."

It was the French Revolution that forever destroyed the belief in the divine and indisputable right of monarchs to rule and ignited the struggle against the privileged classes in the interests of establishing a sovereign nation of free and equal individuals. In the concept of a sovereign nation, established during the French Revolution, the scheme of legitimizing the power of an absolute monarch is used in a secular version, and a nation is identified with a sovereign people. True, now representatives of the privileged classes were excluded from the number of citizens of the nation. One can recall the concept of Abbot E. Sieyès, who declared only representatives of the third estate (who, in his opinion, were descendants of the Gauls and Romans) to be French and denied membership to the French nation of the aristocracy as descendants of the Norman conquerors. He, in particular, wrote: “The Third Estate has nothing to be afraid of going back into the depths of centuries. It will find itself in pre-conquest times and, having today enough strength to fight back, will now put up much more powerful resistance. Why does it not throw into the forests of Franconia all these families who cherish the insane claim to descent from the conquering race and to their rights? Having thus purified itself, the nation will be fully justified, I believe, in naming among its ancestors only the Gauls and the Romans.”

French revolutionaries, acting for the benefit of a sovereign nation, emphasized their devotion to the Fatherland - that is, their civil obligations to the state, which is the guarantor of the existence of the nation, defined as “one and indivisible.” However, in 1789, half the population of France did not speak French at all, and this despite the fact that the French language, formed on the basis of the French dialect of the historical region of Ile-de-France, was declared compulsory for use by a royal ordinance back in 1539 in all official acts. Legal proceedings were conducted everywhere in it, financial documents were drawn up, and the Huguenots made it the language of religion, thereby facilitating its penetration into the popular environment. Even in 1863, approximately a fifth of the French did not speak formal literary French. “The merger of rural and peasant France with the republican nation on the principles of the same year 1989 will last at least another century and much longer in such backward areas as Brittany or the southwest,” notes the famous historian Francois Furet. - The victory of republican Jacobinism, so long attributed to the Parisian dictatorship, was achieved only from the moment it received the support of rural voters in late XIX V.". The task of “transforming peasants into French” (J. Weber) was finally solved only in the 20th century.

In the United Kingdom, somewhat earlier than in France, the “political” nation was formed from those who inhabited the British Isles, and included various ethnic components, but was perceived as a single whole primarily due to the common for all commitment to Protestantism, freedom and law, as well as shared hostility towards Catholicism and its embodiment in the universal national enemy - France (the image of the external enemy). Moreover, national unity was cemented by cruelty towards British Catholics of Gaelic and Scottish origin (the image of the internal enemy), who were mercilessly exterminated and expelled from the country because they were identified with the external enemy of the nation. Such cruelty was necessary in order to overcome the hostility that had hitherto existed even between the Protestant English and the Protestant Scots, who historically belonged to peoples who had been at war with each other with short intervals for the previous six hundred years.

In Italian society, shortly after the unification of the country in 1870, the “standard” state language (based on the Tuscan-Florentine dialect) was used by a tiny part of the population, and regional differences were so great that this gave reason to the writer and liberal politician M. d'Azeglio to make an appeal: “ We created Italy, now we must create Italians!».

The political motto of the Old Order is "One King, One Faith, One Law!" - French revolutionaries first replaced it with the formula “Nation! Law. King". From then on, it was the nation that made the laws that the king had to apply. And when, in August 1792, the monarchy was abolished, the main thing the nation finally became the source of sovereignty. The Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen stated: “The source of all sovereignty is essentially rooted in the nation; no group and no person can exercise power that does not clearly emanate from this source.” Everything that was previously royal was now turning into national, state. According to the ideas of the French revolutionaries, the nation is built on the free self-determination of the individual and society and the unity of civil political culture, and not on cultural-historical or, especially, blood ties.

A nation is the unity of the state and civil society

The French Revolution proclaimed and legislated another important principle, but in the sphere of international relations: non-interference in the affairs of other peoples and condemnation of wars of conquest. Innovations in international law together with radical foreign and domestic political transformations, they contributed to the emergence and development of national movements in Europe, the main goal of which was the creation of sovereign national states.

One of the results of the French Revolution was the birth of the first nationalist dictatorship modern world- Bonapartism (1799), which represents the first attempt in the history of modern times to introduce one-man rule based on the will of the people: if the formula of European absolutism is “The State is I” (Louis XIV), then the newest formula on which Napoleon’s power was based I - “The nation is me” (however, even before Napoleon, M. Robespierre modestly declared: “I am neither a sycophant, nor a ruler, nor a tribune, nor a defender of the people; the people are me”).

The formation of a despotic regime, growing out of democracy and mixed with nationalist appeals to the nation and people, was indeed a completely new phenomenon (in connection with this, an unusual formula appears: “The Emperor according to the Constitution of the Republic”). The prospect of Bonapartist ideology is therefore defined as the desire for unlimited individual power of the Caesarist type, based on the legitimate will of the people (nation). For the first time, a situation arose, which was repeated many times, when new democratic principles of legitimation of power were used to recreate and legitimize unlimited domination. As a result, Napoleon combined two types of legitimation - democratic (plebiscitary) and traditional-monarchical (divine - coronation in Notre Dame Cathedral), becoming emperor "by the grace of God and the will of the French people."

However, it was precisely from the time of the French Revolution that the word “nation” (in the West) began to mean the natives of the country, the state and the people as an ideological and political whole and contrasted with the concept of “subjects of the king.” It was the leaders of the revolution who put into circulation the new term “nationalism” and formulated the so-called principle of nationality, according to which every people is sovereign and has the right to form their own state. Nationalism has transformed the legitimacy of nations into the highest form of legitimacy. These principles were embodied in European history in the 19th century, called the “century of nationalism.” It is no coincidence that the nation is still understood here primarily politically - as a community of citizens of the state, subject to general laws.

In this case we are talking about the evolution of the concepts of “state” and “nation” in Western Europe. However, already in Germany, where state and national unity came late (in 1871) and “from above”, and the national idea preceded it, the word Reich covered a wider sphere, soared into spiritual transcendental limits. It may be recalled that only the recognition of the sovereignty of the German principalities by the Treaty of Westphalia deprived Germany of its former dominance in foreign affairs Europe. However, the state formation, which included the German states until 1806, was called “ Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation" Therefore, such a fundamentally new phenomenon as the formation of a single national German state in 1871 was presented as a restoration of historical justice and a return to the traditions of the Holy Roman Empire of the German nation, created by Otto I back in the 10th century.

According to R. Koselleck, the Latin term status was translated into German by the word Staat already in the 15th century, however, as a concept denoting a state, it was used only from the end of the 18th century. The Reich was never a "state" in the French sense of the word. Therefore, until the end of the 18th century. the term Staat was used here exclusively to denote status or class, especially to denote high social status or status of power, often in phrases such as Furstenstaat. If the phrase “sovereign state” arose in France already in the 17th century, then in Germany it began to be used only in the 19th century. Hence the German cult of the state, often noted by researchers. F. Dürrenmatt, explaining the deification of the state in the German tradition, wrote: “The Germans never had a state, but they had the myth of a sacred empire. German patriotism has always been romantic, necessarily anti-Semitic, pious and respectful of authority.”

The concept of “nation” also takes on a different meaning here. For German romantics, a nation is something person-like - a “mega-anthropos”: it has an individual, one-of-a-kind destiny; it has its own character or soul, mission and will, and is characterized by an internally connected spiritual and psychic development, which is called its history. Nations were even sometimes assigned a “life age,” distinguishing between “youth,” “maturity,” and “old age”; as its material referent it has a territory limited, like the human body. The state must be “the internal coherence of integral mental and spiritual needs, the integral internal and external life of the nation in one large, active and infinitely mobile whole” (A. Muller), i.e. the state is the product of the final formation of the nation as an organic integrity.

German philosopher and historian I.G. Herder (1744-1803) put forward the thesis that humanity as something universal is embodied in individual historically established nations. “Peoples with their different languages ​​are a diverse expression of the one Divine order, and each people makes its contribution to its implementation. The only source of national pride can be that the nation represents a part of humanity. Special, separate national pride, as well as pride of origin, is great stupidity, for “there is no people on earth, the only one chosen by the Lord: everyone must seek the truth, everyone must create the garden of the common good.” Thus, already on the eve of the Great French Revolution, the educated layers of German society opposed the “imperial nation” of the princes with a new understanding of the nation as a national community based on a common language, culture, history and human rights.

Already Leon Duguit, who in 1920 introduced the concept of “nation-state” into scientific circulation, noted the difference between the “French” and “German” understanding of the nation. In particular, he believed that by the beginning of the 20th century. in Europe, two concepts of social life, forms state power and its legitimation, which opposed each other in the First World War. On the one side was Germany, which defended the worldview according to which power (sovereignty) belongs to the state, and the nation is nothing more than an organ of the state. On the other is France, with its traditions of national sovereignty, defending its vision of the state as a “nation-state.”

Consequently, according to L. Dugis, the main feature of a “nation-state” is that the nation has sovereignty. As for the “nation state,” it qualifies as a political organization with a still unfinished national basis. In this case, national identity does not mature organically during the historical development of the country, but is rather artificially stimulated by the state. This largely explains the fact that the overwhelming majority of nationalist-minded politicians are the product of “nation-states.” And, as a rule, the struggle to create a spirit of national identity in their country turns into hostility towards other nations among such politicians.

If the French nation is a political project born in the persistent political struggle of the third estate, then the German nation, on the contrary, appeared first in the works of romantic intellectuals as an eternal gift based on a common language and culture. For the latter, language was the essence of the nation, while for the French revolutionaries it served as a means of achieving national unity. It is no coincidence that I.G. Herder believed that nationality should be considered primarily as a cultural phenomenon, that is, as a category related to civil society and not to the state.

For all modern nationalists, nations are eternal (primordial) entities, natural human collectives. They do not arise, but only awaken after being in a state of lethargy for some time. Having realized themselves, nations strive to correct historical injustice or achieve it.

Eric Hobsbawm identifies two fundamental meanings of the concept of “nation” in modern times:

1) the relationship known as citizenship, in which the nation is constituted by collective sovereignty based on common political participation;

2) a relationship known as ethnicity, in which a nation includes all those who are supposedly bound by a common language, history, or cultural identity in a broader sense.

In this regard, J. Rösel proposes to distinguish between “liberal” and “ethnic” nation-states. The idea of ​​a liberal nation, according to the researcher, arose earlier than the idea of ​​ethnonation. The formation of liberal nations is associated with the democratization of the state; they are fundamentally open to membership. Liberalism perceives humanity as a kind of aggregate consisting of individuals who have the opportunity to freely associate. The ethnic concept of the nation is objectivist and deterministic in nature. An ethno-nation is a closed nation. Humanity in this concept appears as a conglomerate, naturally breaking up into ethnic groups that strive to maintain their identity. According to the author, these two concepts of the nation are not only incompatible, they are in constant competition.

Throughout the 20th century. the words “nation” and its derivative “nationality” were used in the Russian language usually in an ethnic sense, not related to the presence or absence of statehood, which today introduces additional confusion into the issue of delimiting the content of concepts in Russian ethnopolitical science. In Soviet science, it was customary to distinguish stage-historical varieties of an ethnos - tribe, nationality, nation, linking them with certain socio-economic formations. The nation was considered as the highest form of ethnic community, which emerged during the formation of capitalism on the basis of economic ties, unity of territory, language, cultural characteristics and psyche, i.e. ideas about the nation were based on the famous definition of I.V. Stalin at the beginning of the 20th century:

“A nation is a historically established stable community of language, territory, economic life and mental makeup, manifested in a community of culture (...) none of these characteristics, 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” (work “Marxism and the National Question”).

N.A. Berdyaev had an idealistic approach to defining a nation: “Neither race, nor territory, nor language, nor religion are features that define nationality, although they all play one role or another in its definition. Nationality is a complex historical formation, it is formed as a result of blood mixing of races and tribes, many redistributions of lands with which it connects its fate, and the spiritual and cultural process that creates its unique spiritual face... The secret of nationality is kept behind all the fragility of historical elements, behind all the changes of fate, behind all the movements that destroy the past and create what has not been. The soul of France of the Middle Ages and France of the 20th century. - the same national soul, although everything in history has changed beyond recognition.”

Many authors do not distinguish between the use of the words “nation” and “people” in relation to ethnic and territorial-political communities. Hence, the two main types of nationalism (in the Western sense) and the definition of a nation, national and nationalistic (in Russian literature), are not distinguished or are strictly opposed. But at the same time, civil or state, cultural or ethnic types of communities actually resonate with each other and are not mutually exclusive. We are talking about a nation-ethnic group and a nation-state, without contrasting them at all, but only tracing the logic of their own historical development, genesis.

The peoples inhabiting the USSR were divided into nationalities, national groups and nations (this division was enshrined in the Constitution of the USSR of 1936). Nations were considered those peoples who had their own statehood, - that is, the titular peoples of the republics, union and autonomous, therefore, there was a kind of hierarchy of ethnocultural communities and national-state formations. Thus, a primordialist approach to ethnic categories dominated in Soviet science and political practice.

In turn, Zbigniew Brzezinski asks the question: what is Russia - a nation-state or a multinational empire? And he responds with a call to “persistently create a stimulating environment so that Russia can define itself as Russia proper... Having ceased to be an empire, Russia retains the chance to become, like France and Great Britain or early post-Ottoman Turkey, a normal state.”

Today in Russia both ethnic (German) and political (French) understandings of the nation are widespread - with a clear predominance of the first- and there is no consensus on their content and correlation. In reality, such a division of the definitions of “nation” into two classes is quite arbitrary, since this concept is also polysemantic and has different shades and definitions. As the American political scientist G. Isaacs notes, “each author has his own list of parts that make up a nation. One sign more, one sign less. All of them include a common culture, history, tradition, language, religion: some add "race", as well as territory, politics and economics - elements that, to varying degrees, form part of what is called a "nation".

M. Weber defines a nation as follows: “The concept of a nation can be defined approximately like this: it is a community given in sensibility, the adequate expression of which could be its own state and which, therefore, usually strives to generate this state from itself.” A similar definition of a nation was formulated by Ernest Renan in 1882, emphasizing the special role in its formation of historical consciousness and common collective memory. E. Renan noted that many factors, such as a common religion, ethnic principle, natural geographical boundaries and, above all, a common language and culture, may well play a prominent role in the self-perception of nations, but this is not enough as a criterion for defining a nation. In particular, rejecting the common interests of the group as such a criterion, Renan ironically remarks: “A customs union is not a Fatherland.” As a result, according to E. Renan, “the nation is the soul, the spiritual principle. Two things make up this soul, this spiritual principle. One of them belongs to the past, the other to the present. The first is the joint ownership of a rich heritage of memories, the second is real agreement, the desire to live together. A nation, therefore, is a large solidary community, supported by the idea of ​​\u200b\u200bthe sacrifices already made and those that people are ready to make in the future. The condition of its existence is the past, but it is determined in the present concrete fact - a clearly declared desire to continue coexistence. The existence of a nation, excuse me for such a metaphor, is a daily plebiscite.”

Thus, M. Weber, J. S. Mill. E. Renan and other (mostly liberal) thinkers imagined a nation as the result of the free choice of people expressing the will to live together and under “their” rule, a choice that is made under certain historical circumstances and is determined by a number of factors, none of which is a priori decisive .

According to another well-known definition - B. Anderson, nations are “imaginary communities”, which, of course, does not mean that a nation is a purely artificial construct: it is a spontaneous creation of the human spirit. It is imaginary because members of even the smallest nation never know each other personally, never meet or speak. And yet, in the minds of everyone there is an image of their nation. A prerequisite for the formation of any community’s idea of ​​itself is continuity of consciousness. The very essence of a “nation” as a collective whole, living in continuity from generation to generation, predetermines a certain “tradition” of its life, the preservation of the foundations of this life. Ancestor cult in traditional society, National holidays and the worship of national shrines today are designed to remind us that we are all connected by common roots and a common past. Nations are as conditional as they are organic, for any of them have their own borders, beyond which there are other nations... They are real thanks to the reproduction of people’s faith in their reality and the institutions responsible for the reproduction of this faith.”

V.A. Tishkov has a similar approach: a nation, in his opinion, is a semantic-metaphorical category that has acquired great emotional and political legitimacy in history and which has not become and cannot be a category of analysis, that is, become a scientific definition.

In people's minds, a nation is always a single community. Regardless of the inequality that exists in it, we, as a rule, perceive it at the level of horizontal connections. But at the same time, it also acts as a political community. We do not accept it as a voluntary association of private individuals, which may disintegrate at any moment; on the contrary, a nation manifests itself through a system of public institutions created to serve the community, the main one being the state. Therefore, the nation is seen as an independent entity, it is no coincidence that its concept was born during the era of the French Revolution, which questioned the legitimacy of traditional dynastic rule and the sovereignty of the monarch. Since then, peoples who recognize themselves as nations have been fighting for national liberation, and the symbol of this freedom is a sovereign state. “A nation is nothing more than a nation-state: the political form of territorial sovereignty over its subjects and the cultural (linguistic and or religious) homogenization of the group, overlapping each other, give rise to a nation,” writes D. Cola.

Thus, like any national community, Western nations were created on the basis of one or another combination political, socio-economic, cultural and ethnic factors. The process of their formation was based on the culture and unity of the dominant ethnic group, which in turn had a centuries-old history of previous consolidation. Therefore, ethnic and political history cannot be ignored, since the history of the formation of any phenomenon contains the key to understanding its nature.

Nation and violence in Renan's model of the state nation

Ernest Renan, widely cited as a primary source on the Western model of the nation-state, has no doubt about the presence of violence in its history. In his famous report “What is a Nation” in 1882, he writes: “Unification always occurs in the most brutal way. The north and south of France were united as a result of almost a century of ongoing extermination and terror.” The House of Habsburg did not take advantage of the "tyranny" of the merger, so "Austria is a state, but not a nation." “Under the crown of Istvan, the Hungarians and the Slavs remained completely different, as they had been eight hundred years before. Instead of uniting the various elements of their state, the House of Habsburg kept them separate and often even pitted them against each other. In Bohemia, the Czech and German elements lie on top of each other, like water and oil in a glass.”

Renan's constantly quoted metaphorical definition of the nation as a "daily plebiscite" was not a contradiction to the unified violence on the way to the modern nation, but a call to contemporary Europeans to take the side of the state nation - against ethno-nation. Renan called the confusion of “ethnography” and “nation” a “deep error.” “The ethnographic factor did not play any role in the formation of modern nations. France is Celtic, Iberian and Germanic; Germany - Germanic, Celtic and Slavic. Italy is a country with a complex ethnography. There, Gauls, Etruscans, Greeks, not to mention a whole series of other elements, intertwined and crossed in an extremely intricate way.”

Renan strongly opposes the assertion of the existence of a nation-race. Anyone who makes politics under the “banner of ethnography” raises the danger of “zoological wars,” which could “only develop into destructive wars.” Renan debunks the idea of ​​Europe consisting of homogeneous nations. “Nations are not eternal. They started someday and will end someday.”

“A nation is a non-eternal large combination of partially equivalent provinces that form a core around which other provinces are grouped, connected to each other (...) by common interests. England, the most perfect of all nations, is also the most heterogeneous from the point of view of ethnography and history. Pure Bretons, Romanized Bretons, Irish, Caledonians, Anglo-Saxons, Danes, pure Normans, French Normans - they are all fused there into a single whole.”

Renan, as a representative of the Western type of state nation, argues against the defenders of the idea of ​​ethnonation. His goal is the creation of a "United States of Europe", united on the basis of a "federal pact" which would "regulate the principle of nationalities by means of the principle of federation." In Mannheim terminology, one could define Renan's similar hopes for the formation of a confederal nation-state Western Europe as “multinational nationalism,” politically organized into a multinational confederation dominated by three hegemonic nations: France, Germany and England. In an era of nation-state wars, Renan sought to dampen the potential for violence of nations and their states. But even this pacification of war-threatening nations was aimed at domination. Formation of self-awareness of nations, as Renan believes, occurs “only under external pressure”. Thus, the French nation was formed “only under English yoke,” and France itself became “the midwife for the German nation.” And now, in the second half of the 19th century, the challenge posed to Western Europe by North America, “the vast world of the East, which cannot be allowed to cherish too great hopes,” and above all “Islam,” perceived by Renan as “a complete negation of Europe,” became clear. But “the future belongs to Europe and only Europe.”

Renan speaks of the "Indo-European spirit" and of the "ultimate victorious march of Europe." For this, Europe needs a confederation led by France, Germany and England, “an invincible trinity, with the strength of spirit guiding the world, especially Russia, on the path of progress.”

Renan, whose authority everyone, including politicians in their speeches, willingly use in establishing Western-style state nationalism as opposed to all ethno-national ideologies, also considered the nation and the national state as instruments of struggle, generated by a series of unification wars and realizing themselves under alien, foreign pressure . He imagined that Western Europe would move toward a multinational confederation with nation-state cores, and its superior strength would ensure that the three most powerful European nations dominated the rest of the world. Renan's view of the nation is confirmed by Eric Hobsbawm's position that one of the three main criteria for defining a people as a nation is the “proven ability to conquer”, or more precisely, the ability to form into a nation, relying on violence in civil or interstate war. This applies even to Switzerland, where in 1847 the Sonderbund War began the transition from a cantonal federation to a multilingual national federal state, as well as to Belgium, which in 1830 was covered by France civil war separated from the Netherlands and was transformed into a multinational federal state.

Nations - interpretation by E. Heywood

Nations (from Latin nasci - to be born) are a complex phenomenon formed by a combination of cultural, political and psychological factors:

• in the cultural dimension, nations are a community of people connected by common customs, language, religion and historical destiny, although for each nation these factors operate differently;
• in the political dimension, a nation is a community of people that perceives itself as a naturally formed political community, which most often finds expression in the desire to gain - or maintain - statehood, as well as in the civic self-awareness inherent in this nation;
• in the psychological aspect, nations appear as a community of people connected relations of internal loyalty and patriotism A. The latter, however, is not an objective prerequisite for belonging to a nation; a person belongs to it even in the absence of these attitudes.

Let's start with the fact that it is indeed not easy to give any precise definitions here, because nations represent a unity of objective and subjective, a combination of cultural and political characteristics.

From an objective point of view, a nation is a cultural community, in other words, a group of people speaking the same language, professing the same religion, connected by a common past, etc. It is precisely this understanding of the matter that underlies nationalism. Residents of Quebec, Canada, for example, identify themselves based on the fact that they speak French, while the rest of Canada speaks English. National problems in India are associated with religious confrontation: examples are the struggle of the Sikhs in Punjab for their “home” (Khalistan) or the movement of Kashmiri Muslims for the annexation of Kashmir to Pakistan. The problem, however, is that it is impossible to determine a nation based on objective factors alone, because in reality nations are a much broader combination very, very specific cultural, ethnic and racial traits. The Swiss remained Swiss, despite the fact that in the country, not counting local dialects, they speak three languages ​​(French, German and Italian). The differences between Catholics and Protestants, which are so acute in Northern Ireland, are not of fundamental importance for the rest of the UK.

From a subjective point of view, a nation is what the people belonging to it understand as such - it is a kind of political-psychological construct. What distinguishes a nation from any other group or community is, first of all, that the people belonging to it recognize themselves as a nation. This means that we can talk about a nation only when the people belonging to it recognize themselves as an integral political community, which, in fact, is the difference between a nation and an ethnic group. After all, an ethnic group is also bound by a sense of internal unity and a common culture, but, unlike a nation, it has no political aspirations. Nations, historically, have always strived to gain (or maintain) their statehood and independence, or, in extreme cases, to ensure autonomy or full membership within a federation or confederation of states.

The complexity of the problem, however, does not end there. The phenomenon of nationalism sometimes eludes strict analysis also because its own varieties understand the nation differently. Two concepts stand out here. One represents the nation primarily as a cultural community, emphasizing the importance of deep ethnic ties - material and spiritual; the other sees in it a predominantly political community, emphasizing the role of civil - social and political - connections. Offering their own view of the origin of nations, both concepts have found a place for themselves in different trends of nationalism.

Nations as cultural communities

The idea that a nation is first and foremost an ethnic and cultural community, is rightly considered the “primary” concept of the nation. This idea has its roots in Germany in the 18th century. - to the works of Herder and Fichte (1762-1814). According to Herder, the character of any nation is determined by such factors as natural environment, climate and physical geography are factors that shape lifestyle, work habits, preferences, and creative inclinations of people. Above all, Herder placed the factor of language; in him he saw the embodiment of the traditions characteristic of the people and their historical memory. Each nation, according to Herder, has its own Volksgeist, which is expressed in songs, myths and legends and is for a given people the source of all and every form of creativity. Herder's nationalism should be understood as a kind of culturalism, where national traditions and collective memory come to the fore, but not statehood. Ideas of this kind contributed greatly to the awakening of the national consciousness of the Germans in the 19th century, when they discovered ancient myths and legends, as manifested, for example, in the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm and the operas of Richard Wagner (1813-1883).

The main idea of ​​Herderian culturalism is that nations are “natural” or organic communities that go back to antiquity and will exist as long as humanity exists. The same position is taken by modern social psychologists, who point to the need for people to form groups in order to gain a sense of security, community and belonging. The division of humanity into nations, according to this point of view, comes precisely from this natural tendency of people to unite with those who are close to them in origin, culture and way of life.

In Nations and Nationalism (1983), Ernest Gellner showed that nationalism is associated with modernization, especially the process of industrialization. According to his concept, in the pre-capitalist era, society was held together by a great variety of very different bonds and connections, so characteristic of feudalism, but the emerging industrial societies relied on social mobility, independence and competition: in order to preserve the cultural unity of society, all this required some kind of completely new ideology. Nationalism took on the role of such an ideology - a reaction to new social conditions and circumstances. With all this, according to Gellner, nationalism is fundamentally ineradicable, since society can no longer return to pre-industrial social relations.

The postulate of a connection between nationalism and modernization, however, aroused objections from Anthony Smith, who, in The Ethnic Roots of Nations (1986), showed continuity between modern nations and ancient ethnic communities: such communities he called ethnic groups. According to Smith, nations are a historically determined phenomenon: they are formed on the basis of a common cultural heritage and language, everything that arises much earlier than any statehood or struggle for independence. Although ethnic groups predate any and all forms of nationalism, Smith agreed that modern nations were born only when fully formed ethnic groups accepted the idea of ​​political sovereignty. In Europe this happened at the turn of the 18th - 19th centuries, and in Asia and Africa - in the 20th century.

The German historian Friedrich Meinecke (1907) went even further, dividing nations into “cultural” and “political”. “Cultural” nations, in his opinion, are characterized by high level ethnic homogeneity: ethnos and nation in this case are almost synonymous. Meinecke considered the Greeks, Germans, Russians, English and Irish to be “cultural” nations, but such ethnic groups as Kurds, Tamils ​​and Chechens also fit his concept. These nations can be considered “organic”: they arose through natural historical processes rather than any processes of a political nature. The strength of "cultural" nations is that, having a stronger and historically determined sense of national unity, they tend to be more stable and internally united. On the other hand, “cultural nations”, as a rule, claim exclusivity: to belong to them, political loyalty alone is not enough - you must already be a member of the ethnic group, inherit your nationality. In other words, “cultured” nations tend to think of themselves as something like an extended family of relatives: it is impossible to “become” German, Russian or Kurdish simply by adopting their language and faith. Such exclusivity gives rise to closed and very conservative forms of nationalism, since in the minds of people the differences between nation and race are practically leveled out.

Nations as political entities

Those who consider a nation to be an exclusively political organism see its distinctive feature not as a cultural community, but as civil ties and, in general, its inherent political specificity. A nation in this tradition appears as a community of people bound together by citizenship, regardless of any dependence on cultural or ethnic affiliation. It is believed that this view of the nation goes back to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, a philosopher in whom many see the “progenitor” of modern nationalism. Although Rousseau did not specifically address the national question or the phenomenon of nationalism itself, his thoughts on the sovereignty of the people - and especially the idea of ​​​​the "general will" (or public good) - in fact, sowed the seeds from which the nationalist doctrines of the French Revolution then grew 1789 By declaring that government should be based on the general will, Rousseau thereby, in essence, denied the existence of both the monarchy and all sorts of aristocratic privileges. During the French Revolution, this principle of radical democracy was reflected in the idea that all French people are “citizens” with their own inalienable rights and freedoms, and not simply “subjects” of the crown: sovereignty, therefore, comes from the people. The French Revolution established this new type of nationalism with its ideals of freedom, equality and fraternity, as well as the theory of a nation over which there is no power other than itself.

The idea that nations are political, rather than ethnic, communities was subsequently supported by many theorists. Eric Hobsbawm (1983), for example, has found ample evidence that nations are, in a sense, nothing more than “fictional traditions.” Not recognizing the thesis that modern nations were formed on the basis of ancient ethnic communities, Hobsbawm believed that any talk about the historical continuity and cultural specificity of nations, in fact, reflects only a myth - and a myth generated by nationalism itself. From this point of view, it is nationalism that creates nations, and not vice versa. The awareness of belonging to a nation, characteristic of modern man, the researcher claims, developed only in the 19th century and was formed, perhaps, thanks to the introduction of national anthems, national flags and the spread of primary education. In this case, the idea is also called into question. native language", which is passed on from generation to generation and embodies the national culture: in fact, the language changes as each generation adapts it to its own needs and contemporary conditions. It is not even entirely clear whether it is possible to talk about a “national language”, since before the 19th century. most people did not have a written form of their language and usually spoke a local dialect that had little in common with the language of the educated elite.

Benedict Anderson (1983) also considers the modern nation to be an artifact, or, as he puts it, an “imagined community.” A nation, he writes, exists more as a mental image than as a real community, because it never achieves that level of directly personal communication between people, which alone can support a real sense of community. Within his own nation, a person communicates only with a tiny part of what is supposed to be the national community. According to this logic, if nations exist at all, they exist only in the public consciousness - as artificial constructs supported by the educational system, the media and processes of political socialization. If, in Rousseau's understanding, a nation is something that is inspired by the ideas of democracy and political freedom, then the idea of ​​it as a “fictional” or “imaginary” community is more likely to coincide with the views of Marxists, who believe that nationalism is a kind of bourgeois ideology - a system of propaganda tricks designed to prove that national ties are stronger than class solidarity, and thus bind the working class to the existing power structure.

But even putting aside the question of whether nations arise from the desire for freedom and democracy or are they nothing more than ingenious inventions of political elites and the ruling class, it should be understood that some of them have a uniquely political character. In the spirit of Meinecke, such nations can well be classified as “political” nations - those nations for which the moment of citizenship has much more political significance than ethnicity; Often such nations consist of several ethnic groups and are therefore culturally heterogeneous. Classic examples of political nations are Great Britain, the USA and France.

Great Britain is essentially a union of four "cultural" nations: the English, Scots, Welsh and Northern Irish (although the latter can be divided into two nations - Protestant Unionists and Catholic Republicans). The national feeling of the British, so far as it can be said, is based on political factors - loyalty to the crown, respect to Parliament and commitment to the idea of ​​​​the historically won rights and freedoms of the British. The United States, a “country of immigrants,” has a pronounced multiethnic and multicultural character: since national identity here could not develop from any common cultural and historical roots, the idea of ​​the American nation was consciously constructed through the education system and the cultivation of respect for such common values ​​as ideals Declaration of Independence and US Constitution. Likewise, the national identity of the French owes much to the traditions and principles of the French Revolution of 1789.

All these nations, at least theoretically, have one thing in common: they were formed by voluntarily following certain general principles and goals, sometimes even in contradiction with the pre-existing cultural tradition. Such societies, they say, are characterized by special style nationalism - tolerant and democratic. The idea here is the same: since a nation is, first of all, a political organism, access to it is obviously open and not limited by any requirements regarding language, religion, ethnicity, and so on. Classic examples are the USA as a "melting pot" and the "new" South Africa - the "rainbow society". It is also clear, however, that from time to time such nations lack that sense of organic unity and historicity that is characteristic of “cultural nations.” Perhaps, as they write, this explains the well-known weakness of the general British national feeling in comparison with Scottish and Welsh nationalism, as well as the widespread feeling of “good old England”.

Developing states face particular challenges in their quest for national identity. These nations act as "political" in two senses.

First, in many cases they achieved statehood only after the end of their struggle against colonial rule. Under the idea of ​​a nation here, therefore, there was a special unifying principle - the desire for national liberation and freedom, which is why nationalism in the “Third World” received such a strong anti-colonial overtones.

Secondly, historically these nations were often formed within the territorial boundaries defined by the former metropolises. This is especially true in Africa, where “nations” are often made up of a range of ethnic, religious and local groups that, apart from a shared colonial past, have very little in common with each other. Unlike classical European “cultural” nations, which developed statehood on the basis of an already established national identity, in Africa, on the contrary, “nations” are created on the basis of states. This discrepancy between political and ethnic identities has repeatedly given rise to acute contradictions, as has happened, for example, in Nigeria, Sudan, Rwanda and Burundi, and the basis of these conflicts is not the legacy of “tribalism”, but rather the consequences of widespread colonialism principle of “divide and conquer”.

The nation as a source of sovereignty, a basis of legitimacy and an object of loyalty

Historians have argued a lot about the point at which we can talk about the existence of nations. Some started counting from the 5th century, others from the 16th century, others from the end of the 18th century - early XIX V. In theoretical and political terms, according to V.S. Malakhov, debates about when “nations” arose are meaningless. Nation in modern meaning words arises along with the emergence of a new understanding of sovereignty and legitimacy.

The concept of “sovereignty” was introduced into scientific circulation by the French jurist Jean Bodin (1530-1596). According to Bodin, sovereignty is part of "public power", defined as "the absolute and eternal power of the state." In other words, sovereignty is the highest and undivided power. “Whoever receives instructions from the emperor, the pope or the king does not have sovereignty,” says Boden. Sovereignty, according to another classic definition given by Carl Schmitt, is “a power next to which there can be no other power.”

In pre-bourgeois societies, the “sovereign”, i.e. the bearer of sovereignty, is the monarch. His right to rule cannot be challenged by anyone - except perhaps by another monarch. The place of power occupied by the monarch is always occupied. It cannot be empty. The king has two bodies - the physical, which is mortal, and the mystical or political, which is immortal. Therefore, the physical death of the monarch does not mean his disappearance as a mystical source of power: “The king is dead, long live the king!”

With bourgeois revolutions, when the monarchy is replaced by a (democratic) Republic, the situation changes radically. Democracy declares the seat of power empty. No one has the original right to occupy this place. No one can have power without being authorized to do so. But who gives such powers? Who is the sovereign: the people or the nation?

Meanwhile, the “nation” does not exist in the form of an empirically fixed integrity, a certain collection of people. This is a fictitious value that does not even represent the total population of the country. From the “nation”, in whose name a new type of power is proclaimed, not only the nobles and clergy, but also the peasants, the “rabble” are excluded. During the Great French Revolution, only representatives of the third estate, the bourgeoisie, were considered members of the “nation”. The "nation", therefore, is nothing more than an instance of sovereignty.

Here we cannot do without another key concept of political philosophy - legitimacy. In the era of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, the legitimacy of power (that is, its justification and validity) is undeniable. The power of the monarch is sacredly ensured - granted to him by God. Monarch (king, king, emperor) is God's anointed one. If ambiguities arise with the succession to the throne, this inevitably entails a political crisis and rebellion.

In modern times, with the emergence of a new class - the bourgeoisie - on the historical stage, the legitimacy of monarchical power is called into question. Since people no longer believe in the sacred origin of the power of the monarch, the right to exercise power requires special justification. Who gives such a reason? Again, “nation”. And again, “nation” in no way means the total population of the country, not the physical multitude of people. The nation is what one appeals to in an effort to legitimize power.

This chain of thought can be traced from the other end. The essential feature of the state is legitimate violence. The state, according to Max Weber's textbook definition, is an institution that has a monopoly on legitimate violence. The specificity of the modern “national state” in comparison with pre-modern - estate-dynastic - states is that the source of legitimate violence here is the “nation”.

One can define a nation as a specific object of loyalty. It is specific primarily because before the advent of Modernity, such an object did not exist. The population of a particular country could be loyal to the church, confession, local overlord, whose vassals they felt, a province, a city (Venice, Hamburg, Novgorod), but they were not loyal to the “nation.”

What is taken for granted today - a sense of belonging to one or another national community - was not at all perceived as such even a century and a half ago. Representatives of the upper classes in the society of the 18th century. did not consider themselves members of the same community with representatives of the lower classes of their own country. The common people until the 19th century. I did not feel belonging to the same “nation” - not only with the nobility of my country, but also with ordinary residents of neighboring regions. The peasants felt themselves to be “Gascons”, “Provencals”, “Bretons”, etc., but not “French”; “Tver”, “Vladimir”, “Novgorod”, but not “Russians”; Saxons, Swabians, Bavarians, but not “Germans”.

It took many decades of special efforts by the state to push regional and class loyalties into the background and develop loyalty to the nation among the common people.

For modern researchers of nationalism, Eugene Weber’s book “From Peasants to French. Modernizing rural France. 1880-1914". The discovery of this work was that in such a seemingly exemplary “nation state” as France, the lower classes acquired “national consciousness” only at the beginning of the First World War. Up until this time, in most European countries, loyalty to the state rested on loyalty to the dynasty. Peasants could be mobilized for armed defense of the country under the slogans of defending the throne and the “true” religion. As for the “homeland” in the triune formula “For the Tsar, for the Motherland, for the Faith!”, “homeland” here does not mean the country as such, but a small homeland, the place where a person was born and raised.

Konstantin Leontyev once drew attention to the fact that Russian peasants behaved rather indifferently in the first weeks of the Napoleonic invasion. Some even took advantage of the anarchy and began to burn down the manor's houses. Patriotic (i.e. national) feelings awoke in them only when the interventionists began to desecrate churches. The “people” (i.e., the peasantry) behaved similarly everywhere. When foreign troops entered the country, peasants sold fodder to the invaders. Nations did not fight, armies fought. Mass (i.e. national) mobilization is a phenomenon of the 20th century. The First World War was the first conflict of an international type in history.

Thus, the idea of ​​national loyalty as a natural manifestation of popular feelings is erroneous. Collective solidarity and collective mobilization (popular movements in defense of the fatherland), which we perceive today as evidence of the presence of national consciousness among the people, were something else in pre-modern societies.

Another circumstance speaks about the specificity of national loyalty. It challenges the sovereignty of the monarch. If the nation rather than the sovereign becomes the object of loyalty for the subjects of a state, the monarchy is under threat. It is no coincidence that Russian tsarism looked with distrust at the first Russian nationalists - the Slavophiles. Although subjectively the Slavophiles were for the most part convinced monarchists, they theoretically questioned the monarchy as an object of loyalty. Such an object in their constructions turned out to be “the people”, or “nationality”, which was absolutely unacceptable for the ruling regime.

So, a nation is a specific object of loyalty, which is formed only under certain conditions. Before the advent of Modernity, or Modernity, such loyalty was either spotty or completely absent. In the era of Modernity, national loyalty faces serious competition from class, confessional, subcultural and other forms of loyalty. At present, which some authors call postmodern, competition from non-national forms of loyalty is taking on a new dimension.

State people, nation, ethnos, ethnic substrate

The central concepts of national themes in the ethnic, national and state field of concepts are usually denoted by many different words, for example,

• "state",
• "nation",
• "people",
• "ethnos",
• "state people"
• "nationality",
• "national group"
• "national minority",
• "ethnic minority"
• and many others.

Not only do different words sometimes mean the same concept, but the same word often implies different concepts. This often causes significant confusion in general and scientific discussions. The confusion of concepts is further aggravated if we consider similar designations that have the same origin in different languages. Especially words with the Latin root natio, such as "nation", "national", "nationality", "nationalist", "national" and "nationalistic", are used with very different meanings in many languages. The English word "nation" often has a different meaning than French word"nation", German "Nation" or Russian word"nation". In addition, words are often given a very emotional and politically completely different normative assessment.

Of course, it is desirable to use words as neutrally as possible, which would facilitate the analysis and explanation of the opposite state of affairs. In reality, neutral use of language in the social, political and historical sciences is impossible, because science cannot do without frequently using the same words, which evoke completely different associations and evaluations among readers and listeners.

Let's explain this with an example. Both general and political language, as well as the language of international law, know the concept of “ people's right to self-determination", which is often called " the right of nations to self-determination“, but the language does not know the concept of “the right of ethnic or nationalities to self-determination.” This means that by calling a certain large group of people an ethnic group, it is suggested - consciously or not - that this group does not have the right to self-determination, just as vice versa - consciously or not it is implied that this group has such a right if it is called a “nation” or “people” "

Below we should proceed not from words and their different uses, but from concepts filled with meaning for international comparative analysis, that is, about facts and situations distinguished in scientific and political disputes. Four fundamental provisions or concepts should be distinguished, which is often not observed in terminological and political disputes.

The community of members of a state (independent, federal or autonomous state) - today most often the citizens of a country - is called the state people. In international politics, a state people is also called a “nation”, and state citizenship, in accordance with this, is also called a “nationality”. State citizenship is an objective state fact and a fact of international law, regardless of whether an individual citizen of a state desires the state citizenship that he has or another.

The community of those who wish for their own existing or still to be formed statehood is called a nation. In other words, the general will of one’s own statehood (national identity, nationalism) establishes a nation. It follows from this that a distinction must be made between nations without a state and nations with a state, and further that a state people need not be a nation if significant parts of the state people do not desire an existing state. Nationality, in accordance with this, means belonging to a nation, whether this nation is a state people or only wants to become one.

A community of people, regardless of their place of residence, who, on the basis of the same origin (i.e. close family ties), language, religion or territory of origin, or on the basis of a combination of these characteristics, feel themselves tied friend with a friend, form an ethnic group. The existence of an ethnos depends on a certain consciousness of unity, an important indicator of which, as a rule, is the common use of the group name (ethnonym). Belonging to an ethnic group (ethnicity) may have different kinds and stages from microethnos to macroethnos, covering several such microethnoses.

Ethnicity can, but does not necessarily have to create national consciousness, that is, the political need for its own statehood, and this means becoming a nation. In most cases, many small or dispersed ethnic groups do not develop the need for their own statehood.

Nations, in turn, can be either monoethnic or multiethnic, i.e., consist of several ethnic groups or (parts of) ethnic groups. Therefore, there is no necessary connection between ethnicity, nationality and citizenship.

Ethnic movements want to strengthen the consciousness of ethnic unity and promote ethnic interests, while national movements want to gain a stronger foothold in the national consciousness and, against the backdrop of a political goal, to preserve existing statehood, i.e. maintain state unity, restore past statehood or achieve the construction of a new state .

A group of people with certain ethnic characteristics (this means being closely related to each other, speaking the same dialect or literary language, having the same religion, or coming from the same region) is unlikely to be aware of this commonality and will perceive ethnic properties only in a small group in a territorially limited space; it will be perceived as a community under certain conditions only by an observer, a contemporary or a historian. Such a set is only an ethnic category of characteristics or an ethnic substrate, socio-statistically - a cohort, and not a large group in the sense of a living social communication relationship. Ethnic substrates can even exist for centuries, and the large ethnic groups that exist today in the form of self-aware, large groups communicating with each other are a fairly modern phenomenon and are only a few years or decades older than today's nations. From all that has been said, it follows that the emergence and disappearance of ethnic substrata, ethnicities, nations and national states should be clearly distinguished in the analysis.

Literature

Abdulatipov R.G. Ethnopolitical science. St. Petersburg: Peter, 2004. P.50-54.

Achkasov V.A. Ethnopolitical science: Textbook. SPb.: Publishing house St. Petersburg. Univ., 2005. pp. 86-105.

Malakhov V.S. Nationalism as a political ideology: Textbook. M.: KDU, 2005. P.30-36.

Nationalism in late and post-communist Europe: in 3 volumes / [under general. ed. E. Yana]. M.: Russian Political Encyclopedia (ROSSPEN), 2010. T.1. Failed nationalism of multinational and partially national states. P.43-47, 78-86, 97-99, 212-214.

Political Science: Encyclopedic Dictionary. M.: Publishing house Mosk. commercial Univ., 1993. P.212-213.

Tishkov V.A. Ethnology and politics. Scientific journalism. M.: Nauka, 2001. P.235-239.

Heywood E. Political Science: A Textbook for University Students / Transl. from English edited by G.G. Vodolazov, V.Yu. Belsky. M.: UNITY-DANA, 2005. P.131-137.

NATION(Latin natio - people) is a widespread concept in science and politics, which denotes the totality of citizens of one state as a political community. Hence the concepts: “health of the nation”, “leader of the nation”, “national economy”, “national interests”, etc. In political language, a nation is sometimes simply called a state. Hence the concept of “United Nations” and many terms in the field of international relations. Members of a nation are distinguished by a common civic identity (for example, Americans, British, Spanish, Chinese, Mexicans, Russians), a sense of a common historical destiny and a common cultural heritage, and in many cases, a common language and even religion.

The concept of a civil, or political, nation was established in Europe during the era of the French Revolution. 18th century (in the Middle Ages, nations were called compatriotic communities) in order to contrast the divine origin of monarchical power with the idea of ​​a civil community having the right to create a state, have sovereignty and control power. The concept of “nation” was widely used during the era of the formation of modern states instead of feudal, dynastic and religious political entities. In the states of modern times, along with the establishment of a unified government, market and mass education, cultural and linguistic uniformity spread instead of local originality or along with it, general civil and legal norms, and with it a common identity. This is how nations arose in Europe and in the regions of settler colonies (North America, Australia, New Zealand), as well as in Latin America on the basis of the colonies of Spain and Portugal. In Asia and Africa, the concept of "nation" was borrowed from Europe, especially during decolonization and the formation of sovereign states in the 20th century.

Civil nations were and remain multi-ethnic entities (with the exception of small island states) with varying degrees of cultural and political consolidation. The vast majority of nations include several and sometimes tens or hundreds of ethnic communities speaking different languages ​​and practicing different religions (eg, American, Indian, Malaysian, Canadian, Chinese, Nigerian, Swiss). Typically, the language and culture of the largest ethnic community acquire a dominant (and sometimes official) status in the civil community - the state, and the culture of small groups or groups of immigrant populations, called minorities (see. Minority ethnic ), subject to assimilation and discrimination. According to national legislation and international legal norms, representatives of minorities are equal members of nations and usually consider themselves as such (Indian peoples and naturalized immigrant groups in the Americas; Corsicans and Bretons in France; Scots, Irish, Welsh in England; Quebecers, Indians, Eskimos , immigrant groups in Canada; non-Khan peoples in China; non-Russian peoples in Russia). In a number of countries where the ideology and practice of ethnic nationalism or racism , demographically and (or) politically dominant ethnic communities exclude others from the concept of “nation” and even deny citizenship to the indigenous (non-immigrant) residents of the country, transferring the situation (including by legislative means) into the distinctive scheme of “nation and minorities” or considering the latter "stateless" or "colonizers". This is especially typical for a number of post-Soviet states, in which the number of those who are not included in the category of nation can reach half of the country’s population and make up the majority of residents of its capital (for example, in Latvia).

Unlike previous eras, when the prevailing focus was on the cultural homogeneity of the nation through assimilation mechanisms, in recent decades, due to more intensive immigration, the growth of local identities and group (ethnic) self-awareness, the cultural heterogeneity and ethno-racial diversity of European nations (for example, British, German) has increased. , Italian, French). This process was facilitated by democratization and social movements in defense of human rights and minorities that have unfolded in the world since the beginning. 60s At the same time, modern states are making concerted efforts to form a common civic identity and preserve the integrity of the nation, including through a policy of cultural pluralism and various internal forms of self-determination (cultural and territorial autonomy). Instead of the "melting pot" idea, the symbolic formula of modern nations is much more often "unity in diversity." The idea of ​​national self-determination and a nation state on an ethnic basis still retains some positions today, but in countries experiencing post-communist transformations, it has noticeably strengthened.

Ethnic, regional and religious differences and inequalities, as well as the nature of social order and the political regime of individual states can cause crises and conflicts up to the split of the nation into new national entities-states. For these reasons and under the influence of the ideology of ethnic nationalism in the end. 20th century Several multi-ethnic civil nations collapsed. Instead of the USSR, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia, more than 20 new multi-ethnic civil communities have emerged, where the complex process of forming new nations is underway. At the same time, there was a unification of two culturally related and previously state-divided civil nations in the GDR and the Federal Republic of Germany into one German nation, which includes a number of ethnic and immigrant minorities (Serbs, Russian Germans, Turks, Croats, etc.) . Within civil nations, political and armed movements of separatism or irredentism may arise on an ethnic (tribal), religious or regional basis. Such movements exist in many countries of the world (Great Britain, India, Spain, Italy, Canada, China, Sri Lanka, many African countries), and they pose a major threat to the integrity and peaceful development of civil nations. After the collapse of the USSR, such movements, including in the form of an armed recession, arose in Azerbaijan, Georgia, Moldova, and Russia.

There is also a widespread understanding of a nation as an ethnic community or ethnonation (in the domestic tradition - as a type of ethnos), which is understood as a historically emerged and stable ethnosocial community of people with a common culture, psychology and self-awareness. The concept of a cultural nation has its origins in the ideology of Austro-Marxism and Eastern European social democracy and spread in the 20th century. during the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman and Russian empires. After World War I, multi-ethnic states were formed based on the doctrine of national self-determination of Eastern Europe, as well as Finland.

In the USSR, the communist doctrine and regime adopted the concept of ethno-nation and internal “nation-state building”, which was reflected in the administrative structure of the country (territorial autonomies of various levels for the main non-Russian peoples) and in other forms institutionalization "socialist nations and nationalities". During the existence of the USSR, the social construction of many Soviet nations took place on the basis of administrative-state formations and due to the abolition or weakening of previous local, linguistic, religious and other differences (Azerbaijani, Georgian, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Uzbek and other cultural nations). However, there was also an all-Russian (all-Soviet) identity and historical and political community, in which the ideology of Soviet patriotism and the doctrine of a single Soviet people replaced the doctrine of a civil nation. Ethnic communities (peoples) were called nations, and the actual existing civil nation was called the Soviet people. This understanding has remained in this region of the world to this day.

Ethnic nationalism became one of the important reasons for the collapse of the USSR, and it also poses a threat to civil nation-building in post-Soviet states. A number of new states (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Lithuania, Russia, Ukraine) are aware of the need to transition to the concept of a civil nation, which is beginning to assert itself along with or instead of the concept of ethnonation. However, in post-Soviet states, ethnic nationalism, especially on behalf of the so-called. titular nations, maintains a powerful position in the socio-political discourse and serves as a means of political mobilization, ensuring priority access to power and resources. In Russia, based on the doctrine of a “multinational people” and the practice of ethnic federalism, cultural nations have political and emotional legitimacy. The complex coexistence of two concepts of nation takes place in many multi-ethnic countries: at the level of the state and the official language, the concept of a civil nation is used primarily as a means of consolidating co-citizenship; at the level of ethnic communities, the concept of a cultural nation is used to a greater extent as a means of protecting their interests, political mobilization and protecting collective cultural identity from the threat of assimilation or discrimination from the state and the dominant culture. The ambiguous use of the concept “nation” is becoming increasingly common in modern socio-political discourse, although its ethnic meaning is not recognized by international legal norms and the norms of most states of the world.

The scientific content of the concept of “nation” is the subject of lengthy and unproductive discussions, despite the participation of many prominent scientists and publicists in them as in the past ( I. Herder , O. Bauer , K. Kautsky , M.Weber , P.A. Sorokin , I.A.Berdyaev ), and in modern social science (D. Armstrong, B. Anderson, E. A. Bagramov, Yu. V. Bromley, E. Gellner, L. N. Gumilyov, W. Connor, E. Smith, E. Hobsbow, M. Khroh, P. Chatarji). In world science, there is no generally accepted definition of a nation, especially when it comes to its borders, membership in it, or the nation as a statistical category. Nevertheless, until recently, the understanding of the nation as a real community dominated and retains its position in social science. In this case, the nation is seen as a collective individual (or body) possessing basic needs, (self-)consciousness, a common will, and capable of unified and purposeful collective action. One of these needs is to ensure the conditions for its preservation and development, and from this need flows the desire for autonomy and independence in the form of a separate “national state”. The phenomenon of nationalism in this case is presented as a socio-political phenomenon in which nations are the main authors. The realist (or substantive) ontologization of the nation exists not only in naive sociology and political science, but also in more professional social science discourse, which is still accompanied by attempts to give a scientific definition of this concept.

This vision of the nation is not limited to just pointing to the primordial, deep roots, ancient origin and special spiritual strength of national feelings. The ontological view is actually shared by many proponents of modernist and constructivist approaches, who view the nation as a result of industrialization and the spread of “print capitalism”, as a result of unequal development, the growth of communication and transport networks and, finally, as a result of the powerful integrating influence of the modern state (i.e. It is not nations that create the state, but the state that creates nations). The substantive approach is not limited to only looking at the nation as an “objective reality”, i.e. a community that has objective common characteristics (language, religion, etc.), but it also includes subjective factors of the national community, such as a common myth, historical memory or self-awareness. For in this case, too, the nation is understood as a socially constructed, but still really existing group. In the last decade of the 20th century. a number of new approaches in social theory contributed to a departure from the interpretation of social coalitions (groups) as real, substantial communities. This is primarily an interest in the so-called. network forms and the growing use of the category “network” as a guiding image or metaphor in theory and specific research. The theory of rational action emphasizes individual behavioral strategies and a deeper understanding of the phenomenon of groupness. There is a noticeable departure from structuralist views, in which the group was considered as the initial component of the social structure; instead of the concept of “group,” the constructivist concept of “groupness” is used as a constant property of people to unite, which manifests itself differently and is constructed depending on the context. Finally, postmodern approaches have become widespread, which pay more attention to the problems of fragmentation, ephemerality and erosion of rigid forms and clear boundaries of social groups.

It is becoming increasingly clear that the modern substantive approach to understanding the nation accepts the category of “practice” as analytical. Contained in the practice of nationalism and in the activities of the modern system of states, the idea of ​​the nation as a real community is transferred to the sphere of science and becomes central to the theory of nationalism. It is this phenomenon of the reification of the nation as a social process, as an event, and not just as an intellectual practice, that is noted by a number of modern authors (F. Barth, R. Brubaker, R. Suni, V.A. Tishkov, P. Hall, G.-R. Wicker, T.-H. Eriksen). In the light of this approach, the nation can be considered as a semantic-metaphorical category that has acquired modern history emotional and political legitimacy, but which has not become and cannot be a scientific definition. In turn, the national as a collectively shared image and nationalism as a political field (doctrine and practice) can exist without recognition of the nation as a really existing community.

Literature:

1. Brubaker R. Nationalism Reframed. Nationhood and the National Question in the New Europe. Cambr., 1996;

2. Erikscn Th.-H. Ethnicity and Nationalism. Anthropological Perspectives. L., 1993;

3. Tishkov V. Ethnicity, Nationalism and Conflict in and after the Soviet Union. The Mind Aflame. L., 1997;

4. Suny R.G. The Revenge of the Past. Nationalism, Revolution and the Collapse of the Soviet Union. Stanford, 1993;

5. Wicker H.-R.(ed.). Rethniking Nationalism and Ethnicity. The Struggle for Meaning and Order in Europe. Oxf., 1997.

We easily use the word “nation” in everyday speech, considering it generally accepted and completely understandable to each of us. However, do we know what the definition of the word “nation” is? Where did it come from and in what cases is it appropriate to use it? In this article we will look at these issues.

A little history

The term “nation” is a rather complex definition, because the points of view of scientists and researchers are strikingly different from each other. Ernest Gellner studied the concept of this word from the point of view of modernism. Before the industrialization of mankind, that is, before the need for its education and coordinated work arose, such a concept did not exist. The author wrote that only aristocrats could be united into the concept of “nation” in front of the court, since it was not yet familiar to the lower strata of society. Simply put, ordinary people have not grown up to nationalism. The pre-national state was based on one thing - submission to monarchs. Later, with industrialization, being a citizen came to mean being an equal member of society. That is, a person was not just called a citizen - he felt himself to be part of a single nation.

Definition of what a nation means

Nation - translated from Latin means “tribe”, “people”. This concept was mentioned for the first time in Russian documents at the turn of the 17th-18th centuries as a borrowed concept. It is often used to mean ethnic community or nationality. Only after the Great French Revolution the term “migrated” into Russian-language use. Uvarov in the triad “Orthodoxy. Autocracy. Nationality” mentions the word “nation”, the concept and definition of which echoes “nationality”, in fact, being its synonym. Belinsky wrote in the middle of the 19th century: this word differs from the term “people” in that it covers the entire society, while the latter only covers its lower strata.

What is a nation?

This question, which seems to have a simple answer, is dangerous with many pitfalls, so it should be considered in more detail. In essence, a nation is a social association that is initially not associated with political overtones. That is, first a people arises, and then a nation. For example, Lithuanians initially appeared, and only after that the state of Lithuania arose. In this regard, Soviet politicians were cruelly mistaken when they called Soviet people a nation. They reduced this concept to a political meaning, forgetting that people were not united by culture, biological kinship, or other necessary characteristics. While the idea of ​​a nation is primarily based on the fact that a society of people has a single culture and history. Thus, a full-fledged nation cannot have a single link - there are many of them. Among them are politics, culture, history and other factors.

It is incorrect to call Slavic peoples Russians, since each of them has its own cultural characteristics and its own mentality. Russians are just one of the subgroups of Slavic peoples. With such mistakes, confusion arises, and it becomes unclear where the Russians actually are and where the other Slavic peoples are.

Thus, a nation is a community that arose in the industrial era. In international law, the meaning of the word "nation" is synonymous with the nation state.

Below we consider several definitions of a nation:

1. A nation is a society that is united by a common culture. The concept of “culture” includes norms of behavior, conventions, connections, etc.
2. Two people belong to the same nation only if they themselves recognize each other's belonging to it. That is, a nation is a product of people’s beliefs, their willingness to follow generally accepted rules and norms.

What factors unite a group of people into a nation?

The meaning of the word nation is:

1. Residence in the same territory, where the same legislation applies. Its borders are recognized by other states.
2. Ethnic community. This concept includes culture, language, history, way of life.
3. Developed economy.
4. State. Every people has the right to call itself a nation if it is organized into a state and has its own legislation, management system, etc.
5. National awareness. It is this that plays an extremely important role, because a person must understand that he is part of his people. He must not only respect its laws, but also love it. A people who actually do not consider themselves a nation, even if they have all the above-mentioned characteristics, are considered a people, but not a nation. For example, after the Second World War, the Germans stopped considering themselves a nation, and therefore are simply called the “German people,” but patriotic Americans, essentially being a mixture of many ethnic groups, are a nation. Take last president America: although ethnically Haitian and racially Negro, he is nonetheless an American.

Signs of nationality

The fact that a person has national identity is indicated by such signs as:

• knowledge of the history of one’s people, which is called ethnic memory;
• knowledge of customs and traditions, a sense of respect for them;
• knowledge of native language;
• a sense of national pride, which is inherent in almost every resident of the state.

All these signs indicate that in front of you is a worthy representative of a particular nation. They make you feel special, different from others, but at the same time they give you a sense of belonging to something big - a social whole, an ethnic group, a nation. This knowledge can protect a person from feelings of loneliness and defenselessness in the face of global danger.

Ethnicity and nation - concepts and differences

An ethnic group is a people that has the same culture and lives in the same territory, but is not considered a state due to its absence. Ethnicity is often put on the same level as a nation, balancing these concepts. Others believe that the nation stands a level higher, but at the same time is practically no different from it. However, in reality these terms are completely different. An ethnos is not a state and is considered, rather, a tribe that has its own culture, but is not burdened with national identity. Ethnic groups that have developed historically do not set themselves any political goals, do not have economic ties with neighboring states and are not recognized by them at the official level. But a nation is also a political term that consists of the work of masses of people who set certain goals for themselves and achieve them. Most often they are political in nature. A nation is a social force to be reckoned with.

Instead of a conclusion...

What is a nation, from the point of view of some experts? In fact, if we start from versions of the origin of man (in particular, remember the story of Adam and Eve), each of us has one ethnic group, one people. Each of us is an inhabitant of the Earth, and it is not so important what part of the world you live in, what eye shape and skin color you have - all these nuances have developed historically under the influence of climate.