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 the largest modern researchers political history, finding out what certain terms meant in different time and what is 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 the union of people on the basis common origin, which initially does not have a 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 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. Cultural differences of each social group serve to disintegrate such a society. In an industrial society, there is already a need for a universal worker with his ability to move. Education is gaining strength written culture, a national language that unites many separate communities within a 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 the 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 a new industrial society, constant economic growth becomes important, which, in turn, depends on the efficiency of each worker. In such a situation it is impossible to social structure, in which an individual’s position was determined not by his effectiveness as a worker, but by his origin.

According to Jürgen Habermas, the success of nation states in the 19th century was 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, was inspired by the idea of ​​a nation with a single culture and history. 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 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 Scotland's kilt and "national" bagpipe music, 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 cultures).

“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 new form religious consciousness."

Before late XVII century, in general, in essence, there were no highlanders as a cultural community. The western part of Scotland was extremely close, culturally and economically, to Ireland and was, in fact, its colony. IN XVIII-XIX centuries there is a rejection of Irish culture and the construction of a single Scottish nation, 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 middle of the 18th century (according to his idea, folk epic the Celts were stolen by the Irish in later Middle Ages). Spread in Germany, France and the USA in the 19th century National symbols- 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 in historical territory Russian state A unique civilizational community has been formed - the 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. Civilizational identity of Russia and Russian nation is based on the preservation of Russian culture and language, the historical and cultural heritage of all peoples of Russia.” Strategy national policy 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.

Nation and ethnicity

2.1 History of origin and formation of the nation

Nation (from Latin natio - tribe, people) is a socio-economic, cultural, political and spiritual community of the industrial era.

The emergence of nations is historically associated with the development of production relations, overcoming national isolation and fragmentation, with the education common system economy, in particular the common market, the creation and spread of a common literary language, common elements of culture, etc. But the formation of nations is not a universal stage in the development of all peoples of the world. Many small peoples (tribes, linguistic and territorial groups) often merge with large nations.

The processes of nation formation are objectively related to the formation of states. Therefore, K. Kautsky considered the national state to be the classic form of state. However, the fate of not every nation is connected with statehood; rather, it is an ideal coincidence. According to the concept of K. Kautsky, the most important factors in the consolidation of people into a nation were commodity production and trade. Most modern nations were born in the process of the formation of bourgeois relations (from the 9th to 15th centuries), but they were formed and developed before capitalism. In countries where development was hampered by colonialism for centuries, this process continues to this day.

The formation of a nation is a complex and lengthy process, in which socio-economic factors play a decisive role. At the same time, the identification of a nation is possible on the basis of its own ethnic properties. The economic and political consolidation of the nation is facilitated by the formation of a single national language and national culture.

On this basis, features are formed national character, national identity arises, which presupposes a commitment to the national language, territory, culture, feeling national pride, as well as certain ethnic stereotypes that accumulate the collective experience of attitudes towards one’s nation and other ethnic groups.

The national question in Russia

The concepts used when considering the national question are too ambiguous to be used without additional explanation. The key concept is the nation. There are at least three options for understanding it...

The national question in Russia

In demography, a special place is occupied by the issues of studying the level of social and cultural development of nations, their consolidation, assimilation, integration, interethnic marriages, bilingualism, development of national identity...

Typology social communities by degree of stability and by size and other criteria

“A clear understanding of observing your duty to people is your true freedom. The more humanely and consciously you observe your duty to people, the more you draw from the inexhaustible source of true human happiness - freedom."

Characteristics of ethnic processes. The problem of the relationship between ethnicity and nation

Often an equal sign is placed between the concept of “nation” and the concepts of “people” and “ethnic group”. In fact, the French are a people, an ethnic group, and they are also a nation. This naturally suggests the conclusion: an ethnic community (people) and a nation are one and the same thing...

Ethnic communities. Nations and national relations. Types and forms of state

Nation is highest form ethnic community of people, the most developed, historically stable, united by economic, territorial-state, cultural, psychological and religious characteristics. Some scientists believe...

Ethnocultural conditions as mesofactors of socialization

Ethnicity (or nation) is a historically established, stable collection of people with a common mentality, national identity and character, stable cultural characteristics...

History shows that the word form “Russian nationality” in relation to a specific ethnic group did not become commonly used in Russia even by the beginning of the twentieth century. You can give a lot of examples when famous Russian figures were actually of foreign blood. The writer Denis Fonvizin is a direct descendant of the German von Wiesen, the commander Mikhail Barclay de Tolly is also German, the ancestors of General Peter Bagration are Georgians. There is nothing even to say about the ancestors of the artist Isaac Levitan - and so everything is clear.

Even from school, many remember the phrase of Mayakovsky, who wanted to learn Russian only because Lenin spoke this language. Meanwhile, Ilyich himself did not consider himself a Russian at all, and there is numerous documentary evidence of this. By the way, it was V.I. Lenin who first in Russia came up with the idea of ​​​​introducing the column “nationality” in documents. In 1905, members of the RSDLP reported in questionnaires about their affiliation with a particular nation. Lenin in such “self-denunciations” wrote that he was a “Great Russian”: at that time, if it was necessary to emphasize nationality, the Russians called themselves “Great Russians” (according to the dictionary of Brockhaus and Efron - “Great Russians”) - the population of “Great Russia” ”, called by foreigners “Muscovy”, which has been constantly expanding its possessions since the 13th century.

And Lenin called one of his first works on the national question “On the National Pride of the Great Russians.” Although, as Ilyich’s biographers found out relatively recently, there were actually “Great Russian” blood in his pedigree - 25%.

By the way, in Europe, nationality as belonging to a certain ethnic group was a commonly used concept already in the 19th century. True, for foreigners it was equivalent to citizenship: the French lived in France, the Germans lived in Germany, etc. In the overwhelming majority foreign countries this identity has been preserved to this day.

The topic "Countries and Nationalities" is studied at the very beginning elementary level. If you open any textbook at this level, one of the first lessons will definitely touch on the topic of countries and nationalities. This is because using the names of different nationalities, it is convenient to practice the use of the verb to be.
From the very first lessons, students learn how to form the names of nationalities from the names of countries, but the list of words covered is usually small: a maximum of twenty of the most popular countries and nationalities. This is enough to get you started, but you will need more knowledge to further explore. In this article we will explain the basic rules by which the names of nationalities are formed, and also talk about the various features of using these words.

First of all, please remember that names of countries, languages, nationalities in English are written with a capital letter.

An adjective can be formed from the name of any country using a specific suffix. For example:

Italy - Italy; Italian - Italian, Italian - Italian.

Do you speak Italian? - Do you speak Italian?
I like Italian food. - I love Italian food.
He is from Italy. He is Italian. - He's from Italy. He's Italian.

As you can see, the same word, derived from the name of a country, can be used in different ways. This adjective is the name of the language of this country and the name of the nationality. Many students, for example, forget about these derivative words and simply use the name of the country (Japan food, Spain singer, and so on). The name of a country cannot be an adjective, nor can it describe the nationality or language of the country, so do not make such mistakes.

Please note that the name of the nationality and the language of the country do not always coincide. For example, in Brazil (Brazil), although there are Brazilians (Brazilians), they speak Portuguese (Portugese). Same with Arab countries, where the nationality of the country does not match the language (Arabic).

However, it is impossible to classify all suffixes according to any one criterion; there are always exceptions. Let's take the suffix -ESE as an example: it would seem to combine with the names of countries in Asia and Africa, but it also forms adjectives from the names of some countries in Europe and South America.

Let's look at the main suffixes that are used to form adjectives from country names:

As mentioned earlier, many adjectives that can be formed using suffixes serve as names for languages ​​spoken in a particular country. In addition, these adjectives, when combined with nouns, describe something characteristic of that country:

French literature - French literature
Japanese food - Japanese food
Mexican traditions - Mexican traditions
Egyptian culture - Egyptian history

To talk about nationalities in general, there are several ways in English, which we will now get acquainted with.

1. The + ADJECTIVE

From the article about you know that the can be combined with adjectives when the adjective denotes a group of people:

The Chinese are very traditional. - The Chinese are very traditional.
The Americans like fast food. - Americans love fast food.

Have you noticed that in the given examples the word Americans is used with the ending -S, while Сhinese is used without the ending? There are a few rules to remember about this:

If nationality-adjectives have endings -SH, -CH, -SS, -ESE, -I then they do not have a plural form (no -S is added to them):

the French - the French
the Swiss - the Swiss
the Japanese - the Japanese
the Scottish - the Scots
the Iraqi - Iraqis
the Israeli - the Israelis

Adjectives with endings -AN and some others have plural forms. These adjectives (unlike the above) can also act as nouns:

the Ukrainians - Ukrainians
the Brazilians - Brazilians
the Greeks - the Greeks
the Thais - residents of Thailand

2. ADJECTIVE + PEOPLE

Any nationality can be designated using the word people in combination with an adjective. The article the is not needed:

Chinese people - Chinese
Italian people - Italians
English people

3. Nouns.

Some nationalities have special nouns that do not match adjectives. These nouns can be used when talking about all representatives of a nationality:

Denmark - the Danes
Finland - the Finns
Great Britain- the British
Poland - the Poles
Scotland - the Scots
Spain - the Spaniards
Sweden - the Swedes
thе Netherlands - the Dutch
Turkey - the Turks

If you're talking about one person, then if this nationality has a noun, you can use it:

an American - American
an Italian - Italian
a Pole - Pole
a Turk - Turk
a Spaniard is Spanish
a Briton - British
a Swede - Swede

If there is no noun, or you want to clarify the gender of the person, then use the formula ADJECTIVE + MAN/ WOMAN/ BOY/ GIRL:

an English boy
a Chinese woman
a French man(can be written together: a Frenchman)
an English man(can be written together: an Englishman)

IN English language there is a term demonym(from Greek demos- people and onym- Name). This term is intended to describe the people living in a certain area. These are the names of nationalities, ethnic groups, residents of a particular area or a particular city. All the above adjectives and nouns derived from the names of countries are demonyms. Demonyms are formed mainly by suffixation:

London - Londoner - resident of London
Kiev - Kiev - resident of Kyiv
Rome - Roman - resident of Rome

In this article we will not provide a list of all nationalities and other demonyms. To begin with, you just need to know the names of the nationalities of large and frequently mentioned countries. If the need arises, you can easily find lists of all nationalities without exception on the Internet. The main thing is to remember general rules and constantly expand your knowledge. And don't forget to subscribe to our updates! I wish you success!

One of the reasons for the two world wars for which the twentieth century became famous was nationalism. Largely because of the easy-to-come-to-mind analogy between “nationalism” and “Nazism,” this word has become almost indecent. Which, however, should not exclude scientific analysis this complex phenomenon. Moreover, modern states did not arise at all as a result of “ immaculate conception"in the minds of the founding fathers, but as a result of the development of the national movement, which often lasted many centuries.

Science begins with a definition. An attempt to define what a nation is immediately shows the complexity of this concept. And, oddly enough, the best definition is that formulated by I.V. Stalin at the beginning of the twentieth century:

A nation is a historically established stable community of people that arose on the basis of a common language, territory, economic life and mental makeup, manifested in a common culture.

Nations are now seen as "imagined communities", the product of industrial development over three centuries. last centuries. As a result of the consolidation of production, the emergence of new means of communication, universal education, and standardization of the language of communication, it became possible to unite people into very large, previously non-existent communities. These communities, as it turns out, can include various ethnic groups that differ from each other in language, religion, and even race. They are united only by national ideology (or national idea), roughly speaking, a fairy tale that everyone believes because it is taught in school.

For example, the national idea of ​​the USA, a state that arose as a state of emigrants, is the constitution and the unconditional primacy of the law based on this constitution. And the national idea of ​​France is the French language and French culture.

In fact, development national idea occurs during the development nation state. This development occurs differently in each state. Certain parameters can be put forward as a national idea, depending on which the life and even the existence of a nation can be more or less successful.

Examples of unsuccessful national ideas are Nazism and communism. Well, these guys failed to gather people under the banner of a new idea and “forge” them into a new people!

Problems with the national idea arise in multi-ethnic countries such as India or Indonesia. Even in Belgium they have not yet developed a national idea equally inspiring to two different people, forming the Belgian political nation. But the Chinese nation, which united many different ethnic groups, even completely different languages speakers, arose during thousand years of history and is currently a fact. A much shorter history united the different and multilingual ethnic groups living in the center of Europe into one Swiss Confederation and one Swiss nation. The process of forming a new political nation is now underway in Ukraine.

Nation and nationality

The concept of “nation” is not equivalent to the concept of “nationality”. Moreover, Russian word"nationality" does not correspond to the English "nationality". The latter stands for "citizenship". For example, “Swiss”, “American”, “British”, “Israeli”. The Russian word “nationality” denotes ethnicity, which in English is denoted by the word “ethnicity”. The picture is similar in comparison with other European languages.

The concept of “nationality” in the multinational Soviet Union was to a large extent a result of bureaucratization. There was a list of nationalities, including citizens of foreign states (French, Turks, Chinese, Hungarians, Bulgarians), titular peoples of the allies (Ukrainians, Belarusians, Georgians, etc.) and peoples autonomous republics, territories and regions (Tatars, Bashkirs, Abkhazians, Chechens, Ossetians, etc.). This list did not include ethnic groups. Cossacks and Pomors were considered, for example, Russians, and Rusyns living in Transcarpathia were considered Ukrainians.

The bureaucratic origin of the concept of “nationality” was emphasized by the fact that the passport had a corresponding column (the notorious “fifth column”), which could not be empty and which had to contain an entry from the above-mentioned list. At the age of sixteen, when receiving a passport, a citizen indicated his nationality of his own free will. Anyone born into a family where parents were of the same nationality was deprived of a choice. In this case, the nationality of the parents was recorded in the fifth column. But in a mixed family, you could choose either the nationality of the father or the nationality of the mother. At the same time, knowledge of the national language did not matter at all. This is how citizens of the USSR appeared, having some nationality, but national language those who do not speak (“Siberian” Ukrainians, “metropolitan” Georgians, Jews who do not know Yiddish). On the one hand, this showed the limited understanding of the concept of “nationality” in the international state that the USSR proclaimed itself to be. On the other hand, there were serious restrictions based on nationality. So a young person receiving a passport was often advised to choose a “convenient” nationality.

There were also anecdotal cases. One smart guy Jewish nationality When he issued his passport, he called himself “Jew.” The passport officer wrote “Indian” in the appropriate column. When exchanging the passport, “Indian” was replaced by “Indian” (it turns out that there was such a nationality on the official list). And so they brought up the Indian Rabinovich in their team :)

Veselukha

Currently, in Russia, citizens have the right to independently determine their nationality. Nationality is not recorded in the passport, and ethnicity is only asked during censuses. As a result, nationalities emerged that Soviet leaders and never dreamed of: Cossacks, Pomors, Scythians, even hobbits and elves (warm greetings to Professor Tolkien). Among the answers given during the 2010 All-Russian Population Census were “crossbreed,” “Soviet,” “man of the world,” “foreigner,” and “internationalist.” There were also “Katsaps”, “Bulbashes”, “Chukhons”, “Chaldons”, “Skobari” and even “Pharaohs”. Oh, and the little people have blossomed!