CIVILIZATIONAL SPECIFICS OF RUSSIA AS THE EURASIAN “EMPIRE VISE VERSA”

Abstract

Taking into account the achievements of modern methodology of political, sociological, and ethnological analysis, the article deals with the actual problem of scientific identification of the specifics of the Russian Empire in the context of the history of world civilizations. The purpose of the study is to determine both universal and unique features of the domestic state of the imperial era (XVIII — early XX centuries). The main place in the work is given to criticism of the myth of Imperial Russia as being a “prison of nations, which is widely widespread in the historiography. Referring to the methodological development of a large group of foreign and domestic researchers, the author proves that the Russian state pursued such an internal policy with respect to the subject ethnic communities, which was very unusual for a “great colonial power.” The supreme power and the political elite of the Empire patronized non-Russian subjects, but at the same time they enslaved and discriminated against large regional groups of the Russian superethnos. The most disenfranchised in the imperial period of Russian history were the adherents of the Old Believer Orthodoxy, “the Russians squared,” as the modern researcher of the problem identified, who were subjected to unprecedented discrimination. Actually, therefore, according to the author, historical Russia was an “empire vice versa.” More than that, even if it was a “prison,” it was one only for the Russian people being imprisoned. Nevertheless, the study concludes that there are certain opportunities under favorable conditions for its timely positive transformation into a multinational Federation that preserves the accumulated experience of peaceful cohabitation of peoples on the continental spaces of Eurasia.