The problems of relations of ethnic and muslim confessional identity in modern Tatarstan

Abstract

The urgency of the problem under investigation is determined by the fact that reference to the ethno-cultural situation of the population of the Republic of Tatarstan through the prism of the correlation of ethnic and religious identity becomes important in modern conditions of reforming society, searching for mechanism for effective interaction between the federal center and the region, ensuring the political and socio-cultural unity in the modern Russian Federation. The article aims to consider the main trends in terms of the change of ethnic, confessional and socio-cultural spheres in modern conditions under the influence of the political processes. The leading approaches to the problem studied are the methods of comparative analysis of ethno-cultural policy and confessional practices (relating the individuals to the different confessional, social and cultural communities) and statistic, which allowed to have objective results as the trends change in the ethno-cultural situation of the population of the Republic of Tatarstan. This method is used in view of the complexity of building direct correlation dependences between these phenomena, as the impact of the cultural policy on identity is carried out not directly but indirectly through the personal experience of social subjects. The article reveals that the main social functions of its institutions are aimed at developing and supporting ethno-cultural diversity, establishing and preserving ethnic and confessional interaction, combining population on the basis of regional and federal identity. Besides, the article exposes the statistical data that provide a comprehensive characteristic of the correlation of ethnic and confessional identity. It has been substantiated and proved that the main method of regulation of ethno-cultural and confessional issues in the context of global trends in the modern world is the ideology of multiculturalism, which gained the specificity of syncretic and openness in Tatarstan, in contrast with the countries of the West, where there appeared a number of contradictions: 1) this ideology is not able to resolve the problems of social and cultural inequalities, implying a gradual assimilation in the dominant environment of different confessional elements; 2) it meets the open rejection on the part of the population, acting from a position of national exclusiveness. The analysis of the available data leads to the conclusion that a new ethno-cultural policy of the federal government emerged in the 2000s led to the fact that in the middle of the 2010s most of the Muslim and Tatar population of Tatarstan began to identify from the all-Russian positions, an important factor in these tendencies was the position of the official Sunnite clergy. The materials of the article may be useful for those who are interested in the situation in the dynamic multi-ethnic Russian Federation.