卷 9, 编号 3 (2024)

The article opens the issue dedicated to the ethnosocial problems of the city. Its authors – the compiler and scientific editor of the issue and the editor-in-chief of Historical Ethnology – substantiate an approach to the topic in relation to the ideology of the journal. It is intended to present manifestations of ethnicity in urban settlements in the broad context of the economic, political, social, historical and cultural processes which occur in them. The sections offered to readers reflect this aim and focus on the following aspects: identifying the directions for studying cities, as laid down in the works of ethnosociology classics; the issues of state national policy as applied to them and the influence of various social factors on interethnic engagement; the topic of urban identity in its relationship with ethnic, regional and all-Russian identities, as well as in the context of the impact on the migration mobility of the population; urban ethno-confessional, linguistic and cultural practices that reflect socio-political and economic changes in the post-Soviet space. A brief overview of the articles presents their main ideas and the perspective chosen by each author on the topic. It is concluded that revealing the dialectical relationship between historical, political, economic and ethnosocial development opens up prospects for further research of the city as a social community.

Background. The processes of industrialisation and modernisation, according to classical sociologists, should lead to the blurring of ethnic differences, but practice shows the opposite trend. The purpose of the paper is to identify the level of civil and ethnic identity in the settlements of different types (metropolis, town, village), and the impact of various factors on its formation.

Materials and methods. The implementation of the research tasks has been achieved on the basis of analysing the data of the nationwide research by the RAS Institute of Sociology “20 years of reform as viewed by Russians”, a series of studies by the International Relations Research Center of the RAS Institute of Sociology in Moscow and the republics on a representative sample, a study conducted by the subdepartment of sociology and personnel management” of Penza State University under the grant “Dynamics of students’ values and attitudes in the Volga Federal District under Russian sociocultural modernisation”, as well as data of the European Social Survey. Sociological survey and secondary analysis methods have been used.

Results. The analysis of the research results showed that civil and ethnic identity in the cities not only lower than in the rural areas, but the significance of ethnic identity in the cities is even a little higher.

Conclusions. The nature of interethnic relations is influenced by many factors, such as the level of education, satisfaction or dissatisfaction with one’s life, the assessment of what people gained or lost in the last decade, the collapse of hopes, anger against corruption and injustice in life. In addition, each factor in conjunction with the others “works” in different ways on every territory. 

Relying on the theoretical and empirical developments of representatives of the Novosibirsk scientific ethnosociological school on ethnosocial issues, the author updates and develops them in the aspect of the special emphasis of the state national policy on cities. In existing doctrinal documents, which have serious conceptual limitations and gaps on basic issues, there is no such emphasis, although it is cities today that set the dominant trends in the ethnosocial dynamics of society and at the same time concentrate the most pressing problems in the sphere of interethnic relations and national politics. The necessity of developing and implementing in practice an effective integration national policy at different levels of social organization, including its regional and local scale, is substantiated. The implementation of this task is associated with considering the city as an interethnic community, which develops in the course of localised ethnosocial processes and which is proposed to be perceived as a complex object of national policy at the municipal level. In contrast to the term “multi-ethnic community”, which is common in the West, the concept of “inter-ethnic community”, according to the author, reflects not only the presence of a certain set of ethnically marked subjects and the difference in their positions in a specific socio-cultural space, but also a certain level of their interdependence and integration. The contradictory patterns of city functioning under the influence of migration processes, which have projections into modern times, are highlighted. The features of the Concept of sustainable ethno-social development of the multinational community of the city of Novosibirsk, which was developed with the participation of the author and adopted as a regulatory document for the implementation of state ethnic policy in the largest municipal formation in Russia, are recorded. It is concluded that in order to create an effective mechanism for managing the ethnosocial development of the urban interethnic community, as well as municipalities in general, it is necessary to expand the powers of local authorities and create real institutional, legal, administrative, financial and personnel capabilities.

The article presents the results of the analysis of interethnic relations of the population of Yakutsk. The ideas existing in the public consciousness about the state of these relations in the republic and their problem areas are summarised. The state and dynamics of the urban ethnosocial situation and attitudes in interpersonal communication are diagnosed (using the case of the city of Yakutsk). The results of a representative sociological survey and expert interviews on topical issues of interethnic relations implemented in different years in the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) have been analysed using the following indicators: assessment of interethnic relations, data on the attitude of citizens to people of other nationalities. Ethnically differentiated assessments of the interethnic interactions of the population of Yakutsk are presented based on their comparison with the opinion of the population of the region as a whole, as well as with the Yakut people living in rural areas and in certain regions of the republic. An analysis of the dynamics of assessments of interethnic relations by residents of Yakutsk shows that they were not stable. In five years, their character has changed from a fairly high tension to mostly favourable assessments. The alarming trends in the development of interethnic relations, identified in 2019–2021 in the context of the events in Triumph and Covid restrictions, have recently changed their vector towards benevolence against the background of increasing satisfaction with the financial situation of certain categories of the population. The assessments of interethnic relations by residents of Yakutsk at the regional and local levels practically do not differ and are generally similar to national ideas. The analysis confirmed the existence of differences in the development of interethnic relations in the urban and rural environments of the region. In cities, especially large ones, relationships are assessed as more complex, but the level of ethnic negativity is lower. The dynamics of ethnic and national attitudes of Sakha and Russian residents of Yakutsk demonstrates a positive trend – more than half of the respondents are characteried by a stable lack of hostility towards people of other nationalities.

Based on the analysis of the results of qualitative and quantitative sociological research, the article characterises the influence of the center-peripheral stratification of regions on the stabi­lity degree of the social identity of the population in the capitals of the republics within the Russian Federation – on the example of Saransk, the administrative center of the Republic of Mordovia, and Izhevsk, the administrative center of the Udmurt Republic. The author evaluates the differences in the central-peripheral self-identification of the elites and the population of the republics, due to differences in the “scale effect” of the resource provision of the republics, as a significant component of the metropolitan identity of the central cities of the republics as “centers for the implementation of other people’s initiatives.”

For example, the status of Izhevsk as the largest city is expressed not only in its comparison to medium-sized cities in the Udmurt Republic, but also in competition with large industrial cities in other regions. The contrast example of the negative impact of the scale effect is demonstrated by Mordovia as a relatively small (with a population of less than a million people) and low-resource region with its capital city of Saransk. The formation of a highly polarized population structure in such a region with a single large city in the absence of medium-sized ones does not prevent a negative comparison with the capital cities of more developed and large regions, forming an idea of their own non-competitiveness and periphery in relation to the largest cities, along with a willingness to join the administrative regions they manage, even at the cost of losing their central status. The results of the study explain the phenomenon of blurring the republican identity among the population of the capital cities of some republics and the dysfunction in their social development, which is expressed in their transformation from the “locomotives of modernization” of the republics into the donors of human resources for more developed regions.

The article examines the formation and manifestation of the identity of the youth of an industrial city using Leninogorsk as an example. The attitude of young people towards the town is affected, above all else, by the social opportunities it provides. It is assumed that this attitude and problems of self-identification with the place of residence may, in turn, affect their migration tenets.

Based on the results of surveys conducted among young people, the study identifies their interests and needs, many of which, from the objective point of view, could be fulfilled in Leninogorsk. An ambivalent attitude towards the town was discovered, more specifically, a generally positive perception coupled with an indispensable desire to leave the settlement. Accordingly, a conclusion about the contradictory nature of young people’s interaction of with their town was drawn. It has been suggested that opening a high-tech manufacture there could become one of the factors in further strengthening the city’s identity and retaining young people in Leninogorsk. Such measures could be facilitated by active involvement on the part of the regional and municipal authorities towards building a positive image of the industrial town.

The article analyses the changes that occurred during the period of independence of Uzbekistan in the religious life and national values of the population of the capital of the republic – the city of Tashkent, which are associated with family rituals.

Based on field data, the author reveals a combination of religious and national aspects in Uzbek family rituals regarding the wedding ritual. The article analyses the views of imams concerning the costs and excesses of its implementation. Through observations of modern Uzbek society, Muslims’ social activities, the analysis of the Muslim clergy sermons at Friday prayers, their work on websites, social networks and instant messengers, the author draws attention to the breadth of discussions by Uzbek imams on family and marriage issues. The influence of the constant efforts of the Muslim clergy on changes in the volume of expenses spent on the ritual life of the Uzbek people is emphasized. It is particularly noticeable in wedding ceremonies. The work reveals transformations in Uzbek family rituals from the point of view of ritual economy.

The article is dedicated to the topic of the social functioning of the Tatar language – a topic that is not losing relevance in the region – and the ethnic aspects of urban identity. Its use in the communication process in public spaces of non-capital industrial cities of Tatarstan has been examined, based on the materials of mass-scale sociological surveys conducted in Naberezhnye Chelny, Nizhnekamsk, Almetyevsk, and Zelenodolsk. The paper analyses the vision and assessments of the Tatars and Russians, who live in the given cities, regarding the situation developing with the use of the language in administrative, medical, preventive, and educational institutions of settlements, in public transport, on the streets and shopping areas, and at mass cultural events. A conclusion is drawn about the similarity of views of representatives of the identified ethnic groups concerning the importance of its presence in the socio-cultural space of the city, which is the result of the long-term language policy of the republic. On the other hand, discrepancies were discovered in their assessments of the frequency of the Tatar language use in different environments. Among other things, this is due to the differences in its perception by Tatars and Russians.

Certain differences in the degree of the Tatar language use between the cities of interest have been noted. It is related to the ethnic composition and, to some extent, the location of the cities. Generally, the language can be heard in the non-capital industrial cities of the republic somewhat more often than in Kazan, with the exception of its satellite city, Zelenodolsk.

The conducted study showed a reasonably high degree of the significance of local identity and the continuing relevance of ethnic identity for residents of the cities in question. At the same time, among the factors in the formation of a positive attitude towards the cities, the ethno-cultural factor (the answer option “there is an opportunity to live among representatives of my nationality and communicate in my native language here”) turned out to be important for a little more or less than a tenth of Tatar townspeople.