Authors : Leonid Baltovskij, Vladimir Belous, Stanislav Eremeev and Ivan Radikov
Abstract: For Russia of 21st century, the problem of forming the so called “Russian identity” is topical. Within the framework of renewing the civil society, the modern variant of the national issue topic enters the discourse. This study considers the problem of “identity” whose definition has undergone significant changes. A comparison analysis is used to explore transformations in the meaning of the concept of “identity”. development of man and would harmonically unite traditionalism with modern post-industrial development trends. For social sciences, the task for renovation of the Russian nation is a serious intellectual challenge. Politicians and authority structures need to regard that the objective of modern “political discourse” should be not the self-assertion of power but development of a future society its cultural and human values. Through hermeneutic and ideographic methods, the researchers reveal the topic of identity in the context of social hyperreality a reality that arises as a result of certain discourse practices aimed at the use and consumption of information flows. Because information subjects humans and their consciousness to total programming and design, the researchers look to ethnomethodology to understand and provide a scientific evaluation of the events and facts that trigger ethnic and social choices in the Russia of today. And finally, a culturological method is employed to analyze modern Russian socio-cultural and political activities with its inherent coercive prescriptions. Choosing an identity in Russia is no longer a personal issue but a political one. The term “identification” has come to be understood as a function of coercive prescription: a person should equate oneself with some social or political entity. The pervasive pressure on people to conform limits personal freedom and alienates people from their creative natures. As a result, individual consciousness is completely dependent upon external imperatives, coercive norms and prescriptions. Thus are the simulated character of modern Russian political discourse and its hyperreality revealed. In Russia, the policy of “identification” is becoming a very important instrument for enforcing control over “strangers”. This approach makes it possible to optimize the process of identity project formation and therefore to address “identity” as an existential problem and elicit its true meaning (the self-consciousness of a person) in current post-modernist culture.
Leonid Baltovskij, Vladimir Belous, Stanislav Eremeev and Ivan Radikov, 2017. Modern Russian Political Discourse and Hyperreality. The Social Sciences, 12: 1487-1493.