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environment, i.e. into the natural surroundings. Not until much later,
J. Habermas would propose a vertical-horizontal structure of identity,
which, however, would not close the issue regarding whether social or
personal identity dominates.
Simultaneously, the theory of identity is developing within the
activity approach, where it is understood as the generating quality of
activities – the basis for forming meanings, thinking, and the subjective
perception of the objective reality (Russian researchers A.N. Leontiev and
S.L. Rubinstein). The interpretation of identity as the sameness of behavior
profiles along with the perception of others, the self-conceptions, and
distorted image-structures of figures influenced by the background
saturation and the completeness of forms, is represented in the AustrianGerman humanistic area of psychoanalysis – Gestalt psychology (Ch. von
Ehrenfels (1890), M. Wertheimer (1912), W. Köhler (1947), and K. Koffka
(1935)). In the field theory of behavior that considers both the intrinsic
motives of actions and the valence of external objects (K. Lewin), the
identity is produced by the possibility of realizing the locomotion between
‘regions’. K. Lewin portrays a human as a closed shape, the peripheries of
which separate the object from its life space and, at the same time, subtilize
the part’s feeling of belonging to the whole.
Finally, having processed the metatheoretic experience of learning
identity from the beginning of the 19th till the 20th century, the identity
becomes ‘sociologized’, i.e. it opens out within the conceptual space of
sociology in the context of social behaviorism, and acts as the core category
for social constructivists, such as P. Berger and T. Luckmann (1995), and of
symbolic interactionists, such as G. Mead (1934) and Ch. H. Cooley. They
supposed the process of personal identification to be only possible if
‘others’ are present, through interacting with them, internalizing ‘important
others’, and forming a ‘generalized other’. Following Ch. H. Cooley and his
‘Looking Glass Self’, the identity as a component of the self-conception
was represented in the works of E. Goffman, Sh. Stryker, and R. Fogelson.
R. Fogelson’s concept of opposite identities is known through the identity
classification he proposed: A ‘real’ identity, which an individual thinks
closely approximates an accurate representation of the self; an ideal
identity, an image of itself that one wishes to realize; a feared identity,
which one values negatively and wishes to avoid; and a claimed identity
that is presented to others for confirmation, challenge, or negotiation in an
effort to move the ‘real’ identity closer to the ideal and further from the
RUSSIAN SOCIETY AND RUSSIAN CIVIL IDENTITY
11
feared identity. E.Goffman recognizes forming and activating the identity
within the process of social interaction, too, and interprets it as a complex
of symbolic differences from others. Sh. Stryker, as a representative of
structural symbolic interactionism, proposes the concept of interiorizing the
social positions of a person, where the key category is self-understanding
while interacting with others and the awareness of one’s role in social
processes. The sociological analysis of religious identity evolution and
configurations is given in the works of A.N. Krylov, a Russian and Berlin
social philosopher.
Pre-classically, the notion of ‘identity’ started to be used late in the
19th century, due to the outstanding psychologist W. James. The basis for
the identity theory was laid by S. Freud, although the psychologist did not
actually define the term and never presented it in his research works outside
the context of the theory of developing the sexual individuality; he just
mentioned it at one of his public talks, speaking about his own ethnical
identity. Later, E. Erikson would note that there were Freud’s works where
he discovered the term of ‘internal identity’, not yet formulated, but
frequently indirectly denoted and used by the famous psychoanalyst as the
basis of the meaning of life. A hint at a distinguished position of identity in
personal development and at the necessity to maintain its stability is traced
in Freud’s paper titled The Neuro-Psychoses of Defence (1894), where he
described self-relation as a mechanism of psychological defense in
unbalanced conditions and critical real-life situations. In his research work
titled Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego, S. Freud speaks of
identity as an expression of an emotional tie; while his work titled Ego-
Ideal describes how one’s self-relation to one’s parents or surrogate parents
in combination with infantile self-idealization and narcissism forms a
substructural instance of Super-Ego. The classical idea of identity and the
first occurrence of the term ‘identity’ in academic circles in the 20th century
are related to the name of E. Erikson, an American psychologist,
psychoanalyst, a disciple of P. Federn, S. Freud, and A. Freud. In his
psychosocial concept of identity represented in his research works titled
Childhood and Society (1950) and Identity: Youth and Crisis (1968), the
scientist postulated the continuity, integrity, dynamism, and dimension of
self at each development phase within the lifecycle. These are Erikson’s
works that allowed terminological categories, such as ‘identity crisis’, ‘ideal
identity’, ‘ego identity’, and ‘identity disorder’, to be included into the
framework of categories in the academic community of modern times. In
RUSSIAN SOCIETY AND RUSSIAN CIVIL IDENTITY
12
the postmodern interpretation, identity is transformed, the borders of selfconsciousness become blurred, and multiple terms denoting artificial
identification, i.e. the ‘parody of identity’ as its destruction, are introduced
(M. Foucault). In the context of instable positive identity and popular
discussions on identity disorders, the term of ‘identity capital’ is introduced,
which indicates the high estimate of its social importance.
E. Erikson’s theory proceeds on the basic conceptual ideas of
Freud’s theory, particularly, on the stages of personal psychophysiological,
sexual, and cognitive development, i.e. 1. Oral stage, 2. Anal stage,
3. Phallic stage, 4. Latent stage, and 5. Genital stage. Erikson perfected the
concept of stages by having developed a graphical scheme of eight
successfully occurring lifecycle stages, which allows tracking the basic
purpose-orientation-values, as well as the identity evolution and crises of
the given age period. E. Erikson created his world-famous eight-phase
epigenetic model of psychosocial personal development, according to
which, at each stage of his or her development, a person experiences certain
events, such as critical situations and unbalanced conditions opening new
values and capabilities that are the basis for transiting to another stage and a
necessary condition of further evolution. According to E. Erikson, social
identity evolves over time from self-identification through self-statusing,
i.e. equipping the self with social sense and evaluating the set of one’s
internal images from the perspective of the social environment. In his
works, E. Erikson uses, along with the personal-social identity dichotomy,
the formulation of ego identity or self-identity as the key property of
personality, which some researchers prefer to interpret as the genuineness
of the existence, congruence, authenticity, rectitude – sincerity –
commitment to the first principles, originality, etc.
Erikson’s identity correlates with the concepts of ‘self’ (from
German das Selbst – ‘self’, ‘one's own personality’; C. G. Jung, M. Klein,
H. Kohut, W. Reich, and R. Assagioli), ‘postulated identity’ and
‘individualization’ as liberation from the predetermined social role in the
individualized society theory (Z. Bauman), ‘compensation for individual
weakness and striving for superiority’(A. Adler), ‘self-actualization’ and
‘self-realization’ (K. Goldstein), ‘sense of Self’ (S. Huntington), the ‘true
self and false self’ of British psychoanalyst D. W. Winnicott, ‘personal
spirit’ in the theory of archetypal defences of Jung’s analyst D. Kalsched,
‘individuation’ of C. Jung, etc. Starting from the 19th century, a large
number of authors tried to represent the structure of identity. However, the
RUSSIAN SOCIETY AND RUSSIAN CIVIL IDENTITY
13
systematization of all existing approaches allows distilling the following
groups:
1) Approaches representing a horizontal – multiple structure (co-
existence of subpersonalities perceived by the mind as isolated ones,
correlating with a certain internal image from a set of the personalityimaginal variables, each of which determines human behavior, lifestyle,
motives, needs, etc.);
2) Appoaches representing a vertical – multilevel structure (Self as
a set of structural units in their integrity,such as the classical representation
of the interacting personal/social and internal/external subidentities, as well
as three-/four-/five-level models).
Theoretical analysis of the works published by Russian and foreign
researchers allow us to identify the different bases of typical identity
configurations in socio-humanistic studies:
1) Personal (physical, moral, and intellectual self-
identification) / social (identification of oneself as one-natured with a
certain social group); the author of this classification of the late
19th century is W. James, the outstanding scientist and the originator of
modern psychology; social ‘horizontal’ identities are divided into territorial
(instinct), natural (corporeal), cultural (spiritual), and agent (professional)
identities – V.M. Capitsyn 2.
2) Positive (identification on the basis of interiorizing
the sociocultural meanings) / negative (or black, or surrogate), leads to
indentificational hesitation / mixed, or hybrid (according to E. Erikson);
3) Prescribed / achieved / situative identification.
4) Self now / ‘ideal’ self (self in future).
5) Sexual, gender identity.
6) Civil, national identity.
7) State, civilizational, and territorial identity.
8) Cultural, ethnic, religious, and race identity; the methodical
decomposition of religious identity by Russian researcher A.N. Krylov
allows us to distinguish its anthropological, social, theological,
phenomenological, secular, historical, and geographical dimensions.
2
Capitsyn, V.M. (2014), Identichnosti: sushchnost, sostav, dinamika (diskurs i opyt
vizualizatsii) (Identities: The nature, composition, dynamics (the discourse and
experience of visualization)). In: Capitsyn, V.M. ed. PolitBook, Vol. 1. P. 8–32.
(In Russian).
RUSSIAN SOCIETY AND RUSSIAN CIVIL IDENTITY
14
9) Real / projective identification – a constructed identity realized
as an attempt of psychological defense and represented in affecting the
others’ perception of one's image (H. Kohut); Conscious / ‘unconscious’
identification, where a person intuitively chooses somebody's behavior
models and identifies him or herself with a certain social subject
(O. Kernberg);
10) Corporate, consumer, cyberspace, and club 3 identities (by the
functional sociocultural modes of activities);
11) ‘Concordant’, or emphatic, identity (where the psychologist
analyzes the patient’s personality, identifying through him or herself the
separate parts of the patient’s personality) / ‘complementative’ (the patient
perceives the psychoanalyst as an intra-object), according to H. Racker
(1968).
Taking the side effects of transformation into consideration, some
Russian researchers denote the identity of today’s people, especially that of
youth, as diffuse, spreading, or dispersing. Diffuse identity is a
compensatory psychosocial program optimizing the globalizing shifts in the
axiological fundamentals of modern cultures 4, i.e. the adapted and
modernized version of civil identity. We should also note that the Russian
identity initially means the content-based duality: 1) Formal legal content,
i.e. a common attribution for Russian citizens; and 2) Real content – the
internally realized affiliation to the Russian polyethnic entity, i.e. nationalstate identity 5. This complex structure and the diffuseness of identity just
3
Tuzikov, A.R. and Zinnurova, R.I. (2015) Sotsiokulturniye osnovaniya
mnozhestvennoy identichnosti sotsialnykh grupp molodezhi v sovremennykh
obshchestvakh: kontseptualizatsiya i problema izmereniy [Social and Cultural
Bases of the Multiple Identities if Social Youth Groups in Modern Societies:
Conceptualizing and the Problem of Measuring]. In: The Review of Economy, the
Law and Sociology. No. 4. P. 338–341. (In Russian).
4
Silantyeva, M.V. (2012) Diffuznaya identichnost – sovremennaya versiya
grazhdanskoy identichnosti [Diffused Identity – A Modern Version of Civil
Identity]. In: MGIMO Review of International Relations. N. 2. P. 173. (In Russian).
5
Arutyunyan, Yu.V. (2009) Rossiyane: problemy formirovaniya natsionalno-
grazhdanskoy identichnosti v svete dannykh etnosotsiologii [The Russians:
Problems of Developing the National and Civil Identity in Light of EthnoSociological Data]. In: Arutyunyan Yu.V. ed. In: Obshchestvennyye nauki i
sovremennost [Social Sciences and Contemporaneity]. Vol. 4. P. 91. (In Russian).
RUSSIAN SOCIETY AND RUSSIAN CIVIL IDENTITY
15
compound the issue of the identification and place of each individual and
each ethnos within the social space. Thus, the intolerance of the young
generation in globalized space is often determined by searching identity that
would determine the ways of behaving inside and outside the own group.
Manifestation of intolerance towards other ethnic groups is considerably
influenced by the cultural distance and the integrity level of an ethnic
group 6. Some researchers confirm the relation of youth’s extremist
sentiments to the issues of identity. For instance, A. Gaivoronskaya
concludes that “the structure of the community identity of extremist
organizations can provide a psychological basis for individual behavior
where the group identity is formed at the personal level” 7. For example, in
the Republic of Tatarstan (RT), 64.9 % of the respondents feel like the
citizens of the Russian Federation (RF) to the full, while 66.8 % of them
feel like the citizens of the RT. 25.6 % of the respondents feel like the
citizens of the RF not to the full. For the RT, the share of those having such
feeling is 19 %. Only 4.5 % of the respondents do not feel like full-value
citizens of the RF, and 10 % – of the RT8. Unfortunately, young people
actively engaged in civic activities are easiest to be recruited into fringe
groups, which can be explained through the shrewd misconception of
patriotism and, more frequently, of moderate nationalism denoted in the
modern discourse with the oxymoron of ‘healthy’ nationalism and with the
ideological illusions of false patriotism, i.e. the extreme forms of ethnonationalism, chauvinism, and xenophobia, all dragging the youth to the
6
Kazakov, N.Yu. Ekstremizm v obshchestve: sushchnost, formy proyavleniya,
sotsialnaya baza, problemy i puti preodoleniya [Extremism in a Society: Essence,
Forms of Appearance, Social Basis, Problems, and Ways to Override].
In: Kazakov, N.Yu. and Solovyanov, S.E. eds. – URL:
http://oad.rags.ru/vestnikrags/issues/issue0310/031009.htm (In Russian).
7
Gaivoronskaya, A.A. (2012) Polifonichnost fenomena ekstremizm v sotsialno-
psikhologicheskikh issledovaniyakh [Polyphony of the Phenomenon of Extremism
in Social and Psychological Studies]. In: Gaivoronskaya, A.A. ed. In: NB:
Psikhologiya i psikhotekhnika [Psychology and Psychotechnics]. N. 1. P. 110.
URL: http://www.e-notabene.ru/psp/article_124.html (In Russian).
8
Zinurova, R.I. (2013) Osobennosti grazhdanskogo samosoznaniya i patriotism v
molodezhnoy srede Respubliki Tatarstan [Civil Consciousness and Patriotism
within the Youth Population of the Republic of Tatarstan]. In: Zinurova R.I.,
Tuzikov A.R., Alekseev S.A. and Lipatova T.N. eds. In: Herald of Kazan
Technological University. N. 6. P. 265. (In Russian).
RUSSIAN SOCIETY AND RUSSIAN CIVIL IDENTITY
16
practical implementation of ethnic discrimination and to the incitement of
ethnic hatred. Thus, it is necessary to accumulate the identity capital among
young people and proactively develop traditional values, tolerance, sense of
responsibility, patriotism, and civic consciousness.
One of the topics that is of considerable interest for the Russian and
foreign academic community is the phenomenon of individual identity.
Over a number of centuries, the human society has been developing.
The mankind has run a gamut, from the simplest tribal relations through the
information-oriented society offering multiple communications and
technologies that open the floodgates of distances and cultural and
traditional limits.
Many processes that have been less active before are now
developing quicker and more efficiently. A modern individual has a large
number of possibilities to find like-minded people or the followers of the
same world view. Previously, without the information-oriented society, an
individual could hardly establish communications to the outer world outside
his or her own culture or state.
Now, with the information space being open and equipped with
advanced technology and means of communication, it is easier to the
individual to find an acceptable social circle, within which he or she can
disclose his or her thoughts and discuss topics of interest without fears of
being wasted upon or having no response or reflexion. Thus, with
communication links and social perception being complicated, the process
of individual and group identification becomes more complex. On the basis
of communicative responses and communication, the individual identifies
him or herself with other groups of individuals.
He or she becomes a kind of a member of a certain group and plays
his or her role determined by by his or her position within one social entity
or another. Identifying him or herself with a certain group of people, the
individual performs social actions determining his or her belonging to
specific convictions, a line of statements, and value judgments on a certain
phenomenon. Various groups of individuals may get different views
regarding the same social object, which is often the reason for
contradictions, conflicts, and active controversies.
It means that social identity is not a normal phenomenon, but a kind
of a reason or basis that forms the strategic attitudes of the active behavior
of an individual or a group of people. An individual, accepting the values
and references of the surrounding society, starts performing socially
RUSSIAN SOCIETY AND RUSSIAN CIVIL IDENTITY
17
beneficial activities, social procurement, and everything he or she can do to
contribute to the development of his or her social group. This is the positive
function of social identity. However, social identity may appear moth
positively and negatively. Thus, individuals may build up their identities,
based on the views of social groups that do not accept the global values of
democracy, personal liberty, or the principles of humanity.
This raises a question of whether it is possible to change the social
identity of an individual. Considering the vast flood of information, a
person integrated into social processes may change his or her identity
together with the relevant views, which results in changing his or her value
system, references, and world views. Accordingly, he or she can reconceptualize his or her social role, changing his or her behavior and
actions. It is clear that multiple questions regarding social identity relate to
the individual’s activity, information perception quickness, and ability to
analyze and forecast the changes in social reality.
Nevertheless, at a theoretical level, it is possible to derive the
general principles of social identity that are more or less characteristic of
every person. In other words, the commonly known theories and conceptual
ideas developed by well-known sociologists contain universals that can be a
basis for the methodology of the empirical studies regarding the
phenomenon of the social identity of individuals or groups of people.
The phenomenon of the person’s social identity has been studied by
researchers representing different research areas for a long time, which has
helped accumulate a considerable knowledge capital in these themes. At the
same time, the change of cultural and historical periods that had resulted in
the changes of scientific paradigms determined the necessity to consider the
problematic area of the individual’s social identity within the changing
contexts, such as cultural, historical, or scientific contexts.
The importance of studying the problems of social identity at the
times of the Art Nouveau (late 19th and the first half of the 20th century) was
caused by the emerging possibility for the person to determine his or her
social space. These features can be clearly retraced in the works of the Art
Nouveau period. F.S. Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby and G.B. Shaw’s
play Pygmalion write about the topic of building up the social identity of a
person through his or her social position being shifted by him or herself.
The non-classical stage in the scientific knowledge genesis
corresponded to the cultural and historical age of the Art Nouveau. Within
the non-classical paradigm, the phenomenon of social identity gained the
RUSSIAN SOCIETY AND RUSSIAN CIVIL IDENTITY
18
status of an independent scientific term 9. E.Erikson was the first to propose
it in representing the identity components. He used the idea of the role of
unconscious and stated that identity was related to the individual’s
conscious perception and non-conscious striving, i.e. it acted as a criterion
of ego-synthesis activity to “maintain the internal solidarity with the group
ideals.”
E.Erikson’s theory became fundamental within the scientific
discourse devoted to social identity, while the terms of ‘development
objectives’ and ‘development crises’ started to be used within the
terminology of social psychology and developmental psychology. Erikson’s
psychosocial development model represented one of hierarchy model of
individual development throughout one’s life with certain stages. Such
models assumed the psychological universality of development process of
all people, and they proposed the person’s passing a linear sequence of
certain stages, as the main principle of development.
However, E.Erikson’s model presumed a serious difference –
taking into consideration the role of the cultural and historical context of the
person’s development. E. Erikson’s theory occurred at a certain cultural and
historical moment where the search for such universals seemed to be
reasonable – at the age of the Art Nouveau suggesting beliefs in science and
in the progress of human thought. However, even now, due to its
universality and interdisciplinarity, it continues to be actual, and the model
itself is widely acknowledged by researchers as a basis for understanding
the process of human development.
The key functions of identity, according to E.Erikson, are its
adapting function (in the broad sense) and its organizing function. Identity
is built up within the interaction with other people and represents a basis for
constructing the world view shared with other people and stable
interpersonal relations. Psychosocial identity differs from the contemporary
term with the high level of self-determination and is defined through the
characteristics of a person, due to which the person divides his or her social
9
Kutkovaya, E.S. (2015) Sravnitelny analiz diskursivnogo i narrativnogo
podkhodov k issledovaniyu identichnosti [Comparative Analysis of Discoursive
and Narrative Approaches to Research in Identity]. Dissertation in support of
candidature for a psychology degree. In: Kutkovaya, E.S. ed. Moscow. P. 32–40
(In Russian).
RUSSIAN SOCIETY AND RUSSIAN CIVIL IDENTITY
19
environment into those similar to and those different from him or her 10.
Thus, at the age of the Art Nouveau, the emerged possibility of the selfdetermination by the person of his or her social space lays the groundwork
for studying the phenomenon of the person’s social identity. Following
E. Erikson, another version of the theory of identity and individual
development occurred, which encouraged the development of identity
problem studies in the next decades.
With the onset of the age of Postmodernity (the latter half of the
20th century till now), the ideas of the individual’s social identity problems
are specified and extended according to the changing social conditions,
such as changes in the openness/closedness of state boundaries, dialiectical
relations between atheism and religion or socialism and capitalism, etc.
Restructuring and changing the meanings of the social environment
functioning cause the break-out of nothingness, confusion, and the
disruption of value systems and world-view references, which leads to the
multiple chaotic identities of a person. The central image of the age of
Postmodernity is a “common individual who takes everything for granted
and is left unattended.”
The theory developed by J. Marcia provides insight into ‘identity
statuses.’ In his interpretation, understanding the identity is most
advantageous for and is best suited, in terms of epistemology and
methodology, for the American sociological thought that presupposes a
clear operationalization of notions and structures that ‘sound’ empirically.
The terms and definitions proposed by J. Marica for the social
identity of a person stroke the language dominating in the research area in
modern times. J. Marcia’s identity represents the structure of ego as an
internal, independently created, and dynamic organization of abilities,
needs, convictions, and personal history. According to J. Marcia, the key
element of forming an identity is the individual’s self-identification in three
areas: Religion, profession, and politics. Religion and politics constitute the
ideological area.
In order to configure the identity statuses, J. Marcia presented a
two-dimensional space. Along the axes of the space, there are: The level of
the individual’s search for his or her abilities to research various areas of
10
Erikson, E. Identity, Youth and Crisis (Russian edition, 1996). In: Tolstykh,
A.V. (translation from English, editing, and preface). Moscow: Progress. 264 p.
(In Russian).
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