The collapse of the Soviet Union gave rise to a new geopolitical, cultural and civilizational realitypost-Soviet Russia. Having overcome many crises, Russia is again becoming a real power capable of intensively influencing the geopolitical transformations of the modern world. The paper emphasizes that it is the geopolitics that primarily determines the vectors of Russian civilization's search for its identity. Russia's post-Soviet history clearly identifies two main stages of geopolitical and civilizational selfdetermination. The first, coming in the 1990s and partly in the early 2000s, was characterized by the desire of new political elites to integrate as much as possible into western structures and institutions. Being liberal-minded and perceiving the West as an unconditional winner in the cold war, Russian political leaders, with substantial popular support, saw the West as the most attractive civilizational center. At this point, the West had a unique opportunity to turn Russia into a reliable partner for a long time. However, old stereotypes about Russia's a priori hostility took over. Disappointment in the West, which absorbed not only the political elite, but also a substantial part of the population, led to Russia's geopolitical and civilizational reorientation from the West to the East. The paper concludes that the "focus on the East" that Russia has in recent years does not necessarily mean that the existing conflict with the West is enhancing. All parties to geopolitical confrontation should understand that many problems of modern times can only be solved by joint efforts.
Based on the content analysis of regional regulatory documents of the subjects of the Russian Federa-tion located in the North Caucasus Federal District, the paper examines the institutional framework for the formation of socio-cultural identities in order to strengthen the all-Russian (“Rossiyan”) identity in the region. The legal and institutional base data for making the analysis were: constitutions (charters), regional documents on languages, education, cul-ture, youth and ethnic politics, etc. Since the for-mation of identity is a process of socialization and education, the key research categories were defined as “language policy”, “educational policy”, “patriot-ic education”, “cultural policy”, and “youth policy”. On the basis of the analysis it was concluded that, from an institutional point of view, the integration of the federal subjects into the Russian political space is sufficient, while in the cultural sphere maintaining and reproducing of ethno-cultural specificity is ac-centuated and institutionally supported. Additional efforts on the part of federal and regional authorities are required in order to strengthen the all-Russian civil and civilizational identity in the North Caucasus.
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