BRUSILOVSKIY D.А., ESIPOV I.I. Two Worlds – Two Integrations: The Specificity of Connection of Civilizations with Islamophobia

DOI 10.35775/PSI.2019.33.3.004

D.А. BRUSILOVSKIY Candidate of Sciences (philosophy), Associate Professor at the UNESCO Chair for World Studies In Culture and Religion, Department of philosophy, Kyrgyz-Russian Slavic University, Bishkek, Republic of Kyrgyzstan

I.I. ESIPOV Post-graduate student of the Northwest Institute Of Management - Branch of the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration, St. Petersburg, Russia

TWO WORLDS – TWO INTEGRATIONS: THE SPECIFICITY OF CONNECTION OF CIVILIZATIONS WITH ISLAMOPHOBIA

The article explores the geostrategic, geoeconomic and geophilosophical aspects of Islamophobia in the context of integration. They distinguish and reveal 12 ways of thinking in relation to Islamophobia: 1) Islamophobia as a form of racism in the world historical perspective; 2) Islamophobia as a form of cultural racism; 3) Islamophobia as a form of confrontation between East and West; 4) Islamophobia as a form of globalophobia; 5) Islamophobia as a form of intolerance and stigmatization; 6) Islamophobia, on the one hand, is a form of protest of the Eastern world representatives against the insults of the feelings of Muslim believers in Europe, and on the other, the result of an encroachment not only on the freedom of action of the people of the Western world, but also on their freedom of thought; 7) Islamophobia as a distorted form of knowledge of the East among Europeans and their lack of orientalism; 8) Islamophobia as a form of epistemological racism; 9) Islamophobia as a form of national or ethnic identification; 10) Islamophobia as a form of immigrant phobia; 11) Islamophobia as a form of migrant phobia; 12) Islamophobia, on the one hand, is a new form of racism in Europe, and on the other, a form of neo-racism in relation to the peoples of Eastern civilization.

Key words: adaptation, integration, Islamophobia, migration, civilization.

Nowdays, relations between East and West are deteriorating again. In civilizations, tension increases, and communications decrease. The process of moving towards international cooperation and mutual adaptation of civilizations is extremely slow. In such conditions, the uniformity of the socio-economic system of integrating countries is of paramount importance, since the integration of countries with heterogeneous economies is fundamentally impossible.

When analyzing the objective foundations of modern integration and adaptation processes (1), it is important to take into account the totality of both the conditions for the internal economic development of a country (the economic potential and scale of the country, the degree of objective need for adaptation, the structure of the national economy and a number of others) and foreign economic factors ( the degree of complementarity of the economies of several countries, the depth of interpenetration, the relationship of national economic structures in the adaptive region).

No less important is the totality of political factors that reflect the readiness of a country for integration activities. The formation of economic integration and adaptation processes does not proceed automatically, but presupposes as a prerequisite a series of national and interstate political events aimed at the adapted unification of a group of countries. The latter constitute the political aspect of economic integration. The development of integration in the economic sphere does not break away from the political. At the well-known, rather high stages of integration, the process of restructuring the economic structures of the adaptive countries and the creation of a single economic structure will inevitably put on the agenda the issue of mutual adaptation and gradual restructuring of the political structures of these countries.

In the context of geostrategic adaptation of America, the European model of society depends on market dynamics and adapts with the latter. The UK as the main ally of the United States prefers coordination of foreign policy, intelligence and security outside the European Union. In foreign policy, European unity does not abolish the division along the lines of West-East and South-North. State-political integrity is undermined by the autonomy movements in Bavaria, Catalonia, and Scotland.

The United States keeps Europe tense, using millions of migrants settled there. The main goal of the migration flows was the desire to show the incapacity of the authorities of any European country in the context of Islamophobia. The United States automatically became for the European Union the only defender of the civilized world against the social fears and migration pressure. This is the most natural, but also the most chimerical idea, artificially distributed by representatives of the world power at the European level.

Islamophobia as a way of political influence on the European countries has undergone major changes. Given the differentiation of the causes of migration, we will single out a new phase of Islamophobia – artificial migration to the European Union. Due to the migrants brought to Europe, conflicts occur exactly in the places where they were pre-planned according to the scenario in order to demonstrate Islamophobic activity, confirming the incapacity of the European authorities.

Under the conditions of Islamophobia, it is dangerous for Italy, Greece and Germany not to have capable authorities for various reasons. Firstly, the European Commission is dissatisfied with the activities of the Italian government in the field of taxation, government spending, and the state budget, i.e. fiscal policy. Secondly, the Greek credit crisis showed that the European Central Bank (ECB) is prohibited from acquiring debts to save banks for reasons of reliability. At the initiative of Germany, a ban on the acceptance of unprofitable “Greek-Latin” private and public debts appeared in the ECB charter. The ECB bought Greek bonds from German and French banks at a price of less than 70% of their face value in 2010-2011. Greek bonds, profitable by the ECB gave rise to cooperation between the bank and the country. European governments were forced to fund bank rescue by cutting benefits and raising taxes. Let’s recall that France and Greece abandoned their own central banks in 2000, joining the agreement on the monetary union. However, the eurozone is once again planning to return to a neutral monetary policy. According to the internal standards, the ECB cannot hold more than two-thirds of a country's bonds on its balance sheet. This limit has almost been reached by the ECB with regard to Germany, France, Spain and Italy. Yields on government bonds in the eurozone declined slightly as global risk-free rates fell, and the EONIA forward curve shifted down. Forward transactions are transactions with a delivery date that is separated from the date of the transaction for a period longer than on spot conditions. Transactions with the delivery of an asset on the second business day are called spot transactions. The exchange rate depends on the value date of the transaction. This is due to the fact that all currencies have a certain yield. Thirdly, Islamophobia carries risks for Germany due to low private consumption indicators, weak industrial production dynamics after the introduction of revised emission standards for automobiles and reduced external demand. Islamophobia has become an effective tool for war in the geopolitical, geo-economic, information sphere.

Migration is becoming an objective necessity for the rich countries of the world with an aging population. Based on the experience of Europe, it is possible to say with a certain degree of certainty that the higher is the number of migrants in the region, the stronger is their territorial localization, the less desire they have, and somewhere, the need to participate in the integration processes, and more so to adapt. At the beginning of our century, in the European Union for every four people of working age there was one pensioner aged 65 years and older, “according to the forecast, by 2035 this ratio will fall to 2 to 1” [23. P. 146]. Given the demographic situation in the West, in the near future, the number of Muslim migrants can exceed the indigenous population of Europe many times over, which can lead to a qualitative change in traditional Europe. The Muslim population of Europe is younger than the indigenous population: over the past 20 years, the number of Muslims in Europe has increased by 50%, and by 2030 the number of Muslims in ten European countries will exceed 10% [10. P. 23]. Anyway the low level of mutual adaptation of civilizations and the unwillingness of the majority of the political elite of the countries of the West and the East to conduct a polycivilization dialogue is a crisis of modern international relations.

Some European Union member-states abolish existing restrictions on the free movement of labor. In the socio-legal sphere, the global world is becoming open to the regulated movement of people, goods, and capital. This is evidenced by the "UN Global Migration Pact on Safe, Orderly and Legal Migration – 2018" [14]. In Europe, representatives of Austria, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Poland, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic were not happy with this recommendatory document. According to 7 out of 28 countries of the European Union, the document as an instrument of supranational government will lead to both uncontrolled migration flows and “global” migration management. Aware of the benefits of migration in sphere of finance, these EU countries recognize that migration is sometimes the cause of increased political tension and leads to human tragedies. The text of the document aroused much controversy in Denmark, the Netherlands, and Germany. The government crisis turned into a discussion of the migration pact in Belgium. Numerous anti-migration rallies took place in Estonia. The Estonian representatives of EKRE, the Conservative People's Party, opposed the UN Global Pact on Migration. On the one hand, migration is a source of disagreements within and between states. On the other hand, international migration allows migrants annually seek new opportunities. Thanks to approximately 258 million people, an inter-civilization dialogue is taking place and the mutual adaptation of cultures is being strengthened.

With the intensification of Islamophobia and the expansion of migration flows, Europe has faced disintegration processes on its territory. The fact is that the formation and transformation of a united Europe did not go through the mutual adaptation of the West and the East of the continent, but through the liquidation of the “socialist camp” and the absorption of the Soviet “zone of control,” the countries of Central and Eastern Europe and even the USSR, the three Baltic countries. In this regard, European problems in the political and legal spheres can be solved only through widespread economic and political cooperation between the countries of Eastern and Western Europe, the true affirmation of the principles of peaceful coexistence, the development of comprehensive ties between countries, devoid of any elements of inequality and discrimination. The strengthening of economic ties between East and West Europe will undoubtedly contribute to the consolidation and deepening of the process of legal and political relaxation of tension throughout the world.

The superpower, like other actors of the international relations, is trying to convince European states that migration is beneficial to both migrants and host societies from a socio-economic point of view. That is, European states are offered a new approach to migrants: expand, strengthen and make flexible the channels of legal migration in order to take into account the needs of the labor market and forecast demographic trends. It is only necessary to provide migrants with opportunities to realize their potential. The argument is extremely simple: there are more Middle Eastern migrants of working age than the native inhabitants of Western civilization, and the former usually pay more taxes than the cost of the services they receive from the host states. From the financial point of view, migrants, including illegal migrants, pay taxes and invest 85% of their income in the host economies. The remaining 15% are sent to communities of origin through remittances [20]. In 2017, the amount of remittances in the world amounted to US $596 billion, of which US$450 billion were sent to the developing countries [28].

Under the slogans of adherence to the international law and human rights, the first attempts have been made to distinguish between legal and illegal migrants. Now, it has become fashionable among some states to condemn derogatory remarks about “illegal immigration” and to promote the idea of encouraging legal migration along with the categories of “regular” and “irregular” migrants. At the same time, the category of legal migrants varies depending on the migration policy.

On the one hand, Islamophobia is a byproduct of power and rivalry between the political elites of Europe and the United States in the era after the collapse of the Soviet Union. An example is Austria’s ban on the Muslim women's veil. On the other hand, Islamophobia is the struggle of the political elites of Europe and the USA against the material and spiritual culture of the East. This is the seizure of power and foreign territories, the seizure of wealth, the destruction of the ancient Eastern artifacts of Iraq, Libya, Syria, “cleansing” of history, so that they could not later prove whose territories it is. If the ruler does not have a culture of historical memory, no one will believe in his legitimacy. You can control the peoples with the help of a strong and large army, but such a government will last 120 years. The most effective power formula was discovered back in Ancient Sumer. The rulers of Mesopotamia convinced their people and neighboring countries that no other culture existed on Earth before the Sumerian civilization. The same method can be used in our time. You only need to insure yourself against the defeat: destroy all the cultural traces of previous civilizations.

Islamophobia is not only an excessive fear of Westerners against Muslims, leading them to discrimination in various spheres of public life, but also ignoring the moderate Muslim majority, and treating Islam as a threat to the Western way of life and a global problem. It points out that “Islam for Muslims is more than a religion or an abstract cultural value, more than an objective sociological parameter, more than a lifestyle, behavior style, concept of law, political practice, economic model, information flow, nationality, self-determination, it is a way of coexistence, a way to be in dialogue, fight, love and hope” [10. Pp. 16-17]. Islamophobia proves that Europeans themselves need a minimal understanding of the East. Europeans need to be interested in the specifics of Islamic customs and traditions, understand how similar or different their own and host cultures are, to attract migrant Muslims to study the history of relations between peoples, to know about the presence or absence of conflicts in the past and present, to overcome fear of the unusual and to show positive attitude to other members of the society. Islamophobia is the result of bilateral actions, therefore it is wrong to blame only one side for its formation and development.

Islamophobia acts as a mirror image among Europeans of the consciousness of third-generation migrants who have faced the choice of history: the country of residence or their own ethnic group. If migrants do not accept the new identity of the country and retain a collective memory, the family, then the problem of “integral history” appears: reconciliation of the past with the present. When migrants are being integrated into the host community the problem of mutual adaptation arises, since adaptation processes are possible only through attachment to the present – at the level of dialogue between civilizations and mutual adaptation of cultures in their current form.

The new inhabitants of the Western world do not want to secularize, therefore for Westerners, the manifestation of forms of Islamophobia is also associated with the problem of the survival of civilization. On the outskirts of Paris or Lille, one can no longer hear the dialects of Northern France, the poetry of Romance languages and French music. From the open doors of local cafes and restaurants you can hear only caravan songs, Arabic melodies and African rhythms. Islamophobia proves that people value the external form more than the internal essence: they value more what distinguishes them from others, than something that connects and brings them together.

Islamophobia indicates the presence of hostility and radical critical views of Muslims regarding the values of the Western world. The cultural industry of Western civilization has created a caricatured image of human pleasures, in the absence of normal concepts about them. In contrast, representatives of the culture of Eastern civilizations emphasize the demoralizing nature of the Western media. They criticize films showing gangsterism, sex, the horrors of bloody wars and sadism. Indeed, in such films, the young generation acquaint themselves with the so-called Western civilization and the culture of the creation of mankind. A number of Islamic extremist organizations just emerged as a counterbalance to the processes of Westernization, the imposition of the Western way of life. A similar lifestyle with the listed attributes is alien to the principles of the East and centuries-old traditions of the Turkic-speaking peoples. “Americanization” of life, education, upbringing, psychology and social norms leads to the fact that Eastern civilizations, especially apologists of Islam, fall upon the corrupting influence of Western culture and morals and declare religion the only force capable of stopping the negative impact of the West on the lifestyle of eastern peoples and bring back traditional spiritual values. If we could mutually adapt the positive aspects of industrial Western and traditional Eastern civilization, then we could bring humanity to a new higher progressive sociocultural level and get a new more humanistic value system.

The crisis of Western civilization, its all-encompassing, pathological priority of private ownership, narrowly individualistic ideology and psychology do not allow for a wide mutual dialogue and mutual adaptation with Eastern civilizations. The Western world is “sick” with the spirit of capturing the natural resources and material wealth of the East. This ideology can be changed only upon transition to a qualitatively new type of socially-oriented society, both in depth and in breadth. A genuine dialogue of civilizations will come only with the priority of social forms of ownership, entailing the priority of public interests.

To this end, an increase in the general culture of mankind, youth cooperation, and the adaptation of migrated Muslims from East to West are required. But these possibilities are extremely minimal at this stage. Inside the Eastern civilization there is a constant struggle of two directions: one advocates to fit into the Western society, to use the Muslims of Europe as a kind of internal force or “fifth column” that will help Islam defeat the values of Western civilization; and the other does not want to adapt Islam to the socio-cultural space of Europe and does not accept the processes of Westernization of the East.

On the one hand, among the new generations of Muslims who were born and raised in the European Union and do not have particularly strong ties with the homelands of their fathers, grandfathers or great-grandfathers, ethnic and cultural differences are gradually losing their significance. According to our observations, the process of the formation of local Islam is ongoing throughout Europe, and Muslim youth more than ever regard Islam as personal beliefs, and not as concepts related to their families or tradition. On the other hand, free communication is available through Internet, social networks, Viber or Skype. So, immigration to another country does not entail a break in ties with the homeland and sometimes even forms previously absent personal and socio-economic ties between the places where a person was born and grew up and his new place of stay. From the perspective of transnationalism, a new generation migrant has two or more identities, he is included in the sociocultural life of several communities. This trend affects the form of intercultural integration and adaptation of the migrant.

Two sources have always acted in the history of civilizations: endogenous and exogenous. And the further civilizations advance along the path of progress, the wider are their borrowings of the socio-cultural and scientific-technical achievements. Along with the vertical reception of the development of the inheritance of the past, the horizontal reception has always been important, the perception and development of foreign spiritual values, for the sociocultural progress of peoples.

Over the past decades of the monopolar world, the possibilities of Eastern civilization for intercultural integration and adaptation with Western civilization have been sharply reduced in the context of the alienation of liberal ideology in almost all areas: in economics, morality, politics and law. Especially after the destructive aggression of the Western world, which has turned such eastern countries as Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Afghanistan almost into ruins. A comprehensive analysis of Islamophobia led us to conclude that the combined forces of the Eastern civilization jointly with international organizations should seek to restore the production, social, economic, market, engineering, transport, information, scientific, educational, medical, cultural, tourist infrastructure and get reparations from the Western world for the destroyed countries of the East.

So, the interdisciplinary research [4. Pp. 9-16; 5. Pp. 351-355; 6. Pp. 141-145; 8. P. 480; 13. Pp. 3-15; 12. Pp. 39-43; 21. P. 206; 1. P. 101-120; 2. Pp. 294-308; 3. Pp. 113-124; 7. Pp. 1-13; 9. Pp. 1-35; 15. Pp. 1-12; 16. Pp. 635-652; 17. Pp. 1-10; 19. Pp. 62-70; 22. Pp. 665-681; 24. Pp. 105-117; 25. Pp. 61-86; 26. P. 271; 27. Pp. 317-336; 29. Pp. 1-19] reflected various forms of manifestation of Islamophobia. In our opinion, there are 12 ways of viewing Islamophobia: 1) Islamophobia as a form of racism in the world historical perspective: the two worlds are not just incomparable with each other, but do not havea a single dialogue essence, because the East is static, incoherent, unchanging, monotonous and therefore unable to determine the future of human civilization; 2) Islamophobia as a form of cultural racism: Islamic civilization, compared to Western civilization, is perceived as a rude, potentially hostile and aggressive civilization that promotes terrorism and tends to clash with other civilizations, they attribute to the eastern culture irrationality and a primitive level of development; 3) Islamophobia as a form of confrontation between East and West, this view is based on the essential difference between cultural and civilizational systems, manifested in economic, political, religious, value and other ideological orientations; 4) Islamophobia as a form of globalophobia, that is, an extreme form of the ideology of anti-globalism, a rejection of globalization; 5) Islamophobia as a form of intolerance, that is, the formation of negative stereotypical ideas and stigmatization, attribution of insulting social labels; 6) Islamophobia, on the one hand, is a form of protest by representatives of the Eastern world because of feelings of Muslim believers in Europe are insulted, and on the other, the result of an encroachment not only on the freedom of action of the people of the Western world, but also on the freedom of their thought, that is, a qualitative diversity of reality: recall the resolution of the UN Human Rights Council 16/18 in the context of the Istanbul process and the cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in the Paris satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo; 7) Islamophobia as a distorted form of knowledge of the East among the Europeans and their lack of orientalism, the study of the peoples of Eastern civilization and fascination with the Eastern culture; 8) Islamophobia as a form of epistemological racism is formed in the intellectual space, the superiority of the intellectual and ideological models of the Western world is emphasized, but is not limited to this framework; 9) Islamophobia as a form of national or ethnic identification; 10) Islamophobia as a form of immigrant phobia; 11) Islamophobia as a form of migrant phobia; 12) Islamophobia, on the one hand, is a new form of racism in Europe, and on the other is a form of neo-racism in relation to the peoples of Eastern civilization.

Modern socio-geopolitical processes of integration and adaptation are investigated through fundamental philosophical categories: general, special, individual; phenomenon and essence; form and content; part and whole; cause and investigation; randomness and necessity; opportunity and reality; quality, quantity, measure, leap. Disclosure of the complex nature of the integration and adaptation processes of Western civilization to the global world under conditions of Islamophobia is possible only on the basis of using the latest data from many sciences and disciplines (public policy, social philosophy, cognitive psychology, social psychology, evolutionary economics, synergetic anthropology, physics, etc.), and, moreover, not their eclectic combination, but philosophical generalization and dialectical synthesis. What is needed here is not just an interdisciplinary approach, but a system-synthetic approach, taking into account the specifics of human social adaptation in the context of Islamophobia.

NOTES:

(1) We depict the levels of integration as follows: “integration”, “adaptation”, “mutual adaptation”, “mega-integration”. As for the terminological side of the issue, the concept of “integration” has widespread application. Depending on contexts, sometimes they use the words replacing it: “unification”, “connection”, “rallying”, “mutual agreement”, “whole”, “undisturbed”, “replenishment”, “restoration”, “merging”, “pre-adaptation”, “Adaptation”, “adaptation”, “balancing”, “conformity”, “acclimatization”, “perception of norms and ideals”, “survival”, “joining the team”, etc.

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ASTVATSATUROVA M.A. Ethnopolitical Notes from the Diary of the North Caucasus Federal District

DOI 10.35775/PSI.2019.33.3.003

M.A. ASTVATSATUROVA Doctor of Sciences (political sciences), Professor, Director, chief researcher of the Scientific and educational center for political and ethnopolitical studies, Pyatigorsk State University, Pyatigorsk, Russia

ETHNOPOLITICAL NOTES FROM THE DIARY OF THE NORTH CAUCASUS FEDERAL DISTRICT

The article is devoted to the typical trends of the modern ethno-political situation in the North Caucasus Federal district (NCFD). The aim of the research is scientific understanding and identification of determinants, complex positive and negative factors of interethnic relations, as well as the specific content and forms of policy and management with the account of the ethnicity factor and the current ethnocratic system preserved in the republics of the Russian Federation NCFD. The article focuses on the problem of rotation of power personalities and change of elites as the global problem of relations between the power and civil society, as a problem of restrictions of public policy and public administration. The article emphasizes as an independent risk the current state and crisis manifestations of federal relations in the NCFD, both vertically and horizontally, which have a “precedent effect” and a “Domino effect.” The analysis that has been carried out permits the development of the resulting idea of the next (second) ethno-political timeout in the NCFD. The article demonstrates the necessity to search and realize new political-administrative and organizational efforts for the optimization of the register of national questions taking into account their modern multiplication in a context and in submission to the civil question. The author proposes considerations on the formulation of the main directions of strengthening the modern ethno-political timeout of the NCFD for the optimization of national issues in the context of the general civil issue in the context of the main goal of the state national policy.

Key words: ethnicity, risks of ethnic identification, ethnocratic regimes, interethnic competition, ethno-political timeout, ethnic conflicts, state national policy, ethno-cultural model of civil society.

The current ethno-political situation in the North Caucasus, in this case in the North Caucasus Federal district (hereinafter, NCFD), is characterized by typical trends, which are caused by a variety of well-known objective circumstances, recorded in scientific, monographic and journalistic literature, in numerous multi-departmental monitoring, as well as in many expert and forecast scenarios of well-known experts [12. P. 90; 13. P. 600].

Among these circumstances, it is necessary to note again the weakness of the economy and social infrastructure of the RF NCFD subjects. They include: a low standard of living and low average wages in the regions, a high proportion of unemployed, especially among the young people, the weakness of social and career lifts, low level of educational and medical services, the inability to equip the interests of young and large families in accordance with the legislation of the Russian Federation, the limited social life in rural areas, etc. [10. P. 222].

However, as the most important and actively replenished resource of the North Caucasus region, it is necessary to name its population, who, despite the challenges and risks of the political transition and the present situation, retain high socio-demographic indicators. Residents of the region traditionally show a high ability to social adaptation, as well as ability to combine traditional and innovative elements of life, both personal and social. Residents of the NCFD, regardless of ethnicity, overwhelmingly emphasize in their strategies and “I-concepts” high and prestigious goals: education, employment, decent work, career, material prosperity, the ability to provide for the family.

Taking into account the objective factors, as well as the consequences of ethno-political conflicts that took place in the region in the 90s and early 2000s, including those in manifest destructive forms (elements of civil disobedience and civil war, manifestations of terrorism, extremism, mass death of civilians), it was difficult to restore the constitutional order and eliminate terrorist structures and illegal armed group [7. Р. 164; 1. Р. 264].

A certain level of national security was achieved after implementation of political and administrative course of V. V. Putin as Prime Minister and then as President of the Russian Federation, which allowed us since 1999 to start bringing the legislation of constituent entities of the North Caucasus in accordance with the legislation of the Russian. The most important factor in this process was the formation of federal districts by the Decree of President Vladimir Putin and the further separation of the North Caucasus Federal district from the Southern Federal district by Decree of President Dmitry Medvedev. Through the efforts of the country's leadership, the Russian political and legal space on the territory of the NCFD was restored and strengthened, which made it possible to carry out administrative reforms and reform of LSG in the subjects of the RF NCFD, but in special-pilot and restrictive forms. Conflict incidents connected with the reform are largely due to the objective competition of ethnic communities in extremely confined space: territorial - land, production, infrastructure and social space [15. Р. 278; 14. Р. 193]. There is a problem of land scarcity, disputed territories, inter-settlement lands, pastures, and the formation of new municipal districts. It is symbolized by the rights of the people to historical ethnic territorial locations (“this is our land,” “this is the land of our ancestors,” “here are our graves”), exacerbated by the restoration of administrative and territorial units lost during the ethno-administrative and ethno-political transformations of the Imperial period, the Soviet stage and modern times [5. Р. 584].

The conflict phenomena are evident in the continuing ethnocratic system of the North Caucasus Federal district, a tacit system of ethnic quota to the posts in government and management. This system is a symbiosis of traditional forms of feudal technocratic, military-cratic people's cratic, ethnocratic and also confessional-cratic control and is a rudiment of the Soviet party and economic nomenklatura management in the region [4. Р. 206; 3. Р. 210]. The ethnocratic system suffers a crisis, fails and causes protests in case of the slightest deviations from the “fair ethnic distribution,” it was manifested in Dagestan and Karachay-Cherkessia at the regional and municipal levels in 2018. However, this system is maintained “from above” and “from below,” probably as beneficial and stationary to both the federal center and regional elites, which is confirmed by the new appointments of the heads of Kabardino-Balkaria and Ingushetia in 2018-2019. At the same time, it is obvious that the legislation of the Russian Federation in no way connects competition, appointment or rotation of political and civil service personnel with their ethnic and religious affiliation. It is also obvious that ethnicity and confessionality cannot guarantee professionalism, state thinking, patriotism, creativity or creative initiatives [6. Р. 215; 2. Рp. 295-311].

Today we witness in the district a trend of stabilization of ethno-political processes. Expert opinions boil down to the fact that inter-ethnic relations are in a controlled, inertial state, but with a hidden conflict potential [9. Р. 154]. It can be safely said that there is another ethno-political timeout in the NCFD (the second one, in our opinion, the first one was in 2005-2009 and it was not effectively used). It is taking place due to many objective circumstances, subjective management efforts, as well as the sanity of the inhabitants. It is characterized by the canalization of the conflict incidents, localization of the terrorist attacks, the general mood in the North Caucasian community aimed at stability, development and security. This is largely due to such factors as the strong foreign policy of the Russian Federation, the role of the Russian Federation in the liquidation of the international terrorist syndicates, V. V. Putin's authority (which remains even in the conditions of economic and financial crisis, falling living standards, as well as pension reform), the entry of Crimea (“Crimean consensus,” the possibilities of which are of course limited), the holding of the 2014 Olympics and the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia. It is also largely the result of the implementation of the “Strategy of the state national policy of the Russian Federation for the period up to 2025” in its regional expression [17. Р. 57].

However, even today any political, administrative or organizational transformations in the sphere of territories, land ownership, borders, settlements, as well as objects of industrial and social infrastructure, natural, historical and cultural relic and even mythological objects are projected into the sphere of interethnic and interfaith relations. At the same time, ethnicity as a significant social factor and marker penetrates into political and administrative relations, as well as into the content and forms of regional political regimes, which are problematized in their own context and in the context of all-Russian questions about the choice of the path and model of development [8].

In this regard, as has been repeatedly noted, it is necessary to abandon hopes for a complete depoliticization of ethnicity, as well as for de-ethnization of politics in the NCFD, although the optimization of national (ethnic) issues in the space of the civil issue (all-Russian and all-national) takes place in accordance with the understanding of the national issue by the country's leadership [11].

The year 2018 is considered one of the most peaceful and prosperous in the NCFD. However, even in that year there were terrorist attacks (including with the participation of young people, adolescents and women), self-explosions, and attacks on law enforcement agencies, on believers during services (Dagestan, Stavropol, Chechnya). There were interethnic confrontation and conflicts in Kabardino-Balkaria, confrontation and conflicts between the authorities and ethnic organizations in Karachay-Cherkessia.

In addition, in 2018, the problems of Federal relations were identified at a new level – vertically and horizontally in connection with the establishment of the border between Ingushetia and Chechnya. This precedent, in our view, is extraordinary. It dictates the need for transparency and reliability of power decisions, efficiency of technological and informational support of political “top” will, trust of citizens in the federal and regional authorities, a dialogue with the civil society and a growing civil and legal competence of public leaders. The conclusion of the agreement between the leaders of Ingushetia and Chechnya over the borders with the assistance and approval of the presidential envoy in the NCFD has led to the indignation of the regional ethno-political system in Ingushetia. The weakness of the political and legal support of the procedure destabilized the ethno-political timeout, had a negative impact on public opinion, and damaged the authority of both regional and federal authorities. The immediate consequence of this situation, in our opinion, was the change of the head of Ingushetia in 2019, as previously, a direct result of the ethnic conflict was the change of the head of Kabardino-Balkaria in 2018. Another consequence was the appearance of opposition and radical real and virtual-blogging platforms, apprehension and anxiety among residents of the neighboring regions: Stavropol territory, Dagestan, and North Ossetia-Alania Republic. The “Border situation” and “conflict-prone ethno-political prominences” have a risky “precedent effect” and “Domino effect,” which is far from being exhausted in 2019.

Modern ethnopolitical timeout in NCFD is filled with composite trends, the axiology of which is ambiguous, namely:

– implementation by the federal center and the office of the Plenipotentiary representative of the President of the Russian Federation of those political decisions that seem appropriate to the Central government or that are lobbied by regional leaders and receive the support of the Central government;

– persuasion of the population in the effectiveness of conservative and protective doctrine of politics and the need for “manual control” and “dirigiste methods” with a broad social control by the “seniors”: the heads of the regions, the legislative and executive authorities, heads of municipalities, heads of clans, surnames, tapes, diasporas;

– rotation of the senior level managers appointed by the federal center through indirect vote with personal trust of the President of the Russian Federation as the decisive factor and with the tacit compliance of the ethnicity of the heads of regions with the titular ethnicity of the people (or “prevailing ethnicity” in the bi-ethnic republics);

– the invasion of the religious factor in the political and administrative processes in an effort to replace the Russian secular law with the norms of religion, to use religious dogmas for the resolution of disputes and formation of political parties on the basis of religious ideas;

– interaction of authorities and management with civil society institutions in its ethno-cultural model in the implementation of the state national policy and national-cultural self-determination (determinants, principles, forms), as well as in the prevention of interethnic contradictions and conflicts and in practical peacemaking in the form of “two-track anti-conflict management”;

– repoliticization (“new politicization”) of the activities of individual national and cultural organizations, associations, congresses and forums, family and tribal organizations of peoples who oppose the official decisions of the authorities and involve in such confrontations the interests of other regions, countries and international organizations;

– development of geopolitical inter-ethnic relations because events in Ukraine, Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Georgia etc. stress the problems of compatriots abroad and migration, primarily between entities in the region;

– concentration (quantitative and qualitative) of titular ethnic communities in the respective national-state formations with a high birth rate among certain peoples and ethnic groups of Dagestan, Ingushetia and Chechnya, and the continuing migration of Russian and other non-titular population to other regions of the Russian Federation.

The following considerations are particularly worth highlighting:

– the social situation of the NCFD is negatively affected by the lack of large-scale production and infrastructure and general civil projects, as well as the weakness of the integrative role and low authority of the ruling party – United Russia, and, consequently, the bearers of its ideology, who head by the NCFD;

– destabilizing factors are alteration (or threat of alteration ) of borders and re-subordination of territories and settlements without appropriate professional expert, information and PR-support, without coordination with civil society;

– unbalanced are national issues, which multiply due to new aspects and new actors and cannot be solved in primitive administrative-willed style, among them are: “the Circassian issue”, “the Nogai issue”, “uhovski issue”, “Cossack issue”, “the issue of the Prigorodny district”, “the issue of the Ingush-Chechen border”, “the issue of the Daghestani-Chechen border”, the issue of the “Alanian heritage”. It is also a question of departmental affiliation of objects of worship and construction of new temples, the question of preservation of native languages of ethnic diasporas and indigenous peoples, the question of indigenous minorities, the question of migration and settlement of compatriots, the issue of “full rehabilitation of repressed peoples”, and the question of possible ethnological expertise;

– the retention of the Russian population and the preservation of the Russian language and culture not only as a space for interethnic communication, but as language and culture, public life, civil society, public policy, patogeneza, language and environment of the state holidays of the Russian Federation, its laws and political doctrines, as well as decisions of Russian leaders have an independent political significance.

In view of the above, we consider the following directions as the most expedient in strengthening the ethno-political timeout in the NCFD:

– expansion of public policy, maximum involvement of citizens and civil society in justification, development of significant political and administrative decisions (spatial development programs, ethno-cultural and ethno-linguistic programs, projects on national and cultural self-determination, territorial transformations, national and territorial transformations, alteration of borders) with public control over their implementation;

– introduction of a moratorium on the alteration of the boundaries of subjects, on the formation of mono-ethnic territories and new municipal districts with ethnonymic titles;

– neutralization of the ethnocratic system of politics and management and tacit “ethnic quotas” or “ethnic hierarchy” of positions in government and administration and internationalization of the political and administrative corps;

– support of the inertial state of the “deferred conflicts” in a manageable state with the use of “two-track diplomacy” along with the humanization of national issues and their subordination to the civil issue on the basis of the principles, categories and concepts of the "Strategy of the state national policy of the Russian Federation for the period up to 2025" in its new version;

– consideration for not only the territorial, industrial and social, but also the ethno-cultural capacity of the regions in the development of regional programs of migration, reception of compatriots from abroad and interregional migration;

– modernization of ethno-cultural model of civil society in order to increase the social responsibility of national-cultural organizations and autonomies and strengthen their contribution to the provision of public services, implementation of social projects, and distribution of municipal grants and state orders of civil patriotic content;

– strengthening of Russian identity, civil supra-ethnic and supra-confessional patriotism while preserving and restoring the multi-ethnic composition of the population of certain regions by returning Russian and Russian-speaking non-titular population.

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