Russian version of cultural federalism

Introduction

The twentieth century inscribed in history by the flourishing of ideas of federalism. It was the time when absolute monarchies lost their historical perspectives. The ideas of federalism arose in the West, in attempts to give real forms to the symbolic concept of “state sovereignty” in which society can practice. In turn, Russia at the beginning of the 90s, according to analysts, conceived of federalism as a mechanism that would prevent the revival of absolute centralized power, which was a reaction to the outgoing political unity of the Communist Party. The methodological tools of the “centralization – federalization” pair remains important in the analysis of Russian political and socio-cultural reality.

The fundamental symbolic nature of the construct “federalism” has not yet found an adequate cultural form of implementation that clarifies the original metaphysical meaning, which negatively affects the socio-political interaction of the subjects of the federation and the federal center in need of socio-cultural modernization, taking into account the historical and cultural capital of multinational Russia in the context of assimilation of national and ethnic cultures by mass culture and the processes of socio-cultural globalization during the transformation of the world capitalist paradigm.

Alter modernity, whose particular form is ethno modernity in the culture of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), demonstrates the productivity of this cultural paradigm, inscribing the socio-political sphere of culture into this process, for example, through the proposed idea of cultural federalism. The latter ensures the stability of ethnic cultures in the global era of erosion of the moral and spiritual foundations of culture.

The modern interpretation of federalism, which remains a metaphysical (symbolic) form, should continue to be filled with meaningful meanings: “times have changed, and we have changed with them, but the formula, important for the day before yesterday’s compromises of yesterday’s rulers of thoughts and destinies, has remained and lived its life in new contexts” (Salmin, 2000), by no means clarifying the original meanings. The author speaks succinctly about the idea of federalism: “... Federation is a model that assumes that the nature of relations between the state as a whole and its constituent parts cannot be changed without mutual consent.” Similar thoughts can be found among other researchers. Giorgi Hibua writes: “the establishment of permanent balance between several holders of power is an urgent task of federalism” (Hibua, 2008). In contrast to centralism, which resolves conflicts from a privileged position, “in the name of global interests” by suppressing particular interests, federalism is able to unify social relations, bringing them to a common denominator that removes conflicts in a federal state.

The problematic knot of modern federalism in Russia revolves around the immaturity of articulated consciousness when the authorities cannot act within the strictness of the formal principles of federalism. This results in reciprocal reproaches. The domestic practice of federal relations has shifted to zero, being in the recent past political and financial bargaining between power elites (Vasil'eva et al, 2017). Naturally, real federalism will not be implemented under such conditions, just as its meaning will not be clear to society. A problematic question arises: why do we need a model of federalism distorted between form and content, incapable of resolving existing problems, and are there ways to naturally resolve this situation? Let’s recall that from the standpoint of philosophical knowledge, this institution is primarily a quality of consciousness that institutionalizes contradictions into a single synthesis, giving them the form of a dialogue that prolongs the existence of symbolic forms of civilization (Hibua, 2008). We believe that the need to form the quality of the consciousness of a society that wants to practice in complex social and political forms should begin with the development of the metaphysics of symbolic forms, the articulation of which has always been a problem in Russian reality. The society should have a backlash for the manifestation of its own efforts of self-development and the practice of such symbolic forms.

The purpose of this work is to study federalism, taking into account the development of the consequences of historical and cultural differences of individual territorial parts of the country, as it developed in the Russian state in the socialist in content and European in form paradigm of ethnic federalism. This will be the starting point for the development of the concept of cultural federalism, which returns the abstract metaphysical meaning of the idea of federalism and becomes a factor of stability of ethnic cultures in the modern world.

In the context of comparing the two models of federalism, there are specific tasks of questioning new forms that promote the ideas of socio- cultural modernization, which, according to V.G. Fedotova (2005), has exhausted her own political and economic discourse and is now focused on the search for sustainable consensus of values and lifestyles that belongs to the cultural sphere.

Theoretical aspects

As noted by V.G. Fedotova (2017), in the context of globalization, there is a new turn of modernization, ceasing to be catching up, which means ahead of the West, according to the certain indicators of the use of the socio-cultural characteristics of the region and the country as a whole. This vision invites the regions to build long-term development programs, the institution of which can be new forms of federalism and the corresponding identity, as well as innovative solutions in their management (Yurina, 2021). This institution can be called, in the terminology of Auzan and Polterovich, as an “intermediate institution” that allows for “fine tuning of reforms” (Fedotova, 2020, p.235).

Traditional ontological schemes about the impossibility of dialogue between the “West and Non-West” on the basis of Western metaphysics, according to R.O. Rzaeva (Rzaeva, 2012, p. 89), are not relevant in the unique case of the national regions of Russia that have joined modernity in a couple of centuries. Acceptableappeal to the methodology of postmodernity (Rzaeva, 2012) in the noted dichotomous discourse, in the case of the ethnonational regions of the Russian Federation, becomes unproductive, because the way of being “to be seen by the Other” according to Jean-Paul Sartre, in postmodernity becomes a limitation for the metaphysical consensus, the real foundation of the synergy of cooperation between different national cultures of multinational state and, in particular, the institutionalization of federalism in Russia. We believe that the meta-narrative“West” and its derivative “modern” both for the center and the periphery of Russia are universal and acceptable for the situation of national Russian regions that have passed the active seventieth and then the passive thirtieth anniversary of rapprochement and merging of nations and nationalities, in the words of A.Ya. Flier, diffuse and structuralist cultural dynamics (Flier, 2013).

There are opinions that one of the consequences of the ethnic federalism paradigm is, according to I.M. Busygina, M.G. Filippov, not strengthening, but weakening the state (Busygina, & Filippov, 2020, p. 8), which fragments the political space of the country. Two aspects of this statement that should be noted here. Firstly, the multiculturalism proposed by global postmodernity, denying individuality, affirms, according to A. Rend, “soft totalitarianism” and group identity with conformism (Rend, 2015, p. 303), thereby preventing the individual integration of representatives of different cultures into civil society (Suhorukova, 2012). Secondly, the aspect of system analysis reminds us that the desire for homogeneity in a complex system over historically long period worsens its stability and flexibility in response to the challenges of the external and internal environment. Heterogeneity, in this case multinationality, is a product of the Russian egregore, its spiritual and cultural component, tested for centuries and tested by the ideological and socio-cultural transformation of the Soviet era. This cultural- historical foundation, which has incorporated into“ethnic solidarity”, “internationalism”, “merger and rapprochement of nations” in Soviet terminology, is still unspent social and cultural capital for the search for new forms of federalism.

In the situation under consideration, it is productive to conduct a conversation within the paradigm of altermodernity, rather than postmodernity that is a product of Western culture that reflects the shortcomings of modernity, for example, a value-based attitude to nature as a conquered element by an initiative subject who ascribes only to himself the right of advantage (Rzaeva, 2012, p. 91). The desire for ideological substitution of universal interests for group ones, for example, ethnic ones, reduces the rank of responsible dialogue of “subjects of social creativity”, and, according to A. Buzgalin, ultimately leads not to the culture of the West, but to mass cultural simulacra (Buzgalin, 2014, p. 19), suitable for mass consumption. A variant of altermodernity with an underlined socio- cultural dominant, manifested, for example, by aesthetic searches in the Yakut culture at the turn of XX-XXI centuries, is shown in some of our works (Pudov, 2019), (Pudov, et al., 2020), which fundamentally fits into the variant of "alternative modernity” as a “dialogue between worlds” (Rzaeva, 2012, p. 93).

The cultural renaissance experienced by the regions of Russia today, a vivid example of which is Yakutia (Pudov, Koryakina, 2021), has become a historical result of ethnic federalism with the dialectic of its implementation in the 90s and the declarativity of the 2000s. Nowadays Russia has remained “federation only formally” (Busygina, Filippov, 2020, p. 7) and needsprocess of complicating the systemic diversity of “sleeping” Russian federalism. We believe that the model of cultural federalism can become a guarantee for the protection and development of cultural and historical features that are highly susceptible to assimilation by the mass iconic culture of global postmodernity and, at the same time, will not indulge global capital in the creationof convenient ethnic closure and separatism of the ideology of multiculturalism.

Unfortunately, the national ideas proposed by political elites may remain ontologically unrooted in their ideological nature. The rank of the identity phenomenon of such system is underestimated. In our opinion, an ontologically constructed identity (Pudov, 2014, pp. 266-278), which should substantiate the national idea of Russia, makes it possible to raise the rank of such national concepts. Therefore, we see the essence of cultural federalism in Russia in the variety of models of modernity (“multimodernity” according to S. Eisenstadt) of multinational Russia, the natural modernization of the peoples of which has an active phase. In connection with the above, we believe that the ensemble of cultural modernizations is a condition for spiritually strong Russia that has nourished the national cultures of the regions with the cultural renaissance of modernity for several centuries. The Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) turned out to be a successful socio-cultural ecumene for overcoming the pre-modern culture of world confessions, while preserving the authentic pre- modern feature of its mythological era of traditional society. This is a synergy of the synthesis of modernity and ethnocultural capital, giving rise to a new universal understanding of the ethnic and through it reproducing the meanings of modernity, lost by Western culture, empty or carnival postmodernity. This is the spiritual strength of the peoples of Russia, as well as a way to return to Western culture the meaning, value, and rationality of the lost modernity, and pre-modernity, refracted through the prism of the ethnic. We found similar ideas in Adan, a modern researcher of ethnic cultures of China, designated by him as a dialectical combination of the traditional foundations of ethnic culture and the synthesis of “the most relevant and actively declared ... cultural experience ... refracted onto the ethnic soil of a specific ethnic group” (Adan', 2020, p. 13).

Methodological foundation

Let’s recall that in Soviet times, the national philosophers of Yakutia, such as A.E. Mordinov, described the situation of free and comprehensive development of national cultures as the basis for “development of the socialist culture of the multinational Soviet state, as opposed to the decline and degradation that constitute the law of the culture development of capitalist society” (Mordinov, 1951, p. 19). Without ideological clichés and taking into account modern global capitalism, cultural decline and degradation, we must again oppose the free and comprehensive development of the national cultures of Russia, developing the ethnic cultural capital of the peoples, the basic basis of which should be socio-cultural modernization, on its cultural foundations, conquering the achievements of modernity, for example, a symbolic construct that is relevant from our point of view as a nation, and even more - returning new meanings of modernity to the West. The“reflected” cultural renaissance, a universal metaphysical product of the Russian Silver Age, still nourishes world culture. A new stage of the renaissance of modernity in the face of ethnomodernity is carried out by expanding the ethnocultural spectrum of consciousness to universal values. This will become a guarantee and foundation for the formation of civil and democratic supra-ethnic culture. In Yakutia, the paradigm of ethno modernity that clearly manifested itself in the field of national art at the turn of XX-XXI centuries, became such a basis.

The unity of the multinational culture of Russia, the essence, is in the naturally mastered modernity on their own ethnocultural foundations of the peoples. This condition is the source of their self-development and the formation of a single international cultural space of Russia when each culture complements and enriches it. What is described is a dialectical self- development of ideas developed by the philosophers of the national regions of the Soviet era, who discussed the rapprochement and merging of nations (Mordinov, 2010, p. 31). Moreover, rapprochement, in our vision, can be interpreted as the mastery of symbolic culture - technology, science, and complete merger, in Soviet times understood through the decisive sphere - socio-economic and political, can be interpreted today through the mastery and practice of symbolic forms of civil society, democratic institutions, important conquests of modernity. According to V.M. Mezhuev, in the language of the philosophy of culture, it sounds like: "... becoming a nation, the people do not dissolve in the supranational space, but are included in it with minimal losses and costs for themselves, retaining their peculiarity and originality" (Mezhuev, 2010, pp. 11-12).

In other words, the methodology of ethnocultural dynamics allows us to operate in the analysis and comparison of cultural phenomena of modernity, introducing new meanings, taking into account the intercultural borderline and phenomena that arise at the transitions from premodernity to modernity and ethno modernity, which is the new proposed narrative of cultural federalism that fits into the process of ethnocultural modernization.

Results

From time immemorial, Russia has maintained its multinationality, “Russian multiculturalism”, the basis of which was not isolationism, but mutual enrichment based on Russian culture. The Western version of multiculturalism represents the absence of synthesis and the ensemble of many cultures, where the idea of universal enrichment has become a unifying one. There can be nothing else, within the framework of the globalist capitalist paradigm. The Western basis of multiculturalism is non-ontological by nature and non-complimentary to the moral nature of man. According to S. Zhizhek, multiculturalism has become the reverse side of the unprecedented homogenization of the capitalism (Zhizhek, 2005, p. 115), exacerbating the contradiction between globalization (postmodernity, with its respect for cultural differences) and universalism (modernity in the political dimension, i.e., universal demands of democracy, citizenship, a genuine European heritage, “originating in Ancient Greece”). Zhizhek leaves open the question of the forms and institutions of repoliticization in Europe as the only mechanism against the “regressive forms of fundamentalist hatred” generated by liberal globalization (Zhizhek, 2005, pp. 147-150). Thus, the “divide and rule” policy of globalism (Gorshkov, Bagramov, 2020, p.746), carried out through multiculturalism, and with which Europe has reached a dead end of disintegration, should be blocked. It should prevent the destruction of values by the notorious relativism of multiculturalism, to put up a barrier against the attack for the identification of something as useful (Rend, 2015, p. 303).

The Russian version, replacing Western multiculturalism, can become a synergistic synthesis, giving through the “ontological identity” (Pudov, 2014, pp. 266-278) the possibility of mastering the ethnomodernity paradigm. The categorical “special” of the situation with the Russian version of resolving this contradiction between the upholding communal identity (ethnic, cultural) by the right, threatened by globalization and the political articulation of the left, being etched out, in the terminology of S. Zhizhek, lies in the fact that the cultural complex of Russian national-ethnic regions has absorbed both. This is a unique combination of pre-modernity and modernity, actively mastered today by the Russian multinational people in the aesthetic and socio- cultural sphere. This is what happens within the very boundaries of regional ethnic cultures, namely, an natural access to universal values, called by researchers such as N.K. Gasanovaas “unity in the multitude”, “preservation of the morality of a solidary society” (Gasanova, 2013, p. 66).

That is why cultural federalism becomes an experience of the existential dimension of the life of the culture of the Russian regions. Actually, this is a process of socio-cultural modernization in search of development institutions capable of accumulating consensus models of social solidarity and trust in the space of social ties. Moreover, the emerging updated culture is, according to S. Benhabib, “semantic networks that are redefined again and again through the words and deeds of their carriers” (Benhabib, 2003, p. 35).

In the USSR, the idea of an ideological fusion i.e., internationalism was realized, but unrealized in its entirety, due to a lack of ontological foundations. However, ethnic federalism provided the foundation, connected the socio- cultural foundations of the ethnos with the “feeding landscape” of the small homeland and the entire state with a complicated complex, including political ties.On the basis of historically significant ethnic federalism, Russia has provided the basis for the development of ideas of integration and the discovery of ethnic culture, as opposed to Western multiculturalism, which is characterized by isolation and localization within the framework of multinational state. Russian ethnic federalism has fixed in the minds of generations the conformity of the foundation of socio-cultural features with the small homeland, the land of ancestors, and the landscape that feeds culture. The next stage of development that is cultural federalism, conceived on the basis of ethnic values and worldview, is also ontological and expandable to universal meanings.

The situation is qualitatively different with migrant workers, torn from their native land by socio-economic and political troubles, spurred on by the ideology of multiculturalism, which builds impenetrable barriers to integration and the cultivation of a civil and democratic worldview. Russia is actually provided with a greater socio- cultural base of integration and openness due to ethnic federalism and native territory, and now with the possibility of cultural federalism, securing their sacred right of ownership of the natural habitat i.e., “breadwinner” of ethnic and innovative cultures of our time for the cultural diversity of Russian regions. Therefore, cultural federalism is the justification for the ownership of the spiritual and material culture of future generations including their right to language, traditions and rituals, the natural environment and education customized for this environment. “Giving to the future” we simultaneously work in the model of cultural federalism on the issue of the formation of a historical subject of culture, offering the tradition of the spiritual health of culture, its ecology, continuity, instead of chaos, thus offering the right to human dignity in a certain territory of the federation. Such principles of justice "for the sake of future generations" have always been the spiritual bond of the culture of Russians and Northerners.

In our opinion, the implementation of the concept of cultural federalism, which provides a balance between the tendencies of disruption to ethnic fundamentalism, on the one hand, or unifying assimilation of massification by the global culture, on the other, becomes a factor of the stability of ethnic culture. In substantive aspect, stability is revealed by the following points:

1. The regions offer authentic cultural construction programs that reveal the synergy effect of multinationality through the promotion of supra-ethnic ideas of cultural improvement, ethnocultural modernization programs.


2. Production of new creative cultural and economic products within the framework of these Programs by means of examples of productive ethno modernity, transmigration of ethno symbolism(Pudov, 2014, pp. 93-108), changing the quality of the ethno symbolic spectrum of national culture.


3. World culture demand for ethnoculture, carried out by broadcasting ethnonational cultural products to any part of the global world.


4. Formation of constructive examples of human dignity through the relationship between people, society, and nature, set by examples of access to universal moral values from the position of their local ethnic culture, as well as by enriching the value spectrum of world culture, for example, in ecology, attitude towards nature and another person.


5. Production of mass cultural goods branded with the cultural topos of Russian regions

Collectively, this is the transformation of ethnosymbolic capital into the quality and standard of living of a person ontologically rooted in his culture and land of ancestors. This is the transformation of the ethnocultural spectrum of consciousness into new economic activities that contribute to the socio-economic development of the regions. The latter is the guarantee against inclinations towards secession.

Why do we advocate the transformation into cultural federalism? In traditional society, there was full compliance and adequacy of the elements of the triad “ethnos - culture - socio- economic system of management"”. Each of the elements there, being in a systemic isomorphic connection, is able to reproduce the other two in its uniqueness. The society of modernity, postmodernity and altermodernity has broken this system of mutual conformity.

In the modern era, ethnos has become a derivative of cultural self-identification, which in the globalizing world, according to Western researchers, such as S. Hall, P. Gay, M. Featherstone, and S. Lash, bears the trait of dynamism and instability, and therefore of multi- component complexity (Hall& Gay, 1996), (Featherstone, 1999). It becomes unproductive to remain in the paradigm of ethnofederalism. The cumulative, multi-level, complex culture, the essence of which determines the construct “ethnos”, and its economy with a social structure should be considered as primacy. Culture becomes the productive principle.

In this regard, the model of cultural federalism is also capable of producing a multicultural economy. Culture becomes a causal source for cultural mutual enrichment, while each region offers its own set of cultural products for the country's economy within the established territorial boundaries of ethnic federalism, because culture is able to succeed in something specific and competitive in the world market. This is its know-how, its essence, its cultural economy.

The construction of culture takes place against the background of the paradigm of ethno modernity. The latter is nothing but the building of supra-ethnic, democratic, and civil, which is not and will not be in multiculturalism. This is probably the only way to avoid ethnocentrism and fundamentalism and, on the other hand, not to waste ethnocultural capital.

In addition, the proposed paradigm of cultural federalism becomes a solution to the problem identified by M.H. Farukshin as “ethnization of politics” (Farukshin, 2012, p. 41), which no one is currently actively solves, even at the theoretical level, as part of overcoming the “bottlenecks” of the ethnic federalism paradigm, often accused of secession i.e., the destruction of state integrity and separatism.

In addition, the proposed paradigm of cultural federalism becomes a solution to the problem identified by M.H. Farukshin as the "ethnization of politics" (Farukshin, 2012, p. 41), which currently no one actively solves, even at the theoretical level, within the framework of overcoming the "bottlenecks" of the paradigm of ethnic federalism, often accused of secession, destruction of state integrity and separatism.

It should be noted that ethno federalism de facto incorporates into its methodological orbit the scientific discussion and political controversy around secession. This is an inevitable consequence of the theoretical and methodological vision through the prism of the phenomenon of ethnos/ethnicity. A smooth paradigm shift is needed in the development of the ideas of Russian federalism, rich in content and formative terms to the idea of cultural centrism. Cultural centrism brings a different vision of problematic issues, bringing them to the plane of competing cultural programs and products in the socio-economic aspect.

We believe that ethnos today has become a product of culture, rather than vice versa, culture is a product of ethnos according to Pudov (2018a), (Pudov, 2018b). This vision is quite adequate to constructivism that assumes ethnicity as a construct of socio-political self- identification or external political mobilization. Therefore, focusing on the ethnic is a binding to a political, ideological context, rather than an ontological one, as is the case in a culture that reproduces the phenomenon of personality, a person as a moral and ethical source.

We try to resolve this situation of ideological substitution of the ontological for the ideological by appealing to the ontological identity. Thus, cultural federalism is the cultivation of an ontologically conceptualized product: a developed civic personality, a subject of the history of the Russian state. This is not a descent into political bargaining and polemics about the asymmetry of federalism. This is a process of synergy of cultures as conductors of an integral personality, a spiritually and materially developed civil personality, a subject of the history of the global world and socio-economic development and improvement of the life quality of the regional community.

In addition to all that has been stated, the concept of “cultural federalism” can become the basis or ideological springboard for the production of the national idea of Russia, a mental construct of a symbolic plan that promotes mutual understanding and communication of ethnic groups and cultures. Since, as it has been noted more than once, in the era of postmodernity and the loss of large narratives, previous ideologemes become incapacitated, having squandered their mythological potential. They are demythologized in the context of the Soviet past or disavowed against this background in the current capitalist modernity. New concepts, but not myths or ideologemes, should be a qualitatively new product that incorporates the ontologically conceptualized identity of the representatives of the global world.

Discussion

Let’s turn to some substantive aspects of the phenomenon of Russian identity. As noted by I.N. Lisakovskij, O.N. Astaf'eva, T.G. Bogatyreva (Lisakovskij, 2004), (Astaf'eva, 2007), (Bogatyreva, 2002), the problem of having a single socio-cultural space has emerged in modern Russia. The integrity and, most importantly, the spiritual power of Russia is ensured not so much by a common economic and political space, but by the presence of a single socio-cultural identity for the country. The latter has not been developed.

Against the background of the blurring of socially orienting identities - national, religious, territorial, gender, and so on, secondary forms of identities that are destructive for society arise - rejection of the alien. This is the retribution of society for the phenomenon of mass consciousness, subject to ideological substitutions with a barbaric filling, in the sense of the lack of articulation of culture and the loss of a symbolic beginning in the national. We see the solution to the problem in the presence of symbol creation, namely the synthesis of ethnic symbolic constructs with civil law ones (Novikov, Pudov, 2005, p. 156).

Any identity lives by acts of self-existence both in cash and withdrawn form. The ethnic symbol, secondary in nature, is formed on the basis of primary symbolism (or can be reduced to a primary/metaphysical symbol), which is directly related to being. However, the secondary ethnic symbol is formed under the mythological method of "coding-interpretation" (Pudov, 2014, p. 54-72). Despite this, “walking” around it allowed a person of traditional society to fulfill an applied significance i.e., to remain in the truth regarding moral imperatives. The ethnic symbolism of the myth is functional.

In connection with the above, the solution to the problem is seen in the prolongation of the existence of the ontological basis of national identity. This is the task of expanding the semantic and conceptual world of the ethnic symbol. This is the necessity of combining the ethno and universal metaphysical symbol of philosophical quality. The exit of ethnic symbols to universal metaphysical semantics, which should become dominant in the era of global culture. The essence of this is the change of the ethnos' self-institutionalization to its socio- cultural modernization. Thus, this is a conversation about the transition from an ideological socio-cultural identity to an existential one. The essence of the latter is the reunification of man with the living thought of civil conquest. At the same time, existential identity plays the role of the formative basis of other ways of identity, it provides foundational binding and integrity of all components of a person's identities as a member of a society with a civil position.

In the context of the proposed methodology for evaluating modernization transformations, for example, Japanese modernization appears as a variant of modernization without deep initiation and the release of secondary mythological symbolism to the universalism of civil institutions. This is an unconscious desire for being, without unpacking the essence of modernity’s cultural symbolism (Pudov, & Novikov, 2008). The Japanese turned out to be good repeaters of the iconic level, which proved itself in the iconic field of technical knowledge and skills today. Nowadays a similar situation happened in China and the countries of Southeast Asia.

Conclusion

In connection with the above, it becomes clear that the modernization of the culture of ethnic groups is an ontological process of identifying new existential forms filled with new content. There are no transformations at the ontological level in politically initiated modernizations. They represent a politically initiated, variant of external social modernization, there is no conjugation with the symbolic spectrum of the adopted culture.

Cultural federalism in the era of new forms of capitalism or with a possible return to more backward forms of socio-economic formations at a new round of technological progress, when total material alienation is followed by socio- cultural alienation, becomes a kind of protective mechanism. This mechanism, based on a unique way of synthesizing the ethnic and the universal, allows to create original forms in the entire spectrum of cultural forms, from art to politics and social institutions. This is a way to intensify cultural life, producing cultural self-development programs that use the synergistic effect of the interaction of ethnic and modern. In fact, cultural federalism itself represents one of the cultural programs or "rules of the game", a formative element of the spiritual life of the Russian nation. The wealth and strength of our state lies in the synergy of the multinational nature of their cultures. Prosperity of the cultural self- development of ethnic cultures of Russia falls on the present time, delayed from the Russian Silver Age for about a century. There is a need to use this cultural rise of the regions, expressed in naturally mastered modernity by regional ethnic cultures.

The turn of the millennium marked the completion of the stage of applying ethnic symbolism to the social dimensions of traditional societies. The stage of revealing the universal beginning in the ethnic space of symbols has come.

Summarizing, ethno modernization should incorporate existential identity, be based on the transformed symbolic space of ethno culture, “grasping” being. Metaphysical symbolism is capable of ethno modernization based on existential identity, the ability to retain the empty form of civil and democratic institutions and fulfill its meaning.

Completing the study of the search for new forms of stability of ethnic cultures by means of the concept of cultural federalism, we can draw the following conclusions:

1.Globalism appears as a way of usurping symbolic forms, reducing their metaphysical significance and rank, down to the level of a sign, and the practice of an outdated model of ethnic federalism leads to secession and the growth of fundamentalist attitudes. In the era of global migrations, racial and ethnic mixing, the appeal to the mono-ethnic even declaratively looks like an anachronism since it does not reflect the presence of an ensemble of ethnic and other cultures. For Russian reality, the rank declarativity of the subjects of the federation, remaining a constructive element of stability, against the background of the transformation of the primordia list paradigm into a constructivist one, requires the transformation of its content in the aspect of the ideas of cultural federalism. 2.Cultural federalism offers access to a new level of federal relations - the synergy of cultural programs, the result of which will be the mutual reinforcement of the cooperative effect in building civil forms of sociality, identifying the foundations of a nationwide plebiscite. 3.Cultural federalism, by definition, is for a multicultural society and the moral imperatives of ethnic cultures, the main purpose of which is the cultivation of humanistic principles. 4.Cultural federalism is the nurturing of the national idea of Russia, the consolidation and unity of a single nation in a single idea of the joint cooperative effect of an ensemble of cultures.