The history of the emergence and development of ethnopsychology. The history of the formation of Russian ethnopsychology

The history of the emergence and development of ethnopsychology. The history of the formation of Russian ethnopsychology

Send your good work in the knowledge base is simple. Use the form below

Students, graduate students, young scientists who use the knowledge base in their studies and work will be very grateful to you.

Posted on http://www.allbest.ru/

Introduction

1.1 History of ethnopsychology

1.2 The concept of ethnopsychology

Bibliography

Introduction

The choice of this topic is dictated, first of all, by the relevance of the subject of study.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, a sharp exacerbation of interethnic relations took place on the territory of the former USSR, which in a number of regions took on the character of protracted bloody conflicts. National characteristics of life, national consciousness and self-awareness began to play an incomparably more important role in the life of a modern person than it was 15-20 years ago.

At the same time, as sociological studies show, the formation of national consciousness and self-awareness in a modern person is often based on inadequate sources: random sources, stories of parents and friends, recently - from the media, which, in turn, incompetently interpret national problems.

Chapter I. The concept of ethnopsychology

1.1 History of ethnopsychology

The first grains of ethnopsychological knowledge contain the works of ancient authors - philosophers and historians: Hippocrates, Tacitus, Pliny the Elder, Strabo. Thus, the ancient Greek physician and founder of medical geography Hippocrates noted the influence of the environment on the formation of psychological characteristics of people and put forward a general position according to which all differences between peoples, including their behavior and mores, are associated with nature and climate.

The first attempts to make peoples the subject of psychological observations were made in the 18th century. Thus, the French enlighteners introduced the concept of "the spirit of the people" and tried to solve the problem of its being conditioned by geographic factors. The idea of ​​a folk spirit also penetrated into German philosophy of history in the 18th century. One of its most prominent representatives, I.G. Herder, considered the spirit of the people not as something incorporeal, he practically did not separate the concepts of "soul of the people" and "national character" and argued that the soul of the people can be known through its feelings, speech, deeds, i.e. it is necessary to study his whole life. But in the first place he put oral folk art, believing that it is the world of fantasy that reflects the folk character.

The English philosopher D. Hume and the great German thinkers I. Kant and G. Hegel also contributed to the development of knowledge about the character of peoples. All of them not only spoke out about the factors influencing the spirit of peoples, but also offered "psychological portraits" of some of them.

The development of ethnography, psychology, and linguistics led in the middle of the 19th century. to the emergence of ethnopsychology as an independent science. The creation of a new discipline - the psychology of peoples - was proclaimed in 1859 by the German scientists M. Lazarus and H. Steinthal. They explained the need to develop this science, which is part of psychology, by the need to investigate the laws of mental life not only of individual individuals, but also of entire nations (ethnic communities in the modern sense), in which people act "as a kind of unity." All individuals of the same people have "similar feelings, inclinations, desires", they all have the same national spirit, which German thinkers understood as the mental similarity of individuals belonging to a particular people, and at the same time as their self-consciousness.

The ideas of Lazarus and Steinthal immediately found a response in the scientific circles of the multinational Russian Empire, and in the 1870s an attempt was made in Russia to "build" ethnopsychology into psychology. These ideas arose from the jurist, historian and philosopher K.D. Kavelin, who expressed the idea of ​​the possibility of an "objective" method of studying folk psychology based on the products of spiritual activity - cultural monuments, customs, folklore, and beliefs.

The turn of the 19th and 20th centuries marked by the emergence of an integral ethnopsychological concept of the German psychologist W. Wundt, who devoted twenty years of his life to writing a ten-volume Psychology of Nations. Wundt carried out the idea, fundamental for social psychology, that the joint life of individuals and their interaction with each other give rise to new phenomena with peculiar laws that, although they do not contradict the laws of individual consciousness, are not contained in them. And as these new phenomena, in other words, as the content of the soul of the people, he considered the general ideas, feelings and aspirations of many individuals. According to Wundt, the general ideas of many individuals are manifested in language, myths and customs, which should be studied by the psychology of peoples.

Another attempt to create ethnic psychology, and under this name, was undertaken by the Russian thinker G.G. Shpet. Arguing against Wundt, in whose opinion the products of spiritual culture are psychological products, Shpet argued that there is nothing psychological in the cultural-historical content of folk life itself. Psychologically, it is different - the attitude to the products of culture, to the meaning of cultural phenomena. Shpet believed that language, myths, customs, religion, and science evoke certain feelings in culture bearers, “responses” to what is happening in front of their eyes, minds and hearts.

The ideas of Lazarus and Steinthal, Kavelin, Wundt, Shpet remained at the level of explanatory schemes that were not implemented in specific psychological studies. But the ideas of the first ethnopsychologists about the connections of culture with the inner world of a person were taken up by another science - cultural anthropology.

1.2 The concept of ethnopsychology

Ethnopsychology is an interdisciplinary branch of knowledge that studies the ethnocultural characteristics of the psyche of people, the psychological characteristics of ethnic groups, as well as the psychological aspects of interethnic relations.

The term ethnopsychology itself is not generally accepted in world science, many scientists prefer to call themselves researchers in the field of "psychology of peoples", "psychological anthropology", "comparative cultural psychology", etc.

The presence of several terms for denoting ethnopsychology is due precisely to the fact that it is an interdisciplinary branch of knowledge. Its “close and distant relatives” include many scientific disciplines: sociology, linguistics, biology, ecology, etc.

As for the "parental disciplines" of ethnopsychology, then, on the one hand, it is science, which in different countries is called ethnology, social or cultural anthropology, and on the other, psychology.

The object of the study of ethnopsychology is nations, nationalities, national communities.

Subject - features of behavior, emotional reactions, psyche, character, as well as national identity and ethnic stereotypes.

Studying mental processes in representatives of ethnic groups, ethnopsychology uses certain research methods. The method of comparison and comparison is widely used, in which analytical comparative models are built, ethnic groups, ethnic processes are classified and grouped according to certain principles, criteria and characteristics. The behaviorist method consists of observing the behavior of an individual and ethnic groups.

The methods of research in ethnopsychology include general psychological methods: observation, experiment, conversation, study of the products of activity, test. Observation - the study of the external manifestations of the psyche of representatives of ethnic groups takes place in natural living conditions (it must be purposeful, systematic, a prerequisite is non-interference). Experiment is an active method. The experimenter creates the necessary conditions for activating the processes of interest to him. By repeating research under the same conditions with representatives of different ethnic groups, the experimenter can establish mental characteristics. It happens laboratory and natural. In ethnopsychology, it is better to use natural. When there are two competing hypotheses, a decisive experiment is applied. The conversation method is based on verbal communication and has a private character. It is mainly used in the study of the ethnic picture of the world. Research of the products of activity - (drawings, written compositions, folklore). Tests - should be a true indicator of the studied phenomenon or process; to give the opportunity to study exactly what is being researched, and not a similar phenomenon; not only the result of the decision is important, but also the process itself; should exclude attempts to establish the limit of the possibilities of representatives of ethnic groups (Minus: the psychologist is subjective)

So, ethnopsychology is the science of facts, patterns and mechanisms of manifestation of mental typology, value orientations and behavior of representatives of a particular ethnic community. It describes and explains the features of behavior and its motives within a community and between ethnic groups living for centuries in the same geohistorical space.

Ethnopsychology answers the question: how social and personal mechanisms of identification and isolation historically generated deep psychological phenomena - national self-awareness (expressed by the pronoun “we”) with positive, complementary components of self-acceptance, awareness of neighboring ethnic groups (“they”), the ambivalent orientation of their relationship ( acceptance and cooperation, on the one hand, isolation and aggression, on the other.This science is a related discipline with ethnography, ethnopedagogy, philosophy, history, political science, etc., interested in studying the social nature of man and his essence.

ethnopsychology science people

Chapter II. Contemporary ethnopsychology

2.1 Modern ethnic processes

The following processes are characteristic of the modern stage of development of ethno-national relations:

1) ethnic consolidation of peoples, manifested in the development of their political, economic, linguistic and cultural independence, strengthening of national-state integrity (by the end of the twentieth century, individual peoples became subjects of not only domestic, but international politics);

2) interethnic integration - the expansion and deepening of cooperation between peoples in all spheres of life for the sake of fuller satisfaction of their needs (this tendency manifests itself in the process of globalization and regionalization);

3) assimilation - a kind of “dissolution” of some peoples into others, accompanied by the loss of language, traditions, customs, ethnic identity and ethnic identity.

In the modern world, phenomena that are negative for the world order and international security are gaining strength, such as separatism - the desire for isolation, separation of ethnic groups from each other, secession - the secession from the state of any part of it due to the victory of the separatist movement of the ethnically homogeneous population of a given territory, irredentism is a struggle for accession to the state of the border lands of a neighboring state, inhabited by representatives of the titular nationality of this state.

Many negative phenomena in interethnic relations are associated with the formation of ethnonations. This process became decisive in the emergence of the ethnic paradox of our time - a significant increase in the role of ethnicity in social processes, an increase in interest in ethnic culture against the background of the increasing internationalization of the cultural, economic and political life of mankind. The rise of ethnicity has become a natural response of people to the process of globalization, which has embraced all countries and peoples of the world today. In these conditions, ethnicity performs an integrative function - it unites representatives of ethnic groups, regardless of their class, social status or professional affiliation.

Today, the growing role of ethnicity has become a powerful conflict-generating factor, causing the emergence of more and more hotbeds of interethnic tension, fraught with not only local, but also regional and even world wars (the Chechen conflict in Russia, the Arab-Israeli conflict in the Middle East, ethno-religious clashes in Great Britain, etc.). etc.).

2.2 Ethnic problems of Russia in the context of modern world ethnic processes

Ethnic conflicts and ethnic problems in modern Russia are not an exceptional phenomenon; they have numerous analogies, both in the modern world and in the history of mankind. Russia and other CIS states are included in the world ethno-conflict process; at the same time, ethnic conflicts in Russia have their own specifics, due to both the peculiarities of the current stage experienced by the country and the peculiarities of the geopolitical position of Russia in the changing civilizational structure of mankind. The border position of our country at the junction of two types of civilizations - western and eastern - has led to the presence in the ethnic conflict process of the country as features characteristic to a greater extent of the Western society, and the eastern. These problems can be considered in more detail in the following setting.

First, the ethno-conflictological problems of Russia in the context of the ethno-conflict process in the Western world.

Secondly, the ethno-conflict process in Russia and the challenges of modernization.

Third, the ethno-conflict process in Russia and the emerging intercivilizational shift.

The first of the problems stated for the analysis involves considering the social problems of Russia as part of the Western world with all the cultural originality of our country, which, however, can also be said about many other Western countries, whose belonging to Western civilization is not disputed by anyone.

The obvious aspirations of Russian reformers, at the initial stage of the reforms of the nineties, towards the organic integration of Russia into Western civilization, naturally presupposed an orientation towards the creation of mechanisms for resolving national problems inherent in Western civilization, although this aspect of the reforms was of subordinate importance in comparison with the creation of an economic system of the Western type. ... However, this path has failed, and this failure requires a more detailed analysis.

First of all, it should be noted that in the world scientific literature there are very contradictory assessments of the modern ethnic and ethno-conflict process in the Western world. While Western analysts, for the most part, designate the end of the XX century as a century of nationalism and predict that such a feature will determine, at least, the first half of the XXI century, in the domestic literature there is an idea, if not of the problemlessness in the ethnic life of the West, then about the predominance of integration processes in it, which are usually considered in contrast to the ongoing disintegration processes in the former USSR. It should be noted that in the foreign scientific literature there is a similar trend that feeds domestic research in this area, but it is not decisive.

Ultimately, such phenomena as the ethnic paradox of modernity, ethnic renaissance (ethnic revival) were first identified by Western social scientists when studying the processes taking place in the West; these problems were posed, and the terms were formulated by American researchers who analyzed new phenomena in the ethnic life of the country after the apparent collapse of the “melting pot” ideology. In the 1970s. the concepts and concepts of "ethnic revival" and "ethnic paradox of modernity" began to be applied by European researchers to the analysis of the processes taking place in their own countries.

Modern unification processes in Europe are more likely not a tendency in ethnic processes in this part of the world, but a political response of Western European countries to a geopolitical challenge from old and new centers of geopolitical attraction in the world. A specific and important feature of this process is the absence of a unifying center that could be perceived as a kind of imperial center. If any European power began to claim this role, the unification process would most likely end. Suffice it to recall how worried the leading European politicians of the late 1980s were. caused the impending unification of Germany, which objectively turned this country into the largest Western European power.

According to this parameter, the processes in the CIS states are fundamentally different from the processes in the European world. Although the objective need for integration is recognized by the majority of the newly independent states - the former republics of the USSR, the center of the unification process can be, at least in the present conditions, only Russia. Despite numerous statements by CIS members, including Russia itself, about equal relations between partners in the CIS, the unification process cannot be equal. Real processes, especially their economic component, are developing in the post-Soviet space not according to the model of Western European integration, but according to the model of the disintegration of the British Empire. Therefore, the targets in the integrative processes in the CIS, made on the basis of an analogy with the European integration process, seem inadequate.

In addition, it is important to take into account that only the first practical steps have been taken towards the creation of an integrated Western Europe, and on this path significant difficulties and contradictions have already been revealed. It will be possible to judge the effectiveness of this process only after several decades, so far we are dealing rather with an attractive idea, for which, however, there are necessary grounds and favorable circumstances.

However, the countries of the Western world, especially European ones, have accumulated considerable and, what is especially important, generally valid experience in the settlement of ethnic conflicts and the management of the ethno-conflict process. The basis of this experience is a developed civil society and democratic traditions of maintaining civil peace. Unfortunately, at the early stages of the reforms, from the multisyllabic and multi-level system of social ties supporting the stability of Western society, the ideologues of the reforms were artificially, on the basis of a vulgar-deterministic methodology, only some of these ties were isolated, many of which themselves have a conflict-generating nature and which in the process the evolution of Western society over several centuries, a system of socio-political and spiritual balances has been created.

Taking into account the experience of Western countries in managing the ethno-conflict process, the following main approaches to this process in our country are presented.

The first is the formation of the ideology of the priority of individual rights over the rights of all transpersonal social structures and the rights of civil society (which does not yet exist as such in Russia) over the rights of the state. Such a change in ideology in Russia is a real spiritual revolution; in fact, this is the task of enlightenment transformation of public consciousness.

The second approach, which follows from the first, is the further development of a new element in public consciousness, which is a combination of Russian civic consciousness and national-ethnic consciousness. This component of public consciousness is very typical for the countries of Western Europe, where general civic consciousness actively interacts with regional, ethnic, proto-ethnic consciousness. Russian public consciousness inherited from the Soviet period a favorable spiritual basis for the development of this component of public consciousness in the form of the idea of ​​the unity of patriotism and internationalism. Despite the fact that the concrete social and ideological foundations for the functioning of this idea in the public consciousness can no longer be renewed, the idea itself contains a component that can be considered within the framework of universal human values.

The new image of internationalism, freed from social and class content and filled with the ideals and values ​​of civil society (let's call it democratic internationalism), could fit much more successfully into the value structure of modern Russian society than the concept borrowed in recent years from the arsenal of American socio-political thought ethnocultural pluralism, perhaps successful in a theoretical aspect, but incomprehensible to the everyday consciousness of our society, or, for example, the concept of cosmopolitanism, a negative image of which has still been preserved in the public consciousness of our country after the well-known processes of the early 1950s.

And, finally, the third approach to managing the ethno-conflict process in our country is the all-round development of federalism. The experience of Western countries has shown how promising federalism is in reducing the severity of ethnic conflict tensions, although it does not represent a solution to all problems of nation-building. It should be noted that federalism is a component of the democratic structure of society; it can function stably only under democratic political regimes. The development of federalism is part of the formation of civil society, part of the general process of democratization.

Thus, all three directions of transformation of the ethno-conflict process in modern Russia are in line with the democratic development of the country, the strengthening of democratic tendencies formed in the early stages of reforms, the liberation of the democratic process from pseudo-democratic and mimicking layers of democracy.

The second problem proposed for consideration is the ethno-conflict process in Russia and the challenges of modernization. This aspect of the study of the ethno-conflict process in our country presupposes a change in the framework for considering the problem from the Western world, predominantly to the non-Western one. Modernization has a direct direct and inverse relationship with the ethno-conflict process, and this is clearly evidenced by the experience of countries that have already taken this path.

First of all, modernization intensively changes the ethno-economic stratification of society, activates "vertical elevators"; activities that were previously considered prestigious or profitable cease to be such, and vice versa. In polyethnic societies, which are the majority of modernizing countries or countries that have adopted a modernization orientation, the statuses of ethnoeconomic groups are changing and, what is especially important, the images of these statuses. At the same time, in modernizing societies, ethnic minorities are usually disproportionately represented in the business sphere, which is so unusual for traditional societies, as well as in the more familiar sphere of commerce, often viewed in many cultures as not quite clean, not to mention modern financial business. However, the field for a real ethno-economic conflict between various ethno-professional groups is relatively small. A conflict arises not so much of the statuses of ethnic groups as of the images of these statuses, when negative assessments (sometimes fair, sometimes not) of certain types of economic activity are transferred to the entire ethnic group focusing on this type of activity.

However, it is much more important that catch-up modernization, which is more in line with the realities of our country, has a focal, enclave character. This is typical both for the entire modernizing world at the end of the 20th century, and for individual countries. Obviously, the stronger the traditionalist orientations in the culture of a particular people, the greater the need for transformations in its economic, socio-political and spiritual structure. This is a very important and difficult task for Russian society. Already today, a huge gap in the standard of living, the nature of occupations, even mentality (which is clearly manifested in the results of numerous elections) between several large megacities, as well as donor regions, and the "rest" of Russia, is obvious. So far, this trend does not have a pronounced ethnic aspect, since almost all of Central Russia is among the depressed regions. However, in the case of successful development of modernization processes in the country, the situation may acquire a pronounced ethnic character, as was the case with the peoples of the North, who remained in the vast majority outside the industrial stage of development of our country.

Disproportions in the formation of the national intelligentsia in the Soviet period, an incomplete social structure, persistent ethnoprofessionalism among many peoples with an ethnic homeland on the territory of Russia can play the role of a significant ethno-conflict factor in Russia. Whole regions of the country may be excluded from the modernization process, turning from an organic part of the modernizing space into ethnographic "museums" of traditional culture. With the artificial forcing of the modernization process in regions of traditionalist orientation, a result similar to the result of industrialization, when the jobs created in the field of industrial labor with the aim of forming a national working class, were filled mainly with newcomers to the Russian population, may result.

Such a situation may arise, for example, in the North Caucasus, where the inflow of both domestic and foreign capital will be limited due to conflicts. This does not mean that non-modernizing regions will not be able to find a successful economic niche at all. In the North Caucasus, in the event of a decrease in the general conflict tension in the region, tourism and recreational services, which so far, however, seems unlikely, both because of the generally unfavorable forecasts for a decrease in ethnic conflict tension, and a sharp increase in the quality requirements for such services from consumers who are able to pay for them. Or, for example, perhaps such a palliative and certainly temporary solution as the creation of special economic zones, as is done in Ingushetia. However, the point is that non-modernizing ethnic enclaves may appear in modernizing societies, which feeds the ideology of “internal colonialism” and, as a result, separatist tendencies all over the world.

And, finally, the third problem is the ethno-conflict process in Russia and the emerging intercivilizational shift. Analysis of ethnic conflicts in different countries shows that, although ethnic conflicts are formed and actualized (move from the latent phase to the open), as a rule, on the basis of internal factors and contradictions, for the further development of the ethno-conflict process, including the settlement or resolution of ethnic conflicts , external, first of all, foreign policy factors have a large, sometimes decisive influence. At present, the role of foreign policy factors in the ethno-conflict process in our country, as well as in other parts of the planet, has noticeably increased in connection with the beginning of a global intercivilizational shift.

The phrase “formation of a unified world civilization”, which is usually used to characterize the dynamics of world processes at the end of the 20th century, has a metaphorical rather than sociological or socio-historical meaning. The emergence of new complex connections in the world only testifies to the formation of new systemic relations, which are unlikely to necessarily lead, at least in the foreseeable future, to the formation of a single human civilization. Rather, we should talk about the formation of a new integrated world order, an order hierarchically organized, with complex internal contradictions, than about the formation of a world civilization.

For the development of the ethno-conflict process in Russia, the following geopolitical factors are most significant.

First, the geopolitical activity of Russia's traditional geopolitical rivals, such as Turkey and Iran, who played a significant role in ethnic and ethno-conflict processes in the past, has noticeably increased. Both countries lay claim to the role of regional geopolitical leaders; the geopolitical interests of both powers include the Caucasus as a strategically important region. Both Turkey and Iran can and are acting as systems-attractors (using the terminology of synergetics) for the Muslim peoples of the North Caucasus and Transcaucasia, which are experiencing an acute all-embracing crisis, which will be used and is being used by these states to expand their sphere of influence. In addition, Turkey, having become one of the largest Black Sea powers, is objectively interested in maintaining the conflict between Russia and Ukraine over the ownership of the Crimea and the Black Sea Fleet. This conflict has so far the character of an interstate, and ethnic components do not play a sufficient role in it to identify the conflict as ethnic. However, the evolution of the conflict towards escalation, if the development of events follows this path, will inevitably require ethnic mobilization, and the conflict can transform into an ethnopolitical one with a predominance of ethnic dominance.

Although by the mid-1990s. the unrealizability of the idea of ​​creating a unified Turkic state, which was put forward immediately after the collapse of the USSR, was revealed, Turkey's claims to leadership and an integrating role in the Turkic world remain, and Turkey has objectively turned into a regional center of geopolitical attraction.

Secondly, new centers of geopolitical attraction have formed, which, in an effort to consolidate the position of geopolitical leaders in competition with traditional geopolitical centers, are actively expanding their influence on the post-Soviet world. This applies primarily to China, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan. Thus, a multipolar geopolitical structure is being formed on the borders of the post-Soviet space, which significantly affects ethnopolitical processes within the countries of the former USSR.

The active involvement of new independent states with a titular Islamic population in the field of influence of traditional and new geopolitical centers leads to the transformation of the civilizational qualities of the new states, especially Central Asia, the growth of anti-Russian and anti-Russian sentiments in them at the everyday level, mass migration sentiments among the Russian and Russian-speaking population and the actual migration.

The deepening divergence of two cultural layers - European and Asian - has become a fait accompli in post-Soviet Central Asia, and the problems of the Russian and Russian-speaking population are an external manifestation and detection of this process, expressed in the usual for the end of the twentieth century. terms of ethnic revival. It is no coincidence that the Russian and Russian-speaking population of the Baltic states, hidden and openly discriminated against by the titular ethnic groups and their political structures, is actively fighting for their rights, looking, often quite successfully, for their niche in the economic life of these countries, while among the non-titular population of the Central Asia, which has all political and civil rights, is strengthening the orientation towards leaving these countries. A powerful civilizational shift is taking place in the post-Soviet space, significantly changing the system of ethnic relations in the region.

Third, Russia is objectively interested in becoming a new center of geopolitical attraction, primarily for the post-Soviet countries. This is one of the main imperatives of its existence at the turn of the century; otherwise, the country will turn out to be nothing more than a peripheral zone in the new world order of the 21st century. So far, as noted above, processes are developing in the opposite direction, despite the abundance of integration-oriented statements and documents. The newly independent states, with the exception of Belarus, are striving to move away from Russia, and only an urgent economic necessity prevents the acceleration of this process, and in some cases, generates the opposite tendencies. However, the disintegration process can be changed to an integration one, and Russia can become an attractor system for the post-Soviet states only if modernization is successfully carried out in it, an efficient modern market economy is created, and a civilized society is formed.

Russia is located in one of the most potentially ethno-conflict parts of the planet: cultures and civilizations of various types interact on its territory, located within their historical areas; on the territory of the country, within the limits of their historical homeland, there are peoples who have centers of cultural and civilizational attraction outside of Russia. All this creates a complex system of ethno-cultural-civilizational interaction in the Eurasian space, and some regions of the country, in terms of their geopolitical significance, are not inferior to such strategic territories as the Balkans, the Middle East, for the possession or influence on which for centuries a hidden and open fight. The North Caucasus, as well as the Caucasus as a whole, belongs to such territories, and the preservation of influence in the Caucasus is one of the most important strategic ethnopolitical tasks of Russia at the end of the 20th century.

2.3 Contemporary ethnic processes among indigenous peoples

By the arrival of the Russians on the Yenisei at the end of the 16th century. many of the indigenous peoples had not yet formed and consisted of various tribes or tribal groups that were loosely related to each other. Their final formation took place as part of the Russian state. In the course of this long process, many small ethnic communities disappeared both in the process of consolidation into larger groups and as a result of their assimilation by the Russians, Khakass and other peoples. There were cases of extinction of certain tribes as a result of massive epidemics and famine.

Gradually the Assans, absorbed by the Evenks, disappeared from the map of the Yenisei region; Tintsy, Bakhtins, Mators and Iarinians, dissolved among the Khakass; Yugs who became Kets; Kamasinians assimilated by Russians. There were also opposite examples, when the Russian old-time population of Central Taimyr was subjected to strong acculturation by the local peoples, as a result of which an ethnographic group of Russians was formed - “tundra peasants”. On the whole, the processes of ethnic consolidation prevailed. Thus, the Turkic tribes of the south of the Yenisei region (Kachins, Sagays, Kyzyls, Beltirs, Koibals, etc.) merged into a single Khakass nation, with the exception of the Chulyms, who lived separately in the taiga and retained the originality of the language and the peculiarities of the economic structure. Numerous Tungus tribes, which in the past had special names, lived separately and often fought among themselves, became a single nationality, which received the ethnonym “Evenki” after the 1917 revolution.

The Yenisei Ostyaks of the middle Yenisei formed into the Ket people, while all the other Keto-speaking Yenisei tribes living to the south (pumpokols, Assans, Bakhtins, etc.) were assimilated by the Turkic-speaking nomads. The Samoyed tribes of Central Taimyr - Tavgi, Tidiris, Kuraks - formed the Nganasan people, and the “Khantai Samoyeds” and “Karasin Samoyeds” received the ethnonym “Entsy” in the 20th century.

In the same place, on the Taimyr Peninsula, in the 19th century, a new Dolgan ethnos was formed, through the merger of Russian old-timers and the Evenks and Yakuts who migrated from Yakutia. Of the three languages, Yakut won, which later became a special Dolgan language.

The Nenets moved to the north of the Krasnoyarsk Territory from the west after the annexation of this territory to Russia; at the same time, the Yakuts came from Yakutia to Lake Essei. Thus, the term "indigenous peoples of the region" acquires a very relative character.

After the 1917 revolution, many peoples received new names. The Tunguses became Evenks, the Yuraks - the Nenets, the Tavgian Samoyeds - the Nganasans, the Minusinsk Tatars - the Khakass, etc. However, not only ethnonyms have changed, the whole way of life of these peoples has undergone a radical restructuring.

The strongest transformation of the traditional economy of the indigenous population of Krasnoyarsk was caused by collectivization, the formation of national collective and industrial farms in the 1930s-1950s. Just as actively, especially in the 1950s-1970s, the policy of settling nomadic peoples was pursued, as a result of which many former nomads became residents of villages specially built for them. The consequence of this was the crisis of reindeer husbandry as a traditional branch of animal husbandry and a decrease in the number of reindeer.

In the post-Soviet period, the reindeer population in Evenkia has decreased tenfold, and in many villages has completely disappeared. Kets, Selkups, Nganasans, most of the Evens, Dolgans, Enets, more than half of the Nenets were left without domesticated reindeer.

Serious changes took place in the cultural sphere of indigenous peoples - the educational level was rapidly increasing, cadres of the national intelligentsia were formed, some ethnic groups (Evenki, Nenets, Khakass, etc.) had their own written language, their native language began to be taught in schools, printed materials began to be published - - national textbooks, fiction, periodicals.

The massive assimilation of non-traditional occupations led to the transition of former reindeer herders and hunters to new areas of activity, they got workers, machine operators. The professions of teacher, doctor, and cultural worker have become popular, especially among women.

On the whole, the changes that took place in the Soviet years were distinguished by great contradictions and ambiguity. The seemingly good business of creating boarding schools at stationary schools for the indigenous peoples of the North, where children on full state support could receive the necessary knowledge in the volume of secondary education, led to their separation from their families, oblivion of their language and national culture, and the impossibility of mastering traditional professions.

As shown by special field studies in 1993-2001, the traditional culture and way of life have undergone a serious transformation among the majority of the small peoples of the Krasnoyarsk Territory. So, among the Kets, only 29% of men and not a single woman are employed in the traditional field of activity; among the Evenks, respectively - 29 and 5%; Dolgan - 42.5 and 21%; nganasan - 31 and 38%; enets - 40.5 and 15%; among the Nenets, the situation is somewhat better - 72 and 38%.

The traditional dwelling of the northern peoples has practically not been preserved by the Kets and Chulyms. Chum is used only by 21% of Evenk families, chum or balka are used by Dolgans by 8% of families, by Nganasans - by 10.5%, by Nenets - by 39%. Reindeer teams have long disappeared from the Nganasans, they have become a rarity among the Entsy, and among the Dolgans they are present only in 6.5% of families. Only among the Nenets, every third person still has the opportunity to use this means of transportation.

The settling in the settlements was accompanied by a breakdown in the traditional way of life, the whole way of life. Most of the settlements in which the indigenous peoples live are mixed in terms of ethnic composition, therefore, intensive interaction of different peoples and mutual assimilation began, accompanied by a widespread transition to the Russian language.

Only the Evenks (only 28.5% of the ethnic group live in them), the Dolgans (64.5%) and the Nenets (52%) have mono-ethnic settlements. Moreover, the latter often live outside the settlements altogether, and still wander in the tundra with reindeer, or there are 1-3 families per so-called. "Small fish", where they fish on their lands. It is no coincidence that it is the Dolgans and the Nenets who preserve their national culture better than other small peoples.

Strongly influence ethnic processes and interethnic marriages, which are becoming more and more. Chulym residents have two-thirds of all families of mixed composition. Among the Kets, the proportion of mixed marriages is 64%, among the Nganasans - 48%, the Evenks - 43%, the Dolgans - 33%, the Entsys - 86%. These marriages could lead to the rapid dissolution of small peoples among the newly arrived nationalities, but this is not happening. Today, in the context of the Russian state's policy of paternalism in relation to the indigenous peoples of the North, the majority of people of mixed origin (mestizo) self-identify as representatives of the indigenous ethnos. The corresponding indicator for the Kets is 61.5%, for the Nganasans - 67%, the Nenets - 71.5%, the Dolgans - 72.5%, the Evenks - 80%. The only exceptions are the smallest ethnic groups - Chulyms (33%) and Enets (29%).

Mestizos, as a rule, have a weaker command of the language of their nationality, are less committed to traditional occupations, and are less familiar with traditional culture. Meanwhile, their share in each of the peoples is steadily growing. So, among the Chulym residents in 1986 there were 42% of them, and in 1996 already 56%; among chum salmon from 1991 to 2002, the proportion of mestizos increased from 61 to 74%. Mestizos accounted for 30.5% of the Nenets, 42% for the Dolgans, 51.5% for the Evenks, and 56.5% for the Nganasans; enets - 77.5%.

Among children under the age of 10, this indicator is even higher and ranges from 37% among the Nenets to 100% among the Enets. Everything indicates that, despite the efforts of the state, schools, cultural institutions, it is not possible to prevent assimilation processes.

Small ethnic groups are quickly turning into groups of Russian-speaking mestizos, with very little preservation of ethnic characteristics. The situation is better only among the Dolgans, since many of them live in single-ethnic settlements, and among the Nenets, a significant part of whom roam with reindeer or live far from stationary settlements.

At the same time, some elements of traditional culture remain stable, which do not allow the northern peoples to disappear. First of all, we are talking about the massive and widespread employment of men by hunting and fishing. This, in turn, supports another type of traditional culture - national cuisine. Fish and game meat dishes still occupy an honorable place in the diet of northern peoples. And one more encouraging fact is a stable national identity.

Despite the departure from their native language and culture, mixing in marriages, representatives of the northern peoples are not going to change their nationality to another. Therefore, in the context of the demographic crisis in Russia, the indigenous peoples of Krasnoyarsk not only retain their numbers, but even significantly increase them. The number of Dolgans, Nenets, Evenks, Enets, and Selkups has grown significantly in the region. This means that these peoples are not threatened with extinction, they will continue to exist, albeit in a new guise.

Bibliography

1. Gadzhiev, K.S. Introduction to geopolitics / K.S. Hajiyev. 2nd ed., Rev. and add. - M.: Logos, 2001 .-- 432p.

2. Doronchenkov, A.I. Interethnic relations and national policy in Russia: actual problems of theory, history and modern politics / A.I. Doronchenkov - SPb .: Extra-pro, 1995 .-- 412s.

3. Zdravomyslov, A.G. Interethnic conflicts in the post-Soviet space / A.G. Zdravomyslov. - M .: Higher. School., 1997 .-- 376s.

4. Multiculturalism and transformation of post-Soviet societies / V.S. Yablokov [and others]; ed. V.S. Malakhov and V.A. Tishkov. - M .: Logos, 2002 .-- 486s.

5. Tishkov, V.A. Essays on the theory and politics of ethnicity in Russia / V.A. Tishkov. - M .: Rus. word, 1997 - 287s.

6. Andreeva G.M. Social Psychology. - M., 1996.

7. Krysko V.G., Sarakuev E.A. Introduction to Ethnopsychology. - M., 1996.

8. Lebedeva N.M. An introduction to ethnic and cross-cultural psychology. - M., 1999.

9. Shpet G.G. Introduction to Ethnic Psychology. - SPb., 1996

Posted on Allbest.ru

Similar documents

    Ethnic conflicts as an object of regulation. Characteristic features of symbolic interactionism. Factors of ethnic conflicts and rules of proactive regulation. Natural and violent assimilation. Methods for resolving ethnic conflicts.

    tutorial, added 01/08/2010

    Types, structure, properties and functions of ethnic stereotypes. Questioning as a method of sociological survey, its characteristics and principles of sampling. Revealing ethnic stereotypes about representatives of ethnic groups in the perception of students.

    term paper added on 04/09/2011

    Study of the totality of ethnic groups living in the Primorsky Territory and participating in migration processes. The modern demographic picture in the region. Analysis of observation of the behavior of ethnic groups. Migration flows in the region.

    term paper added 05/26/2014

    The ambiguity of the word "people" and its application to class society. Formation of a nation based on ethnicity. Ethnic structure and essence of ethnic processes. The problem of the relationship between ethnos and nation, ethnos and geosocial organism.

    test, added 01/09/2010

    The concept of sociology as a science, the subject and methods of its research, the history of origin and development, the role of Auguste Comte in this process. Types of sociological knowledge and its main directions. The main functions of sociology and its place among other sciences.

    presentation added on 01/11/2011

    Ethnic characteristics of the Novosibirsk region. Analysis of ethnosocial and ethnopolitical processes in the Novosibirsk region. Migrants and their characteristics, resettlement and residence. Culture and education of ethnic minorities in Siberia and their significance.

    test, added 12/12/2008

    Features of the culture of ethnic groups, their value orientations and dominant motivations. Characterization of youth as a special social group. Study of the motivational profile and value orientations of the respondents of the Uzbek and Russian ethnic groups.

    thesis, added 10/24/2011

    Historical types of ethnic communities. Subjects and specific content of interethnic relations. The causes and methods of resolving interethnic conflicts. The concepts of ethnic consolidation of peoples, interethnic integration and assimilation.

    test, added 11/03/2011

    Definition of the concept and subject of ethnic sociology. Study of ethnic identity - a sense of belonging to a particular group. Consideration of the theory of "passionarity" by L.N. Gumilyov. Study of the emergence and development of ethnic conflicts.

    abstract added on 05/04/2015

    Ideas about the people. The concepts of ethnic identification in ethnosociology and ethnodemography. The structure of ethnic identity. Processes of development of globalization and interethnic. Indicators characterizing the ethnic identification of the peoples of Dagestan.

Ethnopsychology is a science that arose at the junction of social psychology, sociology and ethnography, which also, to one degree or another, study the national characteristics of the human psyche. (Andreeva G.M.) This is a science that studies the patterns of development and manifestation of national psychological characteristics of people as representatives of specific ethnic communities. Philosophy and sociology theoretically comprehend the psychological uniqueness of ethnic groups and, first of all, nations and the specifics of its influence on interethnic communication of people.

Ethnicity (ethnic community) is a really existing group of people that arises, functions, interacts and dies. Gumilev said that an ethnos is one or another collective of people opposing itself to all other similar collectives that have a special internal system and an original stereotype of behavior. Ethnos according to Y. Bromley is a stable set of people historically formed in a certain territory, possessing common features of language, culture and psyche, as well as a consciousness of their difference from other similar formations.

Item. This is a sense of belonging to an ethnic group. (ethnicity) Ethnicity is a sociological category, belonging to an ethnic group according to certain characteristics (place of birth, language, culture)

A bit of history. The first grains of ethnopsychological knowledge contain the works of ancient authors - philosophers and historians: Herodotus, Hippocrates, Tacitus, Pliny the Elder, Strabo. Thus, the ancient Greek physician and founder of medical geography Hippocrates noted the influence of the environment on the formation of psychological characteristics of people and put forward a general position according to which all differences between peoples, including their behavior and mores, are associated with nature and climate.

The first attempts to make peoples the subject of psychological observations were made in the 18th century. Thus, the French enlighteners introduced the concept of "the spirit of the people" and tried to solve the problem of its being conditioned by geographic factors. The idea of ​​a folk spirit also penetrated into German philosophy of history in the 18th century. One of its most prominent representatives, I. G. Gerder, considered the spirit of the people not as something incorporeal, he practically did not share the concept of "soul of the people" and "national character" and argued that the soul of the people can be known through his feelings, speech, deeds, those. it is necessary to study his whole life. But in the first place he put oral folk art, believing that it is the world of fantasy that reflects the folk character.



The English philosopher D. Hume and the great German thinkers I. Kant and G. Hegel also contributed to the development of knowledge about the character of peoples. All of them not only spoke out about the factors influencing the spirit of peoples, but also offered "psychological portraits" of some of them.

The development of ethnography, psychology, and linguistics led in the middle of the 19th century. to the emergence of ethnopsychology as an independent science. The creation of a new discipline - the psychology of peoples - was proclaimed in 1859 by the German scientists M. Lazarus and H. Steinthal. They explained the need to develop this science, which is part of psychology, by the need to investigate the laws of mental life not only of individual individuals, but also of entire nations (ethnic communities in the modern sense), in which people act "as a kind of unity." All individuals of the same people have "similar feelings, inclinations, desires", they all have the same national spirit, which German thinkers understood as the mental similarity of individuals belonging to a particular people, and at the same time as their self-consciousness.

The ideas of Lazarus and Steinthal immediately found a response in the scientific circles of the multinational Russian Empire, and in the 1870s an attempt was made in Russia to "build" ethnopsychology into psychology. These ideas arose from the jurist, historian and philosopher KD Kavelin, who expressed the idea of ​​the possibility of an “objective” method of studying folk psychology based on the products of spiritual activity - cultural monuments, customs, folklore, and beliefs.

The turn of the 19th and 20th centuries marked by the emergence of an integral ethnopsychological concept of the German psychologist W. Wundt, who devoted twenty years of his life to writing a ten-volume Psychology of Nations. Wundt carried out the idea, fundamental for social psychology, that the joint life of individuals and their interaction with each other give rise to new phenomena with peculiar laws that, although they do not contradict the laws of individual consciousness, are not contained in them. And as these new phenomena, in other words, as the content of the soul of the people, he considered the general ideas, feelings and aspirations of many individuals. According to Wundt, the general ideas of many individuals are manifested in language, myths and customs, which should be studied by the psychology of peoples.



Another attempt to create ethnic psychology, and under this name, was undertaken by the Russian thinker G.G. Shpet. Arguing against Wundt, in whose opinion the products of spiritual culture are psychological products, Shpet argued that there is nothing psychological in the cultural-historical content of folk life itself. Psychologically, it is different - the attitude to the products of culture, to the meaning of cultural phenomena. Shpet believed that language, myths, customs, religion, and science evoke certain feelings in culture bearers, “responses” to what is happening in front of their eyes, minds and hearts. According to Shpet's concept, ethnic psychology should identify typical collective experiences, in other words, answer the questions: What do the people like? What is he afraid of? What is he worshiping?

The ideas of Lazarus and Steinthal, Kavelin, Wundt, Shpet remained at the level of explanatory schemes that were not implemented in specific psychological studies. But the ideas of the first ethnopsychologists about the connections of culture with the inner world of a person were taken up by another science - cultural anthropology.

Second part

Three branches of ethnopsychology. As a result of the disunity of researchers by the end of the 19th century. two ethnopsychologies were formed: ethnological, which today is most often called psychological anthropology, and psychological, for which the term cross-cultural (or comparative-cultural) psychology is used. Solving the same problems, ethnologists and psychologists approach them with different conceptual schemes.

The differences in the two research approaches can be grasped using the old philosophical opposition of understanding and explanation, or the modern concepts of emic and etic. These terms, which cannot be translated into Russian, were formed by the American linguist K. Pike by analogy with phonetics, which studies sounds that are available in all languages, and phonemics, which studies sounds specific to one language. Later in all the humanities, including ethnopsychology, emic began to be called a culture-specific approach that seeks to understand the phenomena, and etic is a universalist approach that explains the studied phenomena.

The main features of the emic approach in ethnopsychology are: the study of the psychological characteristics of the carriers of one culture with the desire to understand them; use of culture-specific units of analysis and terms; gradual disclosure of the phenomenon under study, and, consequently, the impossibility of hypotheses; the need to restructure the way of thinking and everyday habits, since the study of any processes and phenomena, be it a person or ways of socializing children, is carried out from the point of view of the participant (from within the group); orientation to the possibility of collision with a new form of human behavior for the researcher.

The subject of psychological anthropology, based on the emic approach, is the study of how an individual acts, thinks, and feels in a given cultural environment. This does not mean at all that cultures are not compared with each other, but comparisons are made only after their thorough study, carried out, as a rule, in the field.

Currently, the main achievements of ethnopsychology are associated with this approach. But it also has serious limitations, since there is a danger that the researcher's own culture will become a standard for him to compare. The question always remains: can he so deeply immerse himself in someone else's, often very different from his own, culture in order to understand the peculiarities of the psyche of its carriers and give them an unmistakable or at least adequate description?

The main features of the etic approach, which is characteristic of cross-cultural psychology, can be considered: the study of the psychological life of individuals of two or more ethnic groups with a desire to explain intercultural differences and intercultural similarities; the use of units of analysis that are considered culturally free; the researcher takes the position of an external observer with a desire to distance himself from the studied ethnic groups; preliminary design by the psychologist of the structure of the research and categories for its description, hypothesis.

The subject of cross-cultural psychology, based on the etic-approach, is the study of the similarities and differences in psychological variables in different cultures and ethnic communities. Cross-cultural research is carried out within the framework of different branches of psychology: general psychology studies the characteristics of perception, memory, thinking; industrial psychology - problems of labor organization and management; developmental psychology - methods of raising children in different nations. A special place is occupied by social psychology, since not only the patterns of behavior of people conditioned by their inclusion in ethnic communities, but also the psychological characteristics of these communities themselves are subjected to comparison.

4.2. The origin of ethnopsychology

as an independent field of knowledge

The emergence of ethnopsychology as an independent field of knowledge, admittedly, took place in Germany. Investigations into the nature of national psychology from the standpoint of the theory of the "folk spirit" began in the middle of the 19th century, when German scientists H. Steinthal and M. Lazarus in 1859 began to publish a special "Journal of the Psychology of Peoples and Linguistics". In the programmatic article "Thoughts on Folk Psychology" they published their ideas about the essence of ethnopsychology as a new branch of knowledge designed to study the laws of mental life not only of individual individuals, but also of whole communities in which people act as a kind of unity. For the individual, the most essential and most essential of all groups is the people. A people is a totality of people who look at themselves as one people, consider themselves to be one people. Spiritual kinship between people does not depend on origin or language, since people define themselves as belonging to a particular nation subjectively. The main content of their concept is that due to the unity of origin and habitat “All individuals of one people bear the imprint ... of the special nature of the people on their body and soul» , wherein "The impact of bodily influences on the soul causes certain inclinations, tendencies of predisposition, properties of the spirit, which are the same for all individuals, as a result of which they all have the same national spirit" (Shteintal H., 1960).

Steinthal and Lazarus took the "spirit of the people" as a basis as a kind of mysterious substance that remains unchanged in all changes and ensures the unity of the national character with all individual differences. The folk spirit was understood as the mental similarity of individuals belonging to a particular nation, and at the same time as their self-awareness. It is the folk spirit, which manifests itself first of all in the language, then in the morals and customs, regulations and deeds, in traditions and chants, and the psychology of peoples is called upon to study (Steinthal H., 1960).

The main tasks of the "Psychology of Nations" are: a) to psychologically cognize the essence of the people's spirit and its actions; b) discover the laws according to which the internal spiritual or ideal activity of the people is carried out in life, in art and in science and c) to discover the foundations, causes and reasons for the emergence, development and destruction of the characteristics of any people (Shpet G.G., 1989).

Two aspects can be distinguished in the "Psychology of Nations". First, the spirit of the people in general, its general conditions of life and activity are analyzed, the general elements and relations of the development of the spirit of the people are established. Secondly, particular forms of the national spirit and their development are investigated more specifically. The first aspect was called ethnohistorical psychology, the second - psychological ethnology. The immediate objects of analysis, in the process of research of which the content of the national spirit is revealed, are myths, languages, morals, customs, everyday life and other features of cultures.

Summing up the presentation of the ideas put forward by M. Lazarus and H. Steinthal in 1859, let us give a short definition of the "Psychology of peoples". They proposed to build ethnic psychology as an explanatory science of the people's spirit, as a doctrine of the elements and laws of the spiritual life of peoples and the study of the spiritual nature of the entire human race. (Steintal G., 1960).

The followers of this school managed to collect significant factual material characterizing the features of the spiritual life of peoples at different stages of their historical development.

Another German social psychologist, Wilhelm Wundt, also tried to develop the idea of ​​isolating the psychology of peoples as a special branch of knowledge. His serious work "The Psychology of Nations", published in 1900-1920. in the volume of 10 special volumes, had as its goal to finally consolidate the right of existence of national - psychological concepts, which Wundt thought as a continuation and addition of individual psychology. Wundt understood the essence of the psychology of peoples differently from his predecessors Steinthal and Lazarus.

In his concept, he developed the position that the higher mental processes of people, primarily thinking, are a product of the historical and cultural development of communities of people. He objected to a direct analogy up to the identification of the individual consciousness and the consciousness of the people. In his opinion, popular consciousness is a creative synthesis (integration) of individual consciousnesses, the result of which is a new reality, which is found in the products of super-individual or super-personal activity in language, myths, and morality. It is the joint life of individuals and their interaction with each other that should generate new phenomena with peculiar laws that, although they do not contradict the laws of individual consciousness, are not contained in them. And as new phenomena, that is, as the content of the soul of the people, he considers the general ideas, feelings and aspirations of many individuals.

Although Wundt understood the essence of the psychology of peoples in a slightly different light than Steinthal and Lazarus, he always emphasized that the psychology of peoples is the science of the soul of the people, which manifests itself in language, myths, customs, morals (Wundt V., 1998). The rest of the elements of spiritual culture are secondary and are reduced to those previously named. So, art, science and religion for a long time in the history of mankind have been associated with mythological thinking.

“Language, myths and customs are general spiritual phenomena, so closely intertwined with each other that one of them is unthinkable without the other. Customs express in actions the same views of life that are hidden in myths and are made common property thanks to language. And these actions, in turn, make them more durable and further develop those ideas from which they flow ”(W. Wundt, 1998, p. 226).

Thus, the main method of the psychology of peoples, Wundt considers the analysis of concrete historical products of spiritual life, that is, language, myths and customs, which, in his opinion, are not fragments of the creativity of the folk spirit, but this spirit itself.

4.3. The origin of ethnopsychology

in the domestic tradition

The origin of ethnopsychology in our country is associated with the needs of studying the psychological appearance, traditions and habits of behavior of the numerous peoples of the country. Interest in the psychology of peoples inhabiting Russia for a long time was shown by such well-known public figures of our state as: Ivan the Terrible, Peter I, Catherine II, P.A. Stolypin; outstanding Russian scientists M.V. Lomonosov, V.N. Tatishchev, N. Ya. Danilevsky; great Russian writers A.S. Pushkin, N.A. Nekrasov, L.N. Tolstoy and many others. All of them paid serious attention in their statements and works to the psychological differences that exist in everyday life, traditions, customs, manifestations of social life of representatives of various ethnic communities inhabiting Russia. They used many of their judgments to analyze the nature of interethnic relations, predict their development in the future. A.I. Herzen, in particular, wrote: “... Without knowing the people, you can oppress the people, enslave them, conquer them, but you cannot liberate them ...” (Herzen AI, 1959, T. 6, p. 77).

Attempts to collect ethnopsychological data and formulate the basic principles of psychological ethnography were undertaken by the Russian Geographical Society, under which an ethnographic department was operating. V. K. Baer, ​​N. D. Nadezhdin, K.D. Kavelin in the 40-50s of the XIX century formulated the basic principles of ethnographic science, including psychological ethnography, which began to be implemented. K. D. Kavelin, for example, wrote about the need to strive to determine the character of the people as a whole by studying its individual mental properties in their relationship. The people, he believed, “is the same single organic being, like an individual person. Start exploring his individual morals, customs, concepts and stop there, you will not know anything. Know how to look at them in their mutual connection, in their relation to the whole national organism, and you will notice the features that distinguish one people from another ”(Sarakuev E.A., Krysko V.G., p. 38)

N.I. Nadezhdin, who proposed the term mental ethnography, believed that this branch of science should study the spiritual side of human nature, mental and moral abilities, willpower and character, and a sense of human dignity. As a manifestation of folk psychology, he also considered oral folk art - epics, fairy tales, songs, proverbs.

In 1847, a program of studying the ethnographic originality of the population of Russia began, which was sent to all provincial branches of the Geographical Society. In 1851 the society received 700 manuscripts, in 1852 - 1290, in 1858 - 612. Based on them, reports were compiled containing psychological sections, in which the national psychological characteristics of Little Russians, Great Russians and Belorussians were compared and compared. As a result, by the end of the 19th century, an impressive bank of ethnographic data of the peoples of Russia was accumulated.

In the 70s of the 19th century, an attempt was made to embed ethnopsychology into psychological science. These ideas emerged from K.D. Kavelin (a participant in the program of ethnographic studies of the Russian Geographical Society), who, not satisfied with the results of collecting subjective descriptions of the mental and moral properties of peoples, suggested using an objective method of studying folk psychology based on the products of spiritual activity - cultural monuments, customs, folklore , beliefs. Kavelin saw the task of the psychology of peoples in the establishment of general laws of mental life on the basis of comparing homogeneous phenomena and products of spiritual life among different nations and among the same people in different periods of its historical life (T.G. Stefanenko, p. 48)

In St. Petersburg in the publishing houses "Dosug and Delo", "Nature and People", "Knebel" in 1878-1882, 1909, 1911, 1915 a number of ethnographic collections and illustrated albums with the works of Russian researchers Grebenkin, Berezin, Ostrogorsky, Eisner were published , Yanchuk, etc., where along with ethnographic characteristics there are many national-psychological ones. As a result, by the end of the 19th century, a significant bank of ethnographic and ethnopsychological characteristics of the peoples of Russia was accumulated.

A significant contribution to the development of ethnopsychology in Russia was made by A.A. Potebnya is a Ukrainian and Russian philosopher - Slavist, who developed questions of the theory of folklore, ethnography and linguistics. He strove to reveal and explain the mechanisms of the formation of the ethnopsychological specifics of thinking. His fundamental work "Thought and Language", as well as the articles "Language of Nations" and "On Nationalism" contained deep and innovative ideas that make it possible to understand the nature and specifics of the manifestation of intellectual and cognitive national psychological characteristics. According to A.A. Potebnya, the main not only ethnodifferentiating, but also ethnoforming feature of any ethnos, which determines the existence of a people, is language. All languages ​​existing in the world have in common two properties - sound "articulation" and the fact that they are all systems of symbols that serve the expression of thought. All their other characteristics are ethno-specific, and the main one among them is the system of methods of thinking, embodied in the language.

A.A. Potebnya believed that language is not a means of designating a ready-made thought. If that were the case, it would not matter which language to use, they would be easily interchangeable. But this does not happen, because the function of language, according to P., is not to designate a ready-made thought, but to create it, transforming the original pre-lingual elements. At the same time, representatives of different peoples through their national languages ​​form thought in their own way, different from others. Further developing their positions, Potebnya. came to a number of important conclusions: a) the loss by the people of their language is tantamount to its denationalization; b) representatives of different nationalities are not always able to establish adequate mutual understanding, since there are specific features and mechanisms of interethnic communication, which should take into account the thinking of all sides of the communicating people; c) culture and education develop and consolidate the ethnospecific characteristics of the representatives of certain peoples, and do not level them.

A student and follower of A.A. Potebnya - DN Ovsyaniko - Kulikovsky sought to identify and substantiate the mechanisms and means of forming the psychological uniqueness of nations. According to his concept, the main factors in the formation of the national psyche are the elements of intellect and will, and the elements of emotions and feelings are not included in their number. Therefore, for example, the sense of duty is not ethnospecific for the Germans, as was commonly believed. Following his teacher, D. N. Ovsyaniko-Kulikovsky believed that national specificity lies in the peculiarities of thinking and that it must be sought not in the content side of thinking and not in its effectiveness, but in the unconscious sphere of the human psyche. At the same time, language acts as the core of folk thought and psyche and is a special form of accumulation and conservation of the mental energy of peoples.

He came to the conclusion that all nations can be conditionally divided into two main types: active and passive - depending on which of the two types of will - "acting" or "delaying" - prevails in a given ethnic group. Each of these types, in turn, can be decomposed into a number of varieties, subtypes, differing from each other in certain ethnospecific additional elements. For example, to passive the scientist attributed to the type the Russian and German national characters, which differ from the presence of the Russian elements of willful laziness. TO active to the type he attributed the English and French national characters, distinguished by the presence of excessive impulsiveness among the French. Many of Ovsyaniko-Kulikovsky's ideas were eclectic and poorly argued, as a result of the unsuccessful application of Freud's ideas, however, later they prompted researchers of ethnopsychology to correctly analyze the intellectual, emotional and volitional national psychological characteristics.

In search of a methodology for ethnopsychological research, it is useful to turn to the works of Russian religious philosophers of the 20th century, whose intense spiritual and moral feat of deep comprehension of the meaning of national belonging in human life, caused by many of them forcible separation from their homeland, is one of the pinnacles of world philosophy on this issue. Most Russian thinkers of the 19th century, as well as philosophers and historians of the Russian Diaspora of the 20th century, pondered the problem of revealing the Russian soul, isolating its main characteristics. P.Ya. Chaadaev, P. Sorokin, A.S. Khomyakov, N.Ya. Danilevsky, N.G. Chernyshevsky, V.O. Klyuchesky, V.S.Soloviev, N.A. Berdyaev, N.O. Lossky, I. Ilyin and many others described the traits of the Russian character, systematized the factors of the formation of the Russian soul.

We can cite as an example some of the thoughts of the Russian philosopher I. Ilyin regarding the importance of national roots in human life for true and deep interethnic communication and mutual comprehension. According to I. Ilyin, there is a law of human nature and culture, according to which all great things can be said by a person or people only in their own way, and all genius will be born in the bosom of national experience, spirit and way of life, therefore the philosopher warns that “national depersonalization is a great misfortune and danger in the life of a person and a people. " Homeland (i.e., a conscious ethnic or national identity), according to Ilyin, awakens spirituality in a person, which can and should be framed as national spirituality. And only after awakening and getting stronger, she will be able to find access to the creations of a stranger national spirit. To love the homeland, according to Ilyin, means to love not just the "soul of the people", that is, its national character, but the spirituality of his national character.“... He who does not know at all what spirit is, and does not know how to love it, does not have patriotism either. But the one who senses the spiritual and loves it, he knows its supranational, universal human essence. He knows that the great Russian is great for all peoples; and that the brilliant Greek is brilliant for all ages; and that the heroic among the Serbs deserves the admiration of all nationalities; and that which is deep and wise in the culture of the Chinese or Hindus is deep and wise in the face of all mankind. But that is precisely why a real patriot is not able to hate and despise other peoples, because he sees their spiritual strength and their spiritual achievements ”(Ilyin I., 1993). These thoughts contain the embryo of those ideas that received their scientific design and development at the end of our century in the form of awareness of the importance of having a positive ethnic identity as a source of ethnic tolerance in the field of interethnic interaction and mutual perception (Lebedeva N.M., p. 13).

Special merits in the development of ethnopsychology in Russia belong to the professor of Moscow University G.G. Shpet, who was the first in Russia who began to teach a course in ethnopsychology and organized in 1920 the country's only study of ethnopsychology. In 1927 he published his work "Introduction to Ethnopsychology", where, in the form of a discussion with W. Wundt, M. Lazarus and G. Steinthal, he expressed his views on the subject and the main method of ethnopsychology. He also considered the "folk spirit" to be the subject of his research. However, by the "people's spirit" he understood not a certain mysterious substance, but the totality of specific subjective experiences of people, the psychology of a "historically formed collective", i.e. people "(Shpet G.G., 1996, p. 341).

Ethnic psychology, from the point of view of G.G. Shpet, should be a descriptive, not an explanatory science. Its subject, in his opinion, is a description of the typical collective experiences of representatives of a particular people, which are the result of the functioning of their language, myths, customs, religions, etc. No matter how individual representatives of a particular ethnic community are individually distinguishable and no matter how dissimilar their attitude to such social phenomena may be, you can always find something in common in their reactions. At the same time, the general is not an averaged whole, it is not a set of similarities. The general was understood by him as a "type", as a "representative of the psyche of many individuals", as a characteristic that unites and shows the nuances of the entire originality of thoughts, feelings, experiences of actions and actions of people of a particular nationality.

Shpet had no doubts that there was nothing psychological in the cultural and historical content of the life of the people. Only the attitude to the products of culture, to the meaning of cultural phenomena, is psychological. Therefore, ethnic psychology should study not the language, customs, religion, science, but the attitude towards them, since nowhere is the psychology of the people so vividly reflected as in its attitude to the spiritual values ​​created by them (Shpet G.G., 1996, p. 341).

4.4. Development of the "psychology of peoples"

in foreign studies

The main theses of Western ethnopsychologists were repeated and developed further by representatives of the school of “peoples' psychology,” well known in sociological science at the end of the 19th century. First, G. Tarde and S. Sigile, and then G. Le Bon came to the conclusion that the behavior of representatives of certain communities is largely determined by imitation, and its most distinctive characteristics are depersonalization, a sharp predominance of the role of feelings over intelligence, loss of personal responsibility of the person in the group. The famous English scientist V. McDougall, the founder of the theory of social behavior instincts, supplemented the ideas about the peculiarities of the actions of people of a particular nation by developing the concept of instincts (innate), which, in his opinion, are internal unconscious motives of their actions.

An important role in the study of the intracultural mechanisms of human interaction was played by the work of French scientists - representatives of the socio-psychological direction in the study of the cultures of G. Le Bon and G. de Tarde. The main focus of the works of G. Lebon "; Psychological laws of the evolution of peoples"; (1894) and "The Psychology of the Crowd"; (1895) - an analysis of the relationship between the masses of the people, the crowd and the leaders, the peculiarities of the process of mastering their feelings and ideas. For the first time in these works, the problems of mental infection and suggestion were posed, the question of managing people in various cultures was formulated.

G. Tarde continued the analysis of group psychology and interpersonal interaction. He identified three types of interactions: mental infection, suggestion, imitation. Tarde's most important works on these aspects of the functioning of cultures are The Laws of Imitation (1890) and Social Logic (1895). The main task of the author is to show how changes (innovations) appear in cultures and how they are transmitted to individuals in society. According to his views, « collective intermental psychology ... is possible only because individual intramental psychology includes elements that can be transmitted and communicated from one consciousness to another. These elements ... can combine and merge together, forming true social forces and structures, the flow of opinions or mass impulses, traditions or national customs "(History of bourgeois sociology, 1979, p. 105).

An elementary attitude, according to Tardu, is a transmission or an attempt to convey a belief or desire. He assigned a certain role to imitation and suggestion. Society is imitation, and imitation is a kind of hypnotism. Any innovation is an act of a creative person, causing a wave of imitation.

G. Tarde analyzed cultural changes on the basis of studying such phenomena as language (its evolution, origin, linguistic ingenuity), religion (its development from animism to world religions, its future), and feelings, especially love and hate, in the history of cultures ... The last aspect is quite original for cultural researchers of that time. Tarde examines him in the chapter "Heart", in which he clarifies the role of attractive and repulsive feelings, reflects on what friends and enemies are. A special place is occupied by the study of such cultural customs as vendetta (blood feud) and the phenomenon of national hatred.

Representatives of "Group Psychology" and the theory of imitation discovered and investigated the mechanisms of intracultural interaction. Their developments were used in the study of cultures in the 20th century to explain a number of facts and problems that arise in the study of various types of cultures. Concluding the consideration of the socio-psychological aspect in the analysis of cultures, it is necessary to dwell on the content of the phenomena discovered by G. Le Bon and G. Tarde.

Imitation, or imitative activity, consists in reproducing, copying motor and other cultural stereotypes. Its enormous importance in the process of mastering culture in childhood. It is believed that thanks to this quality, the child masters the language, imitating adults, mastering cultural skills. Imitation is the basis of learning and the possibility of passing on cultural traditions from generation to generation.

Psychological contamination often consists in the unconscious repetition of actions in a human collective or simply in a crowd of people. This quality contributes to the mastery of people of any states of a psychological type (fear, hatred, love, etc.). It is often used in religious rituals.

Suggestion - the most various forms of introduction into the consciousness of people (in a conscious or unconscious form) of certain provisions, rules, norms governing behavior in culture. It can manifest itself in a variety of cultural forms, very often it helps to unite people within a culture to perform a task. All these three characteristic features of cultural activity actually exist and act together, providing regulation between members of an ethnocultural community.

In the studies of European sociologists at the beginning of the 20th century, completely new in form approaches to the study of ethnic psychology are beginning to emerge. They relied, as a rule, on young teachings that were beginning to gain strength - behaviorism and Freudianism, which rather quickly gained great recognition from researchers and found application in describing the traits of the national character of representatives of different peoples.

For the majority of Western scientists-ethnopsychologists of that time, the so-called "psychoanalytic" approach was characteristic. Proposed at the end of the last century by 3. Freud, psychoanalysis from a peculiar way of studying the patient's psyche has gradually turned into a "universal" method of studying and evaluating the most complex social phenomena, including the mental makeup of ethnic communities.

Z. Freud developed a "cathartic" method of treating neuroses, which made it possible to establish the phenomenon of mental resistance by the patient to the disclosure of repressed memories and the existence of the intrapsychic factor of censorship. This served as an impetus for Freud to create a dynamic concept of personality in the unity of the conscious and unconscious factors. The significance of the works went far beyond the scope of psychotherapy. The possibility of the influence of mental, emotional states on deep, biological ones was shown. Neuroses were interpreted not as ordinary diseases having a basis in the defeat of a local organ, but as a result of universal human conflicts, violations of the possibility of self-expression of the individual.

Thus, a hypothesis was put forward about the behavioral cause of neurosis. This meant that its origins could lie in the sphere of interpersonal interaction of people, in the relationship of the personality (I) with the outside world, the loss of a person's meaning of existence, etc. about the inner world of a person with a single method of self-observation (introspection) became a discipline that studies external cultural phenomena, the features of real human interaction. It is this aspect of psychoanalysis that made it possible to make the subject of study various aspects of ethnocultural stereotypes in human behavior.

This science is also one of the progenitors of ethnopsycholinguistics. At the moment, there are many concepts that explain the essence of the ethnos in many aspects. However, we must nevertheless consider an ethnos as a psychological community that can perform important functions for each person:

1) Orientation in the surrounding world, supplying relatively ordered information;

2) Set common life values;

3) Protect, being responsible not only for social, but also for physical well-being.

Now we must consider the historical development of ethnopsychology in order to understand the essence of science itself as a whole. Let's start with N. Gumilyov (1912–1992), who examines the formation of an ethnos from the psychological aspect - self-awareness and stereotype of behavior, which he understands as the norms of relations between people and groups. Stereotypes of behavior arise in a child in the first years of life. This means that belonging to an ethnic group is acquired in the process of socialization. Gumilyov does not mean education, but formation in a certain cultural sphere. For example, Anna Akhmatova, Gumilyov's mother, who grew up in the French cultural sphere. However, this situation did not prevent her from being a great Russian poetess. But when the stereotypes of the child's behavior are fully formed, then they cannot be radically changed. The cultural environment is an important factor in the formation of a representative of any ethnic culture and its development.

In addition to Gumilyov, there is also Bromel Yu.V. (1921-1990), who understood the ethnos as a historically formed in a specific territory a stable set of people with common features of culture, language and psyche, awareness of their unity and difference from other similar societies. In addition to him, he singles out an ethnos in the broad sense of the word - an ethnosocial organism, an example of which is a nation that has an economic and political community.

There are three fundamental directions in ethnopsychological research. First, relativists believe that psychological phenomena are conditioned by the cultural context. Its extreme pole is the deepening of intercultural differences in the structure of mental processes.

Secondly, the theoretical orientation in the absolutization of the similarities between cultures: any features are not considered, the obvious differences between them are ignored. Proponents are little concerned with ethnocentrism issues, and, as a result, they ignore the possibility of the influence of the culture of researchers on their research works.

The absolutist concept - the use of intelligence tests in interethnic and interracial studies - you are already familiar and should be aware that this very approach serves as a medium for attempts to justify the superiority of some peoples over others due to the "scientifically proven" inferiority of the latter.

In the modern world, ethnological scientists say that an ethnos as a social group, whose members are linked by such objective characteristics as language, customs, religion, psychological peculiarity, etc., has developed in the process of historical development. When proving this approach not only by politicians, but also by scientists - as V.A.Tishkov and the messengers notes - the conclusion can be drawn that all members of the group practice or should practice the same religion speak the same language, wear the same clothes, eat the same food, sing the same songs [Tishkov, 1997, p. 64].

It is not the differences between modern approaches to understanding the ethnos that are important for psychologists. More importantly, what they all have in common is the recognition of ethnic identity as one of its characteristics. All this means that an ethnos is a psychological community for individuals. This is the purpose of the psychologist - to study the groups of people who are aware of their membership in specific ethnic groups.

It is also not very important for psychologists that on the basis of which the characteristics of the awareness of ethnicity are built. The main thing is that the representatives of the ethnos fully understand their difference, their difference from others. They understand that all this: values ​​and norms, language, religion, historical memory, ideas about their native land, national character, myth about ancestors, folk and professional art are ethnodifferentiating features. This idea can be endlessly discussed. For example, it may contain the shape of the nose, the way of closing the robe, like the ancient Chinese, and even the nature of the cough, like the Kutenai Indians. The meaning and role of signs in the perception of members of an ethnic group change depending on the historical situation, on the characteristics of the ethnic environment and many other factors. It is no coincidence that attempts to define an ethnos through a number of features have consistently failed, especially since with the unification of culture, the number of "traditional" ethnodifferentiating features is steadily decreasing, which, however, is compensated by the attraction of new elements.

It is not the cultural distinctiveness of the group itself that is important, but the community of ideas of its members about ethnic markers, people's belief that they are connected by natural ties. For example, the common origin of members of modern ethnic groups is a beautiful myth; several peoples can associate themselves with the same territory; many elements of folk culture have been preserved only in ethnographic museums; the ethnic language can be lost by the majority of the population and be perceived only as a symbol of unity. Therefore, from the standpoint of a psychologist, ethnos can be defined as follows.

Ethnicity is a group of people who are aware of themselves as its members on the basis of any characteristics perceived as natural and stable ethnodifferentiating characteristics.

Thus, we come to the conclusion that psychology is the central core of ethnopsycholinguistics, since it is through cognitive processes that general representations of the world are formed. External factors - the culture of an ethnos, people, its specific features in language, tradition, mentality - affect cognitive (cognitive) processes, which also undoubtedly affect the formation of a personality by transforming them into bases that form a full-fledged personality.

Summarizing all of the above, we can identify all those basic provisions (also problems) that we received in the course of this short article:

1) The basics of personality formation are the cultural, linguistic and psychological environment in which she is from the moment of birth;

2) Changing his environment to another (having gone to another country), a person can radically change his linguistic component, having learned and made the native language of a given country, and become the soul of a representative of this state. However, the formed behavioral characteristics do not change only if a person emigrated to another cultural environment as an adult. The child can change.

3) The inability to learn the basic stylistic and grammatical structures of the language, the influence of another culture and other reasons are factors of how a person can lose the ability to express himself correctly in his language. A direct consequence of this is the use of occasionalisms by people - the misuse and ignorance of the basic roots that form the words of the language.

4) The above lead us to the idea that, perhaps, negative external factors on cognitive processes can lead to disturbances in the perception of the world. All this, presumably, will lead, if this happens, to the degradation of the individual - the entire society and humanity.

The origin of ethnopsychology in history and philosophy

Grains of ethnopsychological knowledge are scattered in the works of ancient authors - philosophers and historians: Herodotus, Hippocrates, Tacitus, Pliny, Strabo. Already in Ancient Greece, the influence of the environment on the formation of psychological characteristics was noticed. The physician and founder of medical geography Hippocrates (460 BC - 377 or 356 BC) put forward a general position according to which all differences between peoples - including their behavior and mores - are related to the nature and climate of the country.

Herodotus (born between 490 and 480 - d. C. 425 BC) is the "father" of not only history, but also ethnography. He himself wandered willingly and a lot and talked about the amazing features of the peoples he met during his travels. In the "History" of Herodotus, we meet with one of the first attempts at an etic approach, since the scientist seeks to explain the features of the life and character of different peoples that interest him with the natural environment around them and at the same time compares them with each other:

« Just as the sky in Egypt is different than anywhere else, and as their river differs in natural properties from other rivers, so the customs and customs of the Egyptians are in almost all respects opposite to those of other peoples "(Herodotus, 1972, p. 91).

Rather, this is a pseudo-etic approach, since Herodotus compares any people with their compatriots - the Hellenes. The best example of an ethnographic sketch by Herodotus is considered to be the description of Scythia, made on the basis of personal observations: it tells about the gods, customs, rituals of twinning and funeral rites of the Scythians, retells the myths about their origin. He does not forget about character traits, highlighting their severity, inaccessibility, cruelty. Herodotus tries to explain the attributed qualities both by the features of the environment (Scythia is a plain rich in grass and well irrigated by deep rivers), and by the nomadic way of life of the Scythians, thanks to which "no one can overtake them, unless they themselves allow it" (Herodotus, 1972, p. 198). In the "History" of Herodotus, we meet with many interesting observations, although he often gives absolutely fantastic descriptions of supposedly existing peoples. In fairness, it should be noted that the historian himself does not believe in stories about people with goat legs or about people who sleep six months a year.

In modern times, the first attempts to make peoples the subject of psychological observations were made in the 18th century. Again, it was environment and climate that were seen as the factors underlying the differences between the two. So, discovering differences in intelligence, they explained them by external (temperature) climate conditions. The supposedly temperate climate of the Middle East and Western Europe is more conducive to the development of intelligence, and with it civilization, than the climate of tropical regions, where "the heat stifles human efforts."

But it wasn't just intelligence that was studied. The French enlighteners of the eighteenth century introduced the concept of "the spirit of the people" and tried to solve the problem of its being conditioned by geographic factors. The most prominent representative of geographical determinism among French philosophers is C. Montesquieu (1689-1755), who believed that “many things govern people: climate, religion, laws, principles of government, examples of the past, manners, customs; as a result of all this, a common spirit of the people is formed ”(Montesquieu, 1955, p. 412). But among many factors, he put climate in the first place. For example, "the peoples of hot climates", in his opinion, are "timid like old people", lazy, incapable of feats, but endowed with a vivid imagination. And the northern peoples are "courageous like young men" and are not very sensitive to pleasures. At the same time, the climate affects the spirit of the people not only directly, but also indirectly: depending on climatic conditions and soil, traditions and customs are formed, which in turn affect the life of peoples. Montesquieu believed that in the course of history, the direct influence of climate weakens, while the action of other causes increases. If "nature and climate rule over the savages almost exclusively," then "the Chinese are ruled by customs, in Japan the tyrannical power belongs to the laws" and so on. (Ibid .: 412).

The idea of ​​the folk spirit penetrated into the German philosophy of the history of the 18th century. One of its most prominent representatives, a friend of Schiller and Goethe, J. G. Herder (1744-1803) considered the spirit of the people not as something disembodied, he practically did not share the concepts of "national spirit", "soul of the people" and "national character". The soul of the people was not for him something all-encompassing, containing all his originality. Herder mentioned the “soul” among other signs of the people, together with language, prejudices, music, etc. He emphasized the dependence of mental components on climate and landscape, but also admitted the influence of lifestyle and upbringing, social structure and history. Realizing how difficult it is to reveal the mental characteristics of a particular people, the German thinker noted that "... one must live with one feeling with the nation in order to feel at least one of its inclinations" (Herder, 1959, p. 274). In other words, he groped for one of the main characteristics of the emic approach - the desire to study culture from the inside, merging with it.

The soul of the people, according to Herder, can be recognized through their feelings, speech, deeds, i.e. it is necessary to study his whole life. But he put oral folk art in the first place, believing that it is the fantasy world that reflects the folk spirit in the best way. As one of the first European folklorists, Herder tried to apply the results of his research in describing the features inherent in the "soul" of some of the peoples of Europe. But when he moved to the psychological level, the characteristics he distinguished turned out to be little connected with the peculiarities of folklore. So, he described the Germans as a people of courageous morals, noble valor, virtuous, bashful, able to deeply love, honest and truthful. Found Herder and the "disadvantage" of his compatriots: cautious, conscientious, not to say a slow and clumsy character. We are especially interested in the traits that Herder attributed to the neighbors of the Germans - the Slavs: generosity, hospitality to the point of extravagance, love of "rural freedom." And at the same time, he considered the Slavs to be easily obedient and obedient (Ibid .: 267).

Herder's views are just one example of the close attention of European philosophers to the problem of national character or popular spirit. The English philosopher D. Hume and the great German thinkers I. Kant and G. Hegel also contributed to the development of knowledge about the character of peoples. All of them not only spoke out about the factors influencing the spirit of peoples, but also offered "psychological portraits" of some of them.