From the editor

Dear readers!

The journal "Otechestvennye zapiski" resumes after a three-year break. This break was due to a seemingly random circumstance - the economic crisis of 2008 hit. And yet, the suspension of the magazine today seems almost natural. At the beginning of 2009, public life almost completely ceased to flow, and the interest in thorough analytics among a non-specialist - an “educated city dweller,” as we called the magazine reader among ourselves - clearly faded.

And then, after three years, an amazing coincidence happened: in the summer of 2011, the permanent trustee and publisher of the magazine, Vyacheslav Aminov, had the idea of ​​​​renewing Otechestvennye Zapiski, and while organizational preparations were underway, the social scene was unexpectedly radically updated. A new character suddenly appeared on her - that same educated city dweller in his own non-partisan persona. So the magazine returns to the public space just in time. Returns - with the same tasks and goals, but on new organizational grounds. Now the publication will be published under the patronage of the Higher School of Economics, as well as the specially created “Domestic Notes” Foundation, designed to promote the formation of a modern expert environment in Russia. The Trustees of the Foundation included Vyacheslav Aminov, Alexander Klyachin, Simon Kordonsky, Yaroslav Kuzminov, Alexander Oslon, Vadim Radaev.

In the first issue of the renewed magazine, we undertake a new “going to the people.” Actually, this task was formulated by Alexander Herzen in 1861 at the peak of the then activation of the “educated society.” Regarding the expulsion from universities of students who participated in protests under liberal slogans, he wrote in Kolokol: “But where can you go, young men, from whom science has been locked? Listen, fortunately the darkness does not interfere with listening: from all corners of our vast homeland - from the Don and the Urals, from the Volga and Dnieper - a groan is growing, a murmur is rising; This is the initial roar of the sea wave, which boils, fraught with storms after a terribly tiring calm. To the people! To the people! “This is your place, exiles of science.” But what are people? In Herzen’s time, it was generally not difficult to answer this question - so deep was the gulf that separated the educated class from the mass of illiterate and downtrodden peasants. Today, the question seems by no means simple, and not only at the expert level, but even at the everyday level. Meanwhile, without an answer to it, one of the main provisions of our constitution - “the bearer of sovereignty and the only source of power in the Russian Federation is its multinational people” - remains an insignificant set of words.

We made a feasible attempt to find at least some ground under our feet, for which we first of all carried out a revision of the existing conceptual apparatus. Archaeological excavations of a powerful cultural layer of meanings invested in the words people and nation over the past two centuries have yielded an unexpected result: it has become obvious that today’s seemingly postmodern debates around these concepts contain quite archaic motives. Moreover, the concept of “people”, which is so convenient for use at rallies, behind which a priori there is a whole set of virtues, turns out to be completely unsuitable when it comes to positive analysis. Because it carries within itself an irresistible temptation to see in the people a political and ideological whole, something indivisible, almost a living organism, a “collective personality” from which unanimity is not only possible, but should also be expected. Meanwhile, positive scientific analysis, on the contrary, involves penetration into the internal structure of the object under study. When trying to identify such a structure, several of the most significant coordinate axes are discovered. The materials in this issue are naturally tied to two most important ones. First, the social axis, on which the “people” appears as a complex set of classes, castes, corporations and estates. Secondly, ethnocultural. Here the whole is divided in accordance with national identity, which differs at different historical moments and in different groups.

We could not help but try to answer the question of how the transformation of the extremely diverse Russian “population” into a “political people” could be carried out, each representative of which would consider himself obliged to participate in the common cause - the organization of public life, to bear responsibility for this matter (in ancient In Greece, there was a special name for those who shied away from such duties - “idiots”).

The editors understood from the very beginning that even in a multi-page volume they would not be able to fully cover the topic of “people,” so this issue should be viewed more as an invitation to a conversation that we are ready to continue in future issues.

We intend to continue to undertake the analysis of concepts that seem obvious, but do not require analysis, in the near future - in the nearest plans of the volume “Corruption” and “Security”. Without such an analysis, synthesis is impossible - the most scarce commodity in Russia.

Despite the abundance of researchers, an expert community has not yet formed in the country, and the journal will continue to do its best to contribute to this process. Finding and attracting people to our site for whom the meaning of life is intellectual search remains the main task of Otechestvennye Zapiski. The magazine’s website, which until now was a simple archive, will change in the same vein. We plan to turn it into a dynamic portal where honest knowledge will reign.

Dear readers! We will try to be needed by you. To each individual and to the whole that you form, that is, the people.

Until next time.