You lit your mind with enlightenment, You have a pure face. And the tenderly alien peoples loved, And he wisely hated it ... You rubbed your hands from our failures, With a crafty laugh, I listened to news, When the broken shelves fled to jump And the banner of our honor is fed. A.S. Pushkin On the relationship of the Russian elite and the Russian nation National self -determination begins with the self -determination of elites.

I never felt like a specialist in the national question. Partly because I am not sure that nations exist in reality, that is, at the gene level, and not just one of the ways of socialization. There is even such a job convincingly proving that there are no Jews in nature, but there is only a habit of being considered a Jew. Partly because throughout my life this issue was interpreted extremely confusing, verbose and contradictory, despite the fact that indisputable authorities.

Recent events on Manezhnaya Square, responding with resonance in several cities of provincial Russia, became the anticipation of a new qualitative situation in Russian politics.