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Paper abstract:

In the proposed study, the author explores the phenomenon of national identity policy and state-building process in the Republic of Dagestan within the Russian Federation, which is the most diverse from an ethnic point of view: more than 18 nationalities are officially recognised as nations here and 14 languages, including Russian, have official status: newspapers are printed on them, television and radio programs are conducted, and culture and creativity are developed.

With its Turko-Persian name, which emerged in the 16 Century and means “land of mountains”, Dagestan differs from other national entities in Russia and the former Soviet Union in having geographical rather than ethnic designation. Its autonomy is based not one or two name-giving nationalities, as in the case of other republics, but on multitude of autochthonous ethnicities. The ethnic diversity creates a Babel-like tangle of languages in a dense patchwork identities.

The identity of Dagestan, in turn, was made up of several factors, such as a common religious heritage, the multinational composition of the region, its relationship with Moscow, as well as the ideological foundations for the elite of the republic (which has always consisted mainly of Avars and Dargins) in an attempt to prove, or vice versa delimit the consolidation of the peoples of Dagestan. In the presented study, the author makes a phenomenal conclusion that, despite the diversity of ethnic groups, which, nevertheless, are united by a common religion, which should play the role of an ethno-confessional mobiliser, despite the presence of alternative figures of public opinion in the form of imams and sports champions with low confidence in official institutions of power on the ground, and despite the use of a single language of interethnic communication, which is associated with the metropolis in the form of Moscow, Dagestan and Dagestanis have not yet formed a solid basis for self-identification. The failure of the policy of building a general Dagestani project is expressed, first, in the fact that the strongest catalysts for ethno-social mobilisation in the republic is the opposition of Dagestanis with others (residents of Moscow, immigrants from neighbouring republics or tourists), while in normal times the identity markers are the community or village from which the respondents originate.