“Positive Discrimination” in the Ethnopolitics as a Problem in Modern Historiography

Abstract

The article discusses the principle of “positive discrimination”, also known as the principle of “positive action” or “affirmative action”. The article addresses the moral dimension of this issue and the question of under what circumstances positive discrimination can and should be used, as well as the conflict of the principles of “positive discrimination” and equality.. This is clearly an important issue for Russia and its neighboring states, which were previously part of the Russian Empire, and then the Soviet Union. In recent years, the number of publications on the relationship between rights of the ethnic majority and the minority has significantly increased. Ethnopolitics within the Russian Federation and in post-Soviet countries gives reason to talk about rich historical experience of “positive discrimination” and its modern practices. At the same time, in modern extensive national historiographies, there are other points of view and assessments of the experience of “positive discrimination” in imperial and Soviet political practice, as well as reflection on situations in the post-Soviet space. One problem posed in specialist literature is the problem of Russians as an ethnic minority in former Soviet republics, where the absence of “positive discrimination” is particularly noticeable. It is precisely with this that researchers associate the emergence of the “Russian question”. General and universal components of this policy, generalized on the basis of political practices and identified in the specialized literature, are applicable both to European society and to societies in Asia, Africa, and other regions of the world, including modern Russia.