Received on August 27, 2020
Multiculturalism is a policy aimed at preserving and developing cultural differences in a particular country and in the world as a whole. Some various ideologies and theories make governments carry out appropriate work among the population. In general, judging from the aesthetic and ethical component, there is nothing wrong with such a whirligig, on the contrary. However, since public life does not always comply with the prescribed regulations, a large number of problems and inconsistencies appear. First of all, not everyone is tolerant of representatives of other cultures and ethnic groups. That contributes to the manifestations of chauvinism, separatism, and xenophobia. This problem, in its turn, depends on the lack of education, appropriate upbringing, self-obsession, but most importantly, on the antagonism formed by the capitalist society and based on economic grounds, as well as other reasons and peculiarities. Mildly speaking, capitalism does not promote integration even within one ethnic group, let alone others. The words of V.I. Lenin written in 1922, almost 100 years ago, seem to be quite relevant even today: "Freedom to withdraw from the union", which we use to justify ourselves, will turn out to be an empty piece of paper, unable to protect Russian foreigners from the invasion of that truly Russian man, the Great Russian chauvinist and, essentially, a rapist and abuser, which is a typical Russian bureaucrat. There is no doubt that an insignificant percentage of Soviet and new Soviet workers will drown in this sea of chauvinistic Great Russian trash like a fly in milk" [10]. (Lenin meant the tsarist bureaucracy that kept on working in the young Soviet republic).
Class antagonism can take many forms. Labour migration from the former Soviet republics is a competition for local proletarians. "Guest workers" agree to work for less wages and entrepreneurs prefer their services. People are usually afraid to speak out against their direct oppressors, forced to fawn on them, and they divert aggression on others. It is not difficult to find examples. They are always in sight and on everyone's lips, even if displayed slightly but rather specifically. The most popular, and perhaps the most innocuous manifestation of ethnocentrism in everyday life is the ethnonym "gooks" (and its variations: "chinks", "skibbies") used to describe people of other nationalities. Moreover, this manifestation is typical for representatives of any profession and class. Mass media also suffers from expressions such as "persons of Caucasian nationality", etc. in relation to the natives of the Caucasus and former union republics of Central Asia. Quoting Lenin again: "Almost always in history, we, the nationals of a large nation, find ourselves guilty of an infinite amount of violence, and even more than that, we unwittingly commit an infinite number of violence and insults. One has only to recall my Volga recollections of how foreigners are treated in our country, how a Polander is not called anything other than a "Pollack", how a Tatar is not ridiculed otherwise than a "prince", a Ukrainian other than a "Ukes", and a Georgian and other Caucasian aliens — as a "Kapkaz man" [10]. However, one cannot say that the latter, in turn, behave under the cultural norms of civilized societies. Anti-ethnocentrism often appears when people fawn on the culture of Western countries, belittling their own culture. This problem exists not only in our country, but all over the world. What are the ways to overcome it? After all, the question is not whether to encourage or not to encourage cultural diversity, but in the form of this encouragement.