Integration potential of a multi-ethnic region in the context of sociocultural security strengthening

The article presents the analysis of problems of socio-cultural security in a multi-ethnic region on the example of the Stavropol region. The emphasis is placed on identifying an integration potential of a multi-ethnic region in the context of sociocultural security as a characteristic feature of an ethnocultural and ethno-confessional environment in which both society and a person are safe and they are not perceived as threats to each other. The article shows that it is the historically developed specific model of a civil society built on the basis of accounting for group ethnopolitical, ethnocultural and ethno-confessional interests that has the highest integration potential. The main agents according to this model are interreligious and interethnic councils, commissions on interethnic and interconfessional relations, Cossack communities, councils of elders, councils of theologians, councils of clans and other institutions that have public authority. Due to the joint activities of the mentioned groups it is possible to build and maintain an interethnic and interreligious harmony, thus ensuring sociocultural security. An integration potential is also characteristic of such an element of a civil society as the existing unwritten rules, socially significant in the sphere of family and kinship, family and community, age and gender relations. It is asserted that linguistic processes also have an integration potential, namely preservation of cultural and linguistic heritage of ethnic communities as a condition for developing a national civic identity and strengthening of the leading role of the Russian language in shaping an all-Russian identity.