Models of understanding cultural-civilizational specificity of Russia

The article proposes a methodology for linking the formation-evolutionary, cultural-civilizational, ethnological, and cultural-anthropological models in understanding the changes of complicated social and cultural systems. Ethnic being is the most powerful energy source of individual and collective mythogenesis. In today’s difficult conditions, there is a need to involve cultural and anthropological epistemological model the socio-humanitarian study, in the centre of which there is a “living person” - a concrete historical individual. This approach opens the possibility of inadequate study of the specifics of the cultural and civilizational development of Russia at all stages of itssocio-cultural changes. Dedicated epistemological models allow to adequately study the specifics of the cultural and civilizational development of Russia, updated in line with the next wave of modernization of the country. The article focuses on the Imperial form of existence of the Russian civilization. he authors analyze the advantages and disadvantages of these models in the study of historical dynamics of complex social systems, revealing their possibilities in identifying the necessary and the accidental, the changeable and the stable, the universal and the specific in the cultural and civilizational being of Russia. A special place in the article is occupied by the controversy with the liberal concept of ethnos and nation, developed by the academician V. A. Tishkov. Another issues are the characteristic of advantages of the passionarity theory by L. N. Gumilev and “ethnic psychology” by G. Shpet.