The specifics of the external identification of russian and western civilizations: domestic discourse

The problems of external identification of Western and Russian civilizations, both having an ideo-cratic character, are considered from a cultural point of view and interpreted as specific features of building relationships with the “other”. The religious and cultural origins forming various variants of external identification are reflected. The Christian faith is distinguished as the basic origin of both civilizations. It developed in various ways: at the West an archetypal complex of modernity with the primacy of anthropocentric views was formed, in Russia it was a complex of Christian universalism, a philosophical interpretation of faith. Within the framework of Western civilization, it is built on the basis of self-recognition as a “world-concept”, universal education, and, as a consequence, colonial policy. Russian civilization forms a different type of external identification based on the principle of a “donor empire”, the philosophical basis of this type is the concept of “Moscow, the third Rome”.