My experience of the CRN, most interesting discussions on our meetings and the work of other participants helped me expand my knowledge of identity formation and learn about a variety of methods that can be used in research of this rather complex phenomenon. I found it interesting to analyze and generalize some papers from two Russian groups. While the papers differ in topics and approaches, one can discern some generalities in the existing patterns of identity formation despite the cultural, historical, and social differences of the investigated cases. What I think is important, though, is that my generalizations also highlighted some unresolved problems and thus some new opportunities for research of identity.

Elites: Rational Choice Strategies

I think it is worthwhile to make clear that all the authors generally share a similar understanding of identity. It can be called constructivist and instrumentalist. Nonetheless, there are also differences as some authors (V. Gelman & E. Popova, N. Petrov, and A. Miller) are inclined to attribute the most active role in identity formation to the elite groups. Others (L. Drobizheva, T. Hopf, R. Galliamov, E. Ponarin, L. Sagitova, M. Stepaniants, and L. Gatagova), while acknowledging the elite effort in identity construction, also emphasize the significance of historically reified constructs when (territorial, ethnic or religious) identity is perceived as given on the mass level.

Every author, by investigating his specific case, tries to show how identity is formed and what objective and subjective factors influence its stability or fluidity over various circumstances. It is noteworthy that whereas in their analysis of identity formation in three Russian provinces Vladimir Gelman and Evgenia Popova successfully use the "invention of tradition" mechanism described by Hobsbawm and Ranger, they also use market terms. One of the subtitles in the paper essentially describes their method: "Symbolic management: demand, supply, and strategies." The authors, within the rational choice framework, examine the resource- maximizing political elites and study the situation on the external and internal symbolic markets that are constrained by the balance of supply and demand.

The authors' investigation focuses on the process of manipulation of the informational environment. Their case study modifies the well-known B. Anderson's conception of nationalism that gives a central role to the novel and the newspaper in an unintentional formation of the imagined community. Gelman and Popova try to demonstrate in their work that the elite strategies of the formation of the regional identity not only reflect but also structure the dimensions of the identity. It allows for manipulation of mass beliefs and mass behavior. The authors convincingly show how politicians in regions varying on the province ethnic composition, geography, size, degree of urbanization, character of the elite, and mass political behavior purposefully form regional identity that becomes a potent tool, as well as a resource, for realization of their interests. The listed variables make a framework within which a province-specific system of rationality is built. This universal mechanism can be reduced to the following scheme: elites achieve their interests through a rational behavior that takes into account local historical, political, cultural, economic, and other factors.

A similar formula, although not in market terms, shows up in other papers. The historian Alexei Miller shows the significance of elite interests and activities in the formation of the Russian state and ethnic identities and how complex political circumstances led to the emergence of new regional identities, such as Ukrainian. Examples from Tatarstan (T. Hopf, L. Sagitova), Bashkortostan (R. Galliamov, L. Drobizheva), Dagestan (M. Stepaniants), and most Russian provinces (N. Petrov) conform the universality of the elite model in the present-day (geo)political situation.

Masses: what is the logic of participation?

The emphasis on the elite activities, however, leaves out the motivation of the recipient masses, although some authors (R. Galliamov, L. Drobizheva, and M. Stepaniants) attempt to examine their reaction to the efforts of the ruling elite, the state, and the intelligentsia. It is clear that their references to mass survey data do little to help us understand as to why the population accepts or rejects the official and other identities generated and imposed from above. For instance, why did B. Khmelnitsky (who in A. Miller's analysis defected to Moscow and thus upset the balance of power between the Muscovite Czardom and the Rzecz Pospolita) receive the support of his Ukrainian rebels? Or why does the population of Russian provinces accept (or maybe it does not?) the regional identities invented by the elites of Novgorod, Sverdlovsk, and Samara? To be sure, Gelman & Popova did not study the mass reactions. But their occasional mentioning of positive mass reactions with references to regional press and statements made by some elite representatives does not look convincing. Electoral behavior, either, cannot be a reliable indicator of mass acceptance of this or that identity because Russian provincial elections are normally rigged.

Of course, it is another problem and resolving it would require other paradigms and methods. It is just an example of how a good study can pose new questions.

Liudmila Gatagova's work gives us a glimpse of how elite and masses jointly participated in the formation of ethnic identity in the Russian Empire of the second half of the nineteenth century. She beautifully shows the role of the public sphere in the formation of beliefs and identities. Although much of the informational exchange was made in the press, the public sphere is not confined to mass media. Mass media defined the discourse that was discussed and modified by the educated strata of the society. That is where exchange of ideas and identity formation took place.

Mass reaction and support (primarily by the peasantry) are convincingly shown with reference to historical facts, such as peasants' complaints against Catholic priests and landlords, their cooperation with the Russian military during a Russian-Polish war, formation of national guards bound to pursue "Polish spies," etc.

At the same time, such interaction of elites and masses highlights some problems. For instance, the author claims: "the Russian national consciousness had clearly visible messianic features, such as the idea of being a chosen people burdened to be the custodians of the Third Rome." If the Russian national consciousness is identical to the collective consciousness, then this ideological belief should have been shared by both elites and masses (mostly peasants). I suppose, however, that the Russian peasant identity and consciousness in the second half of the nineteenth century were quite remote from this discourse; their identity was mostly focused on their religion and locale. The messianic ideology was more common in the elite strata, but even there it was not the only one. Various groups, such as aristocracy, state bureaucracy, clergy, and intellectuals divided into Westerners and Slavophiles, reproduced and maintained their own, often diverse, discourses, which influenced identity formation.

Unlike in other papers (Gelman & Popova, Miller, Sagitova, and Hopf), one cannot see here the motivation of the elite groups. Interesting and detailed historical materials show what attitudes, ideologies, and beliefs were current among the Russian elite. But as one reads them on, one wants to ask why those particular ideas were current. What were their social causes? Were there external "others" (such as the West) or internal "others"? After all, one's identification emerges in contacts with "others", on the cultural frontiers.

The mechanism of transmission of ideologies and beliefs from the educated classes to the mass level (in this particular case, peasants or marginalized groups) remains unclear. So does the logic (motivation) of acceptance or rejection thereof. These questions became even more urgent as one reads the description of the events showing how the masses partake and respond to the current ideologies.

The motivation of the "popular action" described by L. Gatagova can be interpreted: a) as the popular defense of the Russian imperial and religious identity shared by the people and the elite; b) as a social conflict between the rich and the poor when the poor take any opportunity to get even with the rich (and so that is why peasants complain about their landlords); c) as a psychological reaction of frustration to a set of social problems leading to mass hysteria and xenophobia; in the last case it does not have to be about shared identities and values. The general impression is that identity formation on the mass level is spontaneous and not always rational.

Since the ideological activities of the elite are rational and depend on various factors, it would be logical to think that responses of those who are targeted by those activities are bound by its own rationality. That the rationality logic of the masses is different from the strategic rationality of the elite groups should be made a point. Whereas the elite groups strive to maximize the resources enabling them to influence other individuals or groups (Gelman & Popova), the mass interest is to maximize the resources enabling to survive under current social, political, economic, and cultural circumstances. So, although the historical and social factors in the wider sense are essentially the same, various groups have different rationality systems.

The majority and a minority: a mosaic of strategies in the system of identifications

In its turn, what I call mass-level rationality is not homogenous. For instance, it may vary between the (ethnic, racial or religious) majority and minorities. The same factors, such as educational, political, and economic systems of a state, can differently influence the rationality of an identity choice or loyalty in the cases of the majority and a minority.

The state determines much of the relationship of the two. The state imposes norms and regulations through its system of domination, which is legitimated through ideology and daily reproduced through state and social institutes. The status of racial, confessional, and ethnic groups is a part of this system.

Racial, religious or ethnic identities essentially belong to the private sphere. They become public through an effort of elites or the state. And then one's status becomes either a social resource or subject to social sanctions. This alone is bound to make the strategies of majority and minority different.

The majority can choose an ethnic other for an object of aggression caused by social and economic factors (cf. L. Gatagova on mass xenophobia in the Russian society in the nineteenth century). She also describes the reaction of an ethnic and religious minority, the Russian Poles who under the pressure of the state and persecutions chose a rational strategy: lack of trust and of acceptance of others, consolidation around their spiritual leaders, and disengagement, which contributed to crystallization and strengthening of their ethnic and religious identity.

The relationship of the majority and a minority is sensitive to the status determined by various factors, such as race, ethnicity or religion. In the case described by myself the status inequality between the all-Soviet "high culture" (a la Gellner) based on the Russian majority's culture and language and the Tatar national culture in Tatarstan turned out to be a time bomb. In a democratizing society the latter culture claimed a status equal to the Russian culture and language, which became a major demand of the nationalist movement in the post-Soviet Tatarstan.

Or consider another example when the Tatars with a sensitized ethnic identity denounced the fact that the Orthodox churches in Kazan, the capital city of the republic, had their crosses on a higher elevation than the Muslim crescents on mosques. They saw a hidden political meaning symbolizing the Russian domination in the republic. In the ethnic renaissance that started in the late eighties this "injustice" was corrected: a new Kul-Sharif mosque was built in the Kazan Kremlin in 2001. The mosque dominates not only the Orthodox churches but also the whole city.

Interests

The reviewed papers use different examples to show that, in spite of different interests (power and survival) of the elite and the masses, their interests overlap. Such overlaps involve:

• Access to economic and social resources
• Preservation of values (language, culture or religion)
• Sensitivity to status
• Political representation

Relations within the majority and a minority influence the mosaic of motivations in the relations between those two groups, especially when a counter-elite professing a new ideological identity emerges.

That is what happened in the Tatar society in the second half of the nineteenth century and early twentieth century. The Tatar elite split into reformers and conservatives. Essentially, it was a struggle of two conceptions of the Tatar identity. The old Muslim identity was supported by the traditionalist clergy, whereas the new nationalist identity was espoused by the new bourgeoisie, intellectuals, and a part of the reformist clergy. Political, social, and economic interests determined relations between those groups, as well as their relations with the czarist administration. The traditionalists were interested in the preservation of their power in the Muslim community and called for maintaining purity of the ethnic and religious environment and for restriction of private contacts with Russians. But that did not prevent them from developing Tatar loyalty to the Russian state, which may be explained by the fact that since 1788 Muslim dignitaries have been equaled to czarist state officials; that is, they had a rather high status and income.

The reformers' interests converged with those of the (mostly ethnic) Russian political parties who wanted to reform the Russian political life, as the czarist law severely restricted activities of the Tatar bourgeoisie and emerging intelligentsia. Thus, the Tatar delegates who participated in the 1906 All-Russian Congress of the Party of Constitutional Democracy wrote in the petition to the Congress: "In our opinion, the Party of Constitutional Democracy is not a specifically [ethnic] Russian organization . . . rather, it is a party of various peoples." This opinion was informed by some democratic guarantees made in the party program to the Russian "aliens."

The poor strata of both Tatars and Russians were united by their resentment of the bourgeoisie. The editorial titled "Kazan, June 19" published in one of the Tatar newspapers emphasized: "the enterprise owner, whether he is Muslim or Christian, treats his worker in the same manner, as a profit-yielding machine."

These examples illustrate fluidity of identities and of ethnic and confessional boundaries between the majority and a minority, as well as between the social groups that make both. Social and political circumstances (the state being the third actor) influence those boundaries.

Modernity

Ideally, the state was supposed to guarantee justice. That has been the general view since the French revolution. European modernity was thought to be about social contract and resolving the problem of inequality. This of course involved the relations of the majority and a minority. Ethnic and confessional groups have joined the debate. It was not only about social status; minorities compared themselves with the majority in all spheres, from politics to culture. These categories were no longer restricted by state boundaries; they were about civilizations. Class differences were sometimes strangely projected onto confessional differences. This stratification in the spirit of Marx involved the world civilizations and explained social inequality globally.

A good illustration is the ideology of post-revolutionary "Muslim Communism" in Russia. The idea of Islamic unity for the cause of independence was adapted to the changed political reality. The party leaders M. Sultan-Galiev and H. Muzaffar believed that the Muslim countries are proletarian in their status and economic conditions, whereas Europe is their exploiter. That is where they found common interests with the Soviet government that waged a war with imperialism. The alliance was justified by the following arguments made by H. Muzaffar: "We had to take the chance to unite with the Soviet government and make an effort to strengthen it. It is quite possible that a union of these two forces (the world proletariat and the Turk-Tatar bourgeoisie) will strike Europe and put an end to Europe's abuses."

Another important aspect of the relationship of the majority and a minority is what I call the mirror principle. Indeed, the minority's actions sometimes look like an imitation of the majority with a time lag. Thus the development of Russian pan-Slavism in the 1860s provoked the pan-Turkic response on the part of the Russian Muslims. Similarities between the two were visible even in the apprehensive reactions of the Orthodox and Muslim clergies to the ethno-civilizational consolidation of their respective communities (L. Gatagova, M. Stepaniants).

Such repetitiveness also happens when a minority during its national self-determination constructs an ideological interpretation of the "self" borrowing from the relevant extant patterns of the majority (that was shown by Hobsbawm and Ranger with specific examples). Cultural elements, historical events, and the status of a historic personality make construction blocks for the collective identity. From this perspective, the examples made by Nikolai Petrov look quite logical. The author is surprised and makes fun of "the amazing combinations and mixture of very different elements" in construction of regional identities in the post-Soviet space. For instance, "a product of the Soviet era, Islam Karimov, the President of Uzbekistan, initiated the elevation of two historic characters to the status of ‘national' heroes: a long-term Communist leader Sharaf Rashidov and the creator of a powerful 14th century empire Tamerlane." The logic of value-laden approach is not productive here; such unexpected combinations have their rationality. Namely, it depends on social circumstances according to which a pantheon of "our" (ethnic, racial, religious) heroes convenient for the current epoch is built.

Institutions

It is known that the relations of the majority and a minority or relations between minorities are reproduced and routinized through institutions. It can be either informal institutions of the community or formal institutions controlled by the state. This is where the mass and elite rationalities overlap or join. Loyalty to and stability of a group identity, as well as complementarities (or propensity for conflict) of the majority and minority identities, depend on whether these institutes adequately represent the interests of the two named sides. There is a very interesting work of Kristof Zuercher, a German scholar who works on multiculturalism, where he describes the role and significance of local informal institutions in mediating conflict resolution. Using the cases of those North Caucasus republics that are able to maintain stability and peaceful co-existence between the majority, minorities, and "we-groups," Zuercher shows how local institutions maintain or create sustainable balance, diversity, and blurred border zones between "we-groups." The author emphasizes the significance of local grassroots processes by pointing out that the institutionalization of integrative diversity takes place on that level. He distinguishes:

• The local experience in conflict resolution
• The local institutionalized agreements
• Local traditions and histories

1. Maintenance or creation of common institutions
2. Organization of cultural exchange
3. Support or formation of blurred border zones between cultures

In lieu of conclusion