SELF-UNDERSTANDING OF ETHNIC IDENTITY AS AN ESSENTIAL CHARACTERISTIC OF SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS OF YOUNG STUDENTS

The paper discusses the concept of “national identity” as a construct emphasizing the subject side of national identity, the involvement of a person in socio-cultural and political processes. This aspect involves the study of a nation as the predictive side of personal self-identity, the identification of ideas about own country, ethnic group, sense of belonging to the country and the nation. The relevance of the research is caused by the importance of analyzing historical experience, especially experiencing critical, fatal historical events determining the awareness of belonging to own nation as a single civil community, of rethinking the past and including it in the assessment of the present. The purpose of the research is to study self-understanding of ethnic identity of young students as the essential characteristic of their self-consciousness related to the understanding of ethnicity. The authors used the following research methods: The Scale of Express-Assessment of the Degree of Ethnic Identity (N.M. Lebedeva), The Scale of Express-Assessment of Feelings Associated with Ethnicity (N.M. Lebedeva), The Types of Ethnic Identity (G.U. Soldatova, S.V. Ryzhova). The paper presents the results of the study of the formation of self-understanding of ethnic identity by a person. Based on the conducted empirical research, the authors concluded that the degree of ethnic identity, feelings associated with ethnic identity are the evidence of self-understanding and the most constant characteristic of personal self-consciousness since national identity is formed in the process of understanding own history, own current state and possible and desired perspectives in the context of ideas about the ethnocultural identity. The results of the positive ethnic identity of the respondents show their awareness of belonging to a particular nation, which is an essential characteristic of their self-consciousness.