THE FIRST LESSON OF CONSTITUTIONAL PATRIOTISM, OR WHAT RUSSIA WAS TAUGHT BY THE ‘END OF HISTORY'

Abstract

The article discusses the concept of constitutional patriotism, its content and role in the theory of statebuilding and theconstitutional process based on the analysis of scientific sources, the practice of constitutional design and modeling. Conductingempirical research, the author uses the methods of comparative law, classifies and interprets historical data and, thanks to asystematic approach, synthesizes conclusions about the meaning and role of constitutional patriotism in constitutional theory andpractice. The main differences of constitutional patriotism from such concepts as civil patriotism, democratic nationalism andconstitutional nationalism are revealed, the key priorities of this doctrine (constant open political communication of all participantsof the democratic process), its fundamental elements (unity of popular sovereignty and unity of the civic nation), as well as risksand threats of its use in the statelegal life of the Russian Federation. On the basis of a detailed analysis of foreign sources,revealing the content and purpose of constitutional patriotism, the prospects for its use in the state law doctrine of the RussianFederation and abroad are explored. In particular, it is concluded that the main idea in implementing key provisions of the doctrineof constitutional patriotism in the Russian discourse is to understand it exclusively in the version of the nationwide ‘Russian culturalpatriotism', which presupposes the strengthening of Russian civil identity based on the spiritual, moral and cultural values of thepeoples of the Russian Federation. It is argued that the unification of the nation on the basis of the principles of constitutionalpatriotism does not occur by itself, constitutional patriotism is required to learn.