FORMATION OF IDEAS ABOUT “EMIGRATION” AND “EMIGRANTS” IN THE RUSSIAN ETHNIC PICTURE OF THE WORLD (16TH - THE SECOND HALF OF THE 20TH CENTURY)

Thе article addresses the history of the formation of ideas about “emigration” and “emigrants” in the Russian ethnic worldview. Turning to dictionaries, historical documents, literary and journalistic texts, the authors come to the conclusion that the idea of emigration (from the country) emerges much earlier than the words “emigrant” and “emigration” enter the Russian linguoculture. Historically, the spatial meaning in Russian perceptions of emigration was of secondary importance; it was dominated by political connotations syncretized with ethnic (ethno-psychological, ethno-religious) and ethical attitudes. So complexly constructed and historically changing meanings were based on perceptions of “own/foreign”, focused on the image of “fatherland/foreign land”, “righteous/unrighteous”. Emigration and emigrants “to Russia” (from a foreign homeland) and “from Russia” (from one’s own homeland) were characterized by polar meanings. That frame was fully realized after the October Revolution and determined the formation of the image for the perception of emigration in the consciousness of the metropolis and self-perception of emigrants in the dispersion, the artistic specifics of those categories in Russian literature of the 16th – the second half of the 20th century. The spatial meaning of the concept of “emigration” only strengthens the negative political meaning, and the meaning of political identity updates ethnic and national connotations – up to the early 1990s.