"The Soviet people have disappeared together with the Soviet Union", while a new Russian nation has not yet taken shape, he said.
Markedonov sees the end goal of the Russian ethnic policy in the creation of a single Russian civilian and political nation.
He believes that basis for ethnic self-identification should not be the ethnos but the community of all the citizens residing in the territory of Russia.
The lack of a national idea has led to the situation that the ethnic component is now in the centre of the self-identification of parts of society. In his opinion, this is typical of not only national republics but also some regions.
The 1996 ethnic policy concept has sealed "the principle of the ethnical policy bias". The subject of the political process is ethnos, not the Russian nation. In the opinion of Markedonov, such a policy splits society.
