The Role of Amendments to the Constitution of the Russian Federation in Regulating National Relations

Abstract

The paper focuses on the impact of the amendments to the Constitution of the Russian Federation, approved at aa-Russian voting in 2020, on the regulation of state policy in the area of national relations. The author classifies the main innovations determining management approaches to the regulation of national relations in Russia. The author justifies the compliance of these innovations with the foundations of the constitutional order and with the provisions regarding the multinational people as a subject of popular sovereignty as it follows from the Preamble of the Constitution. The author concludes that the cultural and ideological content of the amendments predominates in terms of their influence on state national policy. The paper analyzes the content of the new constitutional category «state-forming people», elucidates the cultural and ideological content of the concept that is associated with the implementation of the constitutional principle of historical continuity of the Russian Federation, as well as the legislative practice that developed before 2020. The author justifies the necessity for an official interpretation of a number of constitutional terms included in the new edition of Chapter 3 and dwells on the development of not only cultural and ideological but also political guarantees for ethnic communities, ensuring the internal sovereignty of the Russian state in the area of culture and national relations.