Abstract: The “national question” relates to such spheres of social life in which the October Revolution demonstrated the most drastic gap with the “old order”; the Soviet government has acquired the anti-colonial, anti-imperial language of self-description. However, the academic studies of the recent twenty five years mark the prevalence of representations on the imperial natural of the Soviet State (image of USSR as the “last empire” has become ingrained in the academic discourse; the post-colonial studies apprehend the post-Soviet space as a legitimate sphere of their scientific interest). The author sets a goal to problematize such approach, thus analyzes the very concept of the “empire”, examines separate aspects of the history of Soviet period, and reconstructs the identity of a Soviet person. A conclusion is made that in a number of cases, the application of the imperial paradigm in describing the Soviet realities rather impedes the adequate comprehension of the latter, because the practices of dominance and administration in USSR, language, cultural, and economic policy, identities of people and their everyday experience cannot be reduced to the imperial and colonial.

Abstract: In this article the problem of integration of the Central Asian migrants in Russia is considered. Investigating a religion role in societies of Post-Soviet Central Asia (mainly in Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan - the countries which are the main donors of labor for Russia), and also analyzing values and installations by which migrants are guided, being in our country, the author criticizes cultures-tsentrichnost of the migratory discourse in Russia preferring to operate with concepts like "war of cultures", "cultural extreneity of migrants" etc. It is possible to distinguish a number of comparative methods, including a method of the comparative-historical and comparative and politological analysis, a method of the analysis of the documents and other texts relating to a work perspective from the main methods applied when writing article. The main conclusions of research consist in the following: speaking about integration of migrants, it is necessary to consider, first of all, not cultural factors, but legal and social and economic. Only a conclusion of migrants from "shadow", creation of conditions for their legal security, simplification of procedure of legalization and other practical measures can promote real integration of migrants into the Russian society. Reasonings on other cultural and religious identity of the population coming for work only take us away from the real problems.