Bederson Vsevolod
Bashkortostan is a very complicated case of the development of regional community on the post-imperial stage in contemporary Russia. Confrontation within Bashkortostan regional community takes place not only on the level of particular political and economic, political and human, etc., decisions, but also in the «margins» of struggle for specific version of regional identity. The article analyzes the structure of «heroic Pantheon» as the product of straightforward identity policy of Bashkortostan regional elite. Controversies of symbolic, ethnical and political features of regional identity are viewed through the analysis of the place and significance of Bashkir «cultural heroes» and their semantic and functional layers (C. Yulayev, K. Arslanov, H. Validi). In addition, the author considers political and ethnic conflicts aroused around the «Pantheon» and associated with heterogeneity of the ethnical composition of population of the Republic. The article offers recommendations concerning relaxing political and symbolic contradictions in the regional community, and observed the instrumental usage of «cultural hero» as identifier of symbolic space and identity in other Russian regions.
Keywords: Regional identity, cultural hero, «heroic Pantheon», identity policy.