Discourse of macro-regional identity in the North Caucasus (based on the official telegram channels of the Heads of Regions and the Russian President’s Plenipotentiary Representative in the North Caucasus Federal District)

The article focuses on the insufficient development of ideas about the macroregional North Caucasian identity in both public policy and academic field. Macro-regional identity is considered a result of spatial-territorial identification, characterized by an understanding and a sense of belonging to macro-region and determined not only by geographical and naturalclimatic but also historical and emotional grounds, i.e. the North Caucasian macro-region has the dual nature - administrative and historical, natural-geographical and symbolic. The authors aim at identifying in the discourse of macro-regional identity those interregional ties that allow to define the North Caucasus as a single macro-region with macro-regional identity capable of strengthening the Russian national identity. The authors analyzed the discourse formed in the Telegram channels of representatives of regional and federal authorities: Heads of the Regions of the North Caucasus and the Plenipotentiary Representative of the Russian President in the North Caucasus Federal District. The empirical base consisted of 187 posts by the Heads of Regions in the North Caucasus Federal District, Rostov and Krasnodar Regions, which mention the North Caucasian community, and 170 posts in the official Telegram channel of the Plenipotentiary Representative of the Russian President in the North Caucasus Federal District. To identify the focus of the regional authorities’ discourse on the North Caucasian macroregional identity, the authors identified semantic units and combined them into several groups: culture, history, security, economy, tourism and religion. The positive field of identity is formed around the following “nodes”: maintaining peace and ensuring security; ethnic-cultural and natural-geographical uniqueness; Russian Caucasus (North Caucasus as a unique region of Russia). However, the North Caucasus is rather an episodic topic: the Heads of Regions strive both to develop regional identity and to integrate it into the national context. The discourse of macroregional identity in the Telegram channel of the Plenipotentiary Representative lacks “district agenda” in relation to identity. The authors argue that the real interregional network interaction could indicate the presence of macroregional integrity and form the basis for managing the multiethnic North Caucasus. A positive macroregional identity can be formed around the idea of development (for example, of tourism), and the idea of the Russian Caucasus would strengthen the all-Russian identity.