In 2010, the Center for Research on General Problems of the Modern East of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences launched a research project on security. At the first stage, a field seminar "Safety as a value and norm: experience of different epochs and cultures" was held (Suzdal, November 2011) and based on its results, a collection of articles of the same name was published in 2012. The second stage was the international conference "Security in the West, in the East and in Russia: Ideas and Concepts", held at the Institute of Oriental Studies in October 2012. The third stage was a field seminar in Suzdal "Cross-border challenges and threats to the national State "(April 2013). The project received financial support from the Ebert Foundation in all three stages. During the fourth stage, scheduled for completion in 2014, a two-volume conference proceedings and a collective monograph "Cross-border Challenges to the Nation-State"will be prepared and published. At the final stage, in 2015-2016, it is planned to prepare and hold an international conference " East in the West, in the East and in Russia: foreign cultural migration and identity security" with subsequent publication of its materials.

This report covers the workshop that took place from April 16 to 18, 2013. Before proceeding to its description, it is necessary to make a few comments about the principles of work on the project implementation, which were consistently applied at all its stages.

First of all, the participants should include not only Russian scientists from provincial institutes and universities, but also representatives of Western and Eastern research and educational centers. Secondly, it is mandatory to combine professionals with long experience in working with young and novice researchers in one team. Third, there is an emphasis on the historical and cultural components of security issues that remain poorly developed in both Russian and foreign studies, and on the corresponding conceptual framework. Fourth, strict adherence to the principle of interdisciplinarity; in accordance with it, at each stage research teams are formed from representatives of various social and humanitarian sciences, philologists, historians, economists, international experts, and anthropologists. Fifth, methodological diversity: a lot of time and attention is paid to discussions on reports, interactive methods of work and rapid surveys are widely used both by the participants themselves and by the reference group - students from the universities where the participants work.

All these principles were consistently maintained during the seminar "Cross-border threats and Challenges to the national State".

The seminar was preceded by a thorough development of its conceptual framework; more than half of those who gathered in Suzdal took part in it. The agreed version of this concept can be summarized as follows.

Justification. In its classical form, the nation-state was formed in Europe in the 19th century. At the end of the 20th century, after the collapse of the USSR and Yugoslavia, this type of state became dominant. However, the triumph of national statehood was immediately called into question: at the end of the XX - first decade of the XXI century, the process of its evolution was strongly influenced by a number of challenges. And many of them are cross-border, either by their nature or by their spatial localization.

Some of the cross-border challenges do not pose a direct threat to national statehood; moreover, some of them can be considered as positive factors-

the role of civil society in its evolution, for example, will contribute to the increasing importance of civil society. Others can transform into real threats to the security of national states-they threaten not only the ruling regimes in them, but also the constitutional system, the national economy, and ethnic and religious harmony. Therefore, it is essential for a nation-state to find timely and adequate responses to cross-border challenges, and their monitoring and research are essential.

Chronological framework. The authors of the project will focus mainly on the twentieth anniversary of the 1990s-2000s - a period of rapid development of globalization processes, the emergence of new centers of economic growth, and the development of regional economic integration. In the same decades, cross-border challenges with a "minus" sign were also clearly identified: it is enough to mention such non-traditional security threats as terrorism, drug trafficking, human trafficking, and previously unknown pandemics.

A. Auxiliary goals:

1. Identify the significant cross-border challenges that national statehood currently faces almost everywhere.

2. Identify among them those that really pose or may pose a threat, and those that, if an adequate state policy is implemented, can become positive factors that contribute to the development of the country's economy, strengthening the state, democratization, and dynamism of society.

3. Make a comprehensive (etymological, historical, logical, etc.) analysis of the key concepts of "border", "national state", "challenges and threats".

B. Main features:

1. Prepare a series of informational and analytical studies based on specific representative examples (case studies) of both types of calls.

2. To offer an original theoretical interpretation of the problem based on these studies and world historiography.

The workshop was attended by 17 participants: 12 from Russia (including nine from Moscow and one each from Barnaul, Irkutsk and Ulan-Ude), one from Ukraine, two from Mongolia and one each from Italy and the UK. Of these, 15 people were present, and two who were unable to attend the seminar sent the texts of their presentations; they were read and discussed by the other participants.

All presentations were grouped into five thematic blocks. The first of them included reports that analyzed the etymology and semantic evolution of the key concepts of "border", "challenge", "threat", and "national state" (based on the material of the Chinese, Russian, and Turkish languages and corresponding cultural traditions); a review of the interpretation of the concept of "nation-state" in the Russian language was proposed. world historiography. This was done in the framework of the following reports: F. Biye (Cambridge University) " How to understand the border in China and Russia: comparative analysis" (read by S. A. Panarin); S. A. Panarin (IB RAS) "The concepts of "challenges" and "threats": the correlation of basic meanings"; E. V. Gaber (Odessa National Research Center). university named after him. Mechnikov). "Evolution of ideas about the national state in Turkey (1920s-early XXI century)"; F. A. Popov (Institute of History of the Russian Academy of Sciences) "National State: a brief outline of the historiography of the concept".

The second block combined messages that showed the main features of perception, interpretation and concretization of the same concepts by Russian youth (on the example of students) and Mongolian youth (on the example of schoolchildren and students) based on the results of rapid surveys. It included three presentations: I. B. Bochkareva (Altai State University), "The National State and its challenges in the views of Russian students"; G. Tungalagtuya (Mughal State University of Science and Technology, MGUNT). "The concept of "threat" in the views of Mongolian youth"; H. Galimaa (MGUNT) "Chinese migration to Mongolia and its perception by student youth".

The remaining blocks were, in fact, collections of specific, thematically and disciplinarily close examples (case studies) of cross-border challenges and threats to the national state.

Thus, the presentations of the third block were devoted to the challenges posed by cross-border migration flows: M. N. Baldano (Institute of Mongolian Studies, Tibetology and Buddhology SB RAS) "Two different results of cross-border migration for the host society: the history of the Shenehen Buryats"; V. I. Dyatlov (Irkutsk State University) " Chinese migrants: risks I. S. Savin (IB RAS) "Illegal labor migration and national security challenges: reality and myths (on the example of the Russian Federation and Kazakhstan)".

The authors of three presentations of the fourth block analyzed resource and economic challenges to the national state: Yu. G. Alexandrov (Institute of International Relations of the Russian Academy of Sciences) " Cross-border movements

hydrocarbon Resources of the Caspian Region: geopolitical effects"; E. A. Borisova (IB RAS) "Regional Security versus National sovereignty over Resources: the example of Central Asia"; N. N. Tsvetkova (IB RAS)"Transnational Corporations and the National State".

The authors of the fifth and most extensive block focused on the challenges that manifest themselves in the political sphere, although they are quite diverse in their genesis. It was about the challenges inherent in the very doctrine of the national state: F. A. Popov (Institute of History of the Russian Academy of Sciences) " The principle of the national state as an independent threat to the existence of such a state. On threats to the National State from integrist political trends in Modern Islam"; S. N. Abashin (Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, read by S. A. Panarin) " New Islamic Movements in Central Asia: against the National State?". On the challenges that arise not so much from specific political projects as from the very existence of cross-border confessional communities: V. P. Kirichenko (IB RAS) "The Shiite factor as a challenge to the national state in Saddam Hussein-era Iraq". On the "expanded reproduction" of extremist and terrorist threats to national security through modern information and communication technologies: D. A. Nechitailo (IB RAS) "The role of social networks in the implementation of Al-Qaeda's globalist aspirations". Finally, on the challenges to the legitimacy of the national state caused by the crisis of traditional political institutions: M. Lorusso (University of Genoa) "The crisis of political parties as a cross-border phenomenon".

In a short report, it is impossible to give a characteristic, even if it is as concise as possible, of each of the listened reports, since their names themselves are quite informative. Instead, we can focus on the results of the discussion caused by the reports that were recognized as both theoretical and heuristic results and should be used in further work on the project by all participants of the seminar. They were formulated by the participants themselves in the form of three theses that were not included in the original project concept.

Thesis one: The quality of transgradiality manifests itself in two ways. First of all, it manifests itself because the person who actually possesses this quality (or is endowed with it in ideas) an actor, subject, or process that originates on one side of a state border acts or appears to act in such a way that the effect of its action is felt or appears to be felt on the other side of it. But also because in the course of the development of national states, some of their significant components, such as formalized political institutions, enter uniform states, regardless of cross-border impacts, which are repeated in many of these states at once. Thus, cross-border threats are such both because they cross national borders in reality or in imagination, and because they are formed in a very wide space everywhere; and the subject of research should be both those and others.

Thesis two: In the nation-state itself, there is the possibility of its destruction from within by means of a secessionist appeal to its fundamental principles. In the most pronounced form, often in the form of an already manifested threat, this possibility exists in States that follow the ethnocentric model of nation-building, but also in the context of an increasingly widespread crisis of state institutions designed to implement the function of national integration. At the same time, it cannot be said that it does not exist in those states that have chosen the option of nation-citizenship.

Thesis three: In everything connected with the border, challenge and threat, representations, including mythical and mythologized ones, are of great importance, and these, in turn, very much depend on the specific historical context of the public consciousness's appeal to them. Depending on the circumstances of the place and time, even at the linguistic level, dynamic shifts are possible in the dominant meanings attributed by this consciousness to the concept of "border": it can be perceived either as a line of defense, or, on the contrary, as a zone of promising contacts. Accordingly, the movement of people, things, ideas and technologies through it can be interpreted as a threat to the existence of the national state and as an incentive to improve it. Taking context into account is a constant recommendation for those working in the social sciences and humanities; however, in the case of cross - border challenges and threats, it becomes a conditio sine qua non of research.

In general, the results of the seminar in Suzdal give every reason to hope for the successful implementation of the idea of the collective monograph "Cross-border challenges to the national State".

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