Features of the Linguistic Component of Ethnic Self-Identification of the Population on the Example of the Askinsky District of the Republic of Bashkortostan

The article analyzes the results of a sociological study on the problems of the linguistic component of ethnic self-identification in the Askinsky district of the Republic of Bashkortostan. The data obtained in the survey indicate that the language in the Republic of Bashkortostan is the most important ethno-forming factor. The article emphasizes that the degree of manifestation of ethno-affiliative attitudes, that is the need for ethnicity, is generally at an average level, which is decisively influenced by the multinational living environment. The ethnic identity of a significant part of the studied residents of the Bashkir villages of the Askinsky district turned out to be not ambivalent as is usually believed. Most of the inhabitants of the studied villages clearly identified their ethnicity as Bashkirs. Until now, most of the authors who wrote about the duality of the ethnic identity of the population of the northwestern regions of Bashkortostan automatically ranked the area under study among them on a territorial basis. In the study, residents of only Bashkir villages of the Askinsky district were interviewed. Only a small proportion of respondents have unstable ethnic identity.