The Great Russian People as the Russian National Idea

The present research featured the state-forming status of the Russian people. The article focuses on the issue of fixing the legal status of Russians as the state-forming nation in the preamble to the Constitution. The research was based on a complex extrapolation modeling, comparative historical analysis, and behavioral approach. The author justified the amendments and explored domestic and foreign policy prospects for the long-overdue constitutional reforms. He introduced three possible constitutional solutions to the so-called Russian question and commented upon the opinion expressed by the judge of the Constitutional Court K. V. Aranovskiy on the state historical continuity of the Russian state. The author believes that there is no alternative to the national roadmap proclaimed by the President of the Russian Federation. However, there is a legal option to restore sovereignty by correcting the incorrigible "Yeltsin" Constitution. The country can claim its political sovereignty by adopting a new fundamental law and conducting the national Referendum on the New Constitution. The author gives evidence in favor of the spontaneous onset of the Russian irredenta in Ukraine. The denationalization of the state-forming ethnic group probably determined the collapse of the USSR and triggered the current constitutional crisis. The research also involved a geopolitical strategic analysis of various projects that proclaim the USSR and the Russian Federation the direct successors of the Russian Empire. The article features the traditional global practice of granting constitutional status to the dominant state-forming ethnic group. The analysis proved the Russian national idea as the optimal political and legal structure for solving the Russian question.