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Национальные меньшинства Российской Федерации – кто они?
The Constitution of the Russian Federation establishes provisions on national minorities in the context of the competence between the Federation and its constituent territories (paragraph “c” of Article 71 and paragraph “b” of part 1 of Article 72). However, Russian constitutional and legal regulation, as well as international level, does not define these ethnic communities. In this regard, the legal doctrine offers various interpretations of the concept of national minorities. Mainly theoretical approaches to the definition of national minorities include various criteria excepting the specifics of the federal structure of Russia, its practice of implementing special international treaties on the protection of ethnic communities, as well as interstate agreements providing for norms on national minorities. In addition, in this matter, it is necessary to take into account the Russian legislation on ethnic associations, in particular, its norms on national-cultural autonomy. The existence of national minorities in Russia means the presence of a special kind of ethnic organization – national-cultural autonomy, which associates with the existence of national minorities in Russia. At the same time, the practice of its creation and the legal regulation are not the same. Several registered organizations represent the interests of ethnic communities that are not actually national minorities. Some legislative acts allow the establishment of other ethnic associations: national societies, national cultural centers and communities, however, these acts do not mention the national minorities as beneficiaries of the right to creation these kinds of associations. That is why the author suggests correcting the provisions of legal acts on ethnic associations in terms of their correlation with each other, clarifying the beneficiaries of the right to their establishment, the procedure for creation and functioning. The author connects the existence of national minorities with the creation of ethnic associations and, based on official information about registered ethnic associations in the Russian Federation, tries to identify specific ethnic communities that, in his opinion, are such. In addition, author proposes to update the information of the register of national cultural autonomies in order to clarify information about organizations of ethnic communities that do not actually belong to national minorities.