Prof. Talia Khabrieva presents her book on the autonomies in Bulgaria

On December 6, 2007 at the St. Clement of Ohrid University of Sofia the long-expected presentation of the book National-Cultural Autonomy in the Russian Federation took place. Te author, Prof. Talia Khabrieva, an indisputable legal expert, arrived at the invitation of the Bulgarian-Russian Juridical Club and Alma Mater’s Faculty of Law. She was warmly welcomed by her Bulgarian colleagues, lecturers at the Law Faculty, and her work on the problems and legal norms of autonomy as a modern phenomenon, was highly praised.

Prof. Khabrieva is Director of the Institute of Legislation and Comparative Law under the Russian Federation Government. In her work she studied contemporary phenomena such as globalisation and at the same time the growing awareness of peoples, the power of ethnic and religious ties, the general migration of world population. In this changing situation though preserving their state unity many countries strive for new methods of respecting the specific features of the different ethnoses that have their own cultures, life specifics and profess different religions.

The book makes in-depth analyses of theoretical and practical problems related to autonomy as a relatively new type of social association. The federal and regional Russian legislation, the regulations and the important documents of the national-cultural autonomies of different levels are analysed; big actual material is used.

In the modern world there are no uni-ethnic countries; in all countries live people of different nationalities. The national-cultural autonomy is one of the forms of national (ethnic) self-determination, a way of independent use of the right of self-organization by the densely living ethnos. This form is used where and when it is most productive.

The national-cultural autonomy does not eliminate the territorial independence of the compactly living ethnoses where it is expedient, neither do territorial autonomy nor national statehood require giving it up. There’s no need to hurry to turn the national-territorial formations into national-cultural and vice versa. These two as well as other forms can prove expedient; they can combine and complement each other in certain circumstances despite the fact that in the most distant perspective the national-cultural autonomy might well come to the fore as a way to regulate the inter-ethnical relations. This is why such a form, stemming from the vague ideas of the 19th century, is more and more becoming a reality of our time.