Medvedev calls for new identity that will consolidate Russia.

MOSCOW, May 20 (Itar-Tass) -- President Dmitry Medvedev called for
creating a new identity that should consolidate Russia.
"Practically all the presentations contained one very true thought
that a considerable number of people living in the Caucasus need full
integration into the Russian social environment," Medvedev said at a
meeting of the Presidential Council for the Development of Civil Society
and Human Rights Institutions on Wednesday.
"We should also move towards creating, as has been pointed out quite
correctly, a full-fledged Russian identity that would encompass all of our
peoples," the president said.
"The task is to create such new Russian identity. If we do not create
it, our country will have a gloomy future," he warned.
Medvedev stressed the need to deal not only with security and judicial
issues, but also with public, including multinational, integration. "We
should build the future that will integrate everyone," he said. Otherwise
"there will never be normal life in the Caucasus", he added.
Events in different countries in the 20th century show how prosperous
nations formed through hardships. "We failed to create a community that
the Soviet system was trying to create, but we know what it was like and
that it was largely false in many ways," the president said.
"But we have all the forces and possibilities for creating our own
identity - a new Russian identity," he said.
"These are probably lofty things, but we cannot but think about them.
Otherwise we will only deal with very sad things and we will have no
vision for the future. And this is something without which a person cannot
live," Medvedev said.