The problem of youth identity in the russian multi-cultural society

Relevance of the studied problem is caused by multicultural character of the Russian society which caused a complex combination of several identities at once: national (state), ethnic, religious, regional and local. The purpose of the article consists in determining specifics of the Russian youth identity. The representative sociological survey conducted in 2014 in the student's environment in several regions of Russia became the leading research method. During research we succeeded to establish that the most important for respondents are the national (state) identity. Further, on importance reduction, ethnic, regional, local and religious identities follow. Opinion that "Rossiyanin" is "any citizen of the Russian Federation, irrespective of nationality" and opinions that these are only "the representative of the Russian people" or "the representative of Russian or other indigenous people of Russia" are equally authoritative in public consciousness of youth. The similar tendency was revealed when studying opinion on the Russian statehood essence: the number of respondents who define Russia as "the state of the Russian Federation citizens irrespective of ethnic identity", almost coincides with number of those who consider it "as the state of only Russians" or "the state of only indigenous people, including Russians". Thus, the identity of Russian population has complex character. The national (state) identity has the largest force, but ethnic and regional identities in some cases are capable to compete with it. At youth community there are two opposite approaches to definition of the Russian statehood essence and a concept "Rossiyane" that constrains processes of society consolidation and development of the general identification bases. Results to research allowed see the problem of youth identity formation anew and can be in demand when developing actions of identity policy