The social wellbeing of the postsocialist countries’ youth (on the example of Russia, Kazakhstan and Czech Republic): Comparative analysis of value orientations (Part 1)

The article presents the results of a three-year study conducted by the Sociology Chair of the RUDN University in cooperation with foreign colleagues to compare the worldview priorities of the today’s student youth. Due to the article size limitations the authors divided the data into two parts: in the first part, they focus on the identification of the values that serve as reference points specifying the social action limits and criteria for assessing events and situations. The data does not allow for broad generalizations due to the non-equivalence of the questionnaires used in three countries, but points to a number of characteristics that make the Russian youth look more similar to their Czech or Kazakhstan peers than to themselves a decade ago. Such a conclusion is based on the analysis conducted according to the thematic structure of the questionnaire. Thus, the article presents the educational values of students (pragmatic-instrumental perception of the higher education), labor values (a mixture of optimism and pessimism when assessing chances to find a job after graduation, and different attitudes to the combination of study and work), interpersonal interaction features (a high credit of trust in parents, especially in a difficult situation, does not depend on the self-perception and the circle of personal responsibility), political values (the ratio of the lack of political activity and interest in politics, and the level of social trust differ despite the same leaders of national pride), general value priorities (attitudes towards religion, interpretations of the life success and qualities necessary for achieving it, the horizons of planning) and problems (assessing one’s generation in terms of actual threats). © N.P. Narbut, I.V. Trotsuk, 2017