Worldview of Russian Youth: Patriotic and Geopolitical Components

According to national surveys, Russian society is marked by a combination of two diverse trends.#On the one hand, we see different forms of government intervention into the private lives of citizens. On the other hand, we observe an obvious ‘de-governmentalisation’, i.e., the reduction of the state’s presence and regulatory impact that gives rise to the citizens’ participation in various non-political voluntary actions and non-government structures to compensate for the indifference of the state. In general, there are some stable strategies of social interaction of the different groups with the authorities, although the most active manifestations of such social activities are rather rare and wavelike due to the general political indifference of the population that turns into political apathy in its youth segment. The Russian state has made efforts (or at least announced such intentions) to ‘hold’ citizens in all senses ofthe word: the political discourse constantly articulates the problem of demographic decline and migration outflows; the government directs the growing financial investments into the priority sectors such as science and education; the state uses ‘jingoistic’ rhetoric and develops complex large-scale educational programs aimed at growing up ‘real’ Russian patriots. Thus, the article highlights two topics basic for understanding the relationships of the state and the youth in terms of patriotism and mutual expectations, referring to the results of national polls and surveys conducted on representative samples of students in the Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia. The first ‘dimension’ ofthe sociological study of patriotism is ‘patriotic mood’ - a set of stable cognitive, affective and behavioural value orientations. The second one includes sociological evaluation of different components of the youth social well-being associated primarily with estimates of the macro-context of life in the country today. The authors admit that both ‘dimensions’ are difficult to measure empirically but make an attempt to show their structural and substantive features by summarising the results of the relevant sociological studies such as the ‘objects’ of national pride, the level of trust in the basic social institutions, and the fears and expectations of the Russian youth regarding the future, etc.