Formation Conditions of Russian Youth’s Political Consciousness

Abstract

The <i>object</i> of research reflected in this article is conditions under which political socialization of contemporary Russian youth is happening. The author analyses internal factors of impact that influence the formation of youngsters’ political identity and tries to find the answers to the following questions: which factors influence political benchmarks obtained by youth, and whether these benchmarks are obtained at all; what are they, how are they manifested, do they comply with political culture of previous generations of Russians and official discourse of today’s authorities; whether authorities are interested in this process of benchmarks-obtaining, and which meanings of political identification are they interested in? Which circumstances contribute to the process of desacralization of authorities? Are there any trends and problems that are common for all modern countries, which characterize the relationships between the youth and operating authoritative institutions? <i>Methods</i>: content-analysis & discourse-analysis of political communications (mass media, governmental TV-channels, websites of pro-governmental socio-political youth organizations, social networks), secondary analysis of statistical data. <i>Results</i>: The author concludes that formation conditions of Russian youth’s political consciousness should be divided at two groups. The first one includes the conditions resulted from objective global trends that are characterized by the state of modern societies (marginality of social structures, limited participation of youth in formalized institutional political processes, the Internet & social networks etc.). The second group of conditions is defined by operating political regime of the country, which tries to enforce its own picture of socio-political reality within the youth generation for the purposes of its own legitimization. According to the author’s opinion, the most significant trends that characterize the process researched are: complicated stratificational structure of today’s society that makes the process of individual and group self-identification more difficult; the prevalence of mixed forms of political culture; a distrust towards the content of official mass media; a desacralization of authorities; “mosaic” form of political consciousness; the lack of interest in global political projects among youngsters; militaristic ideology spread; the lack of interest in problems of youth coming from authorities caused by insignificant electoral weight of youngsters.