Russian and Slavic Identities of Contemporary Youth: Value-Sense Correlations and Political Dimensions

Abstract

The study is aimed at identifying the ideological and value bases and structural and content characteristics of the Slavic identity of the youth in Russia and Eastern Europe. The aim is to identify the ideological and value bases and structural and content characteristics of the Slavic identity of the youth in Russia and Eastern Europe. The object of the study was the youth of the Slavic countries (Bulgaria, Serbia and Russia), who in their everyday life experience constantly encounter these or those images and symbols, which eventually affects their self-identification. In the course of the empirical part of the study, at the first stage formalized interviews were conducted to identify the value and semantic structure of the concept of “Slavic identity”, the system of national and European values, political, ideological and identification orientations. The second part of the empirical study was aimed at identifying the value-semantic structure and correlation of Russian and Slavic identity of Russian youth, the system of its national and European values, political, ideological and identification ones. The main research method was a questionnaire survey containing both closed and open-ended questions, using direct ranking and rating scaling techniques, as well as the method of free associations. The results of the study showed that young people in Eastern Europe are largely oriented towards European values, and despite Euroscepticism over time the EU symbolic policy is bearing fruit, especially among young people in these countries. In the understanding of Russian youth, Slavic identity is more an attribute of culture and history, which is not significant for real life. Therefore, it is obvious that the Slavic identity of both Russian and European youth correlates poorly with their political behavior. Meanwhile, in Russia there is a good potential for work in this direction due to the more pronounced cultural and historical aspects of Slavic identity.