Russian Youths Research Articles

The Perceptions of Nuclear War: The Imbalanced Co-Orientation Between Russian and American Youth

On February 24, 2022, Russia attacked its neighboring country of Ukraine. From the early days of what Russian President Putin called a special military operation, fears mounted that the conflict may grow into World War III, effectively ending the world in nuclear Armageddon. This study compares the current views of American and Russian youths on the issues of global nuclear war and nuclear weapons, as well as explores their inclinations toward supporting a first nuclear strike, nuclear retaliation, and their willingness to make personal sacrifices in the event of a nuclear conflict. Drawing upon the theoretical framework of co-orientation theory, the study methodically assesses the levels of agreement, congruency, and accuracy for the populations of both countries on the issues related to the nuclear conflict. The results show that American and Russian youths are currently in a state of imbalanced co-orientation—a newly defined state in the co-orientation theory—when it comes to their opinions on nuclear war and nuclear weapons. In conclusion, the study underscores the urgent need to address this lack of alignment between the two countries, given the potentially catastrophic consequences of nuclear warfare. Therefore, the study draws upon the co-orientation theory’s insights and formulates strategic public diplomacy recommendations, designed to cultivate mutual understanding, and promote constructive dialogue between the people of the United States of America and the Russian Federation.

Russian young people's subjective health evaluations, self-care practices, and therapeutic networks.

This study investigates the relationship between young people's subjective health evaluations, self-care practices, and therapeutic networks using semi-structured interviews and the computerized qualitative thematic analysis capabilities of the MAXQDA software. In the summer of 2022, 41 Russian youths, ages 16 to 25, took part in this investigation. The major findings demonstrate that young people who had low health evaluations were more likely to conduct self-care with the intention of enhancing their health and to have mothers and other medical experts in their therapeutic networks. Furthermore, individuals who claimed that their health was inadequate engaged in more sports and took care of themselves even when they were ill. There was no association between the objectives of self-care practices, members of the therapeutic network, and self-care activities in terms of the type of health evaluation. Overall, it is possible to suggest that the practices and the structure of therapeutic networks are related to self-evaluated health, but quantitative study is needed to verify the causal relationship.

An Exploration of Chinese-Russian Youth Humanistic Exchanges and Cooperation Based on VAR Modeling

Abstract In the cross-cultural context, interpersonal trust and cooperative behaviors become more complex due to mutual adaptation, communication and interaction between different cultures and races. This study explores the self-perception and materialism of Chinese and Russian youth in humanistic exchanges and the impact on interpersonal trust and cooperation behavior. This paper constructs a humanistic exchange and cooperation evaluation model based on VAR. We apply the panel data clustering method based on structural relationships to model and analyze heterogeneous and cross-sectionally independent PVAR. The variable coefficient PVAR is divided into K classes according to the structural relationship aggregation to reduce the number of parameters estimated by the model. The model estimation method of PVAR based on relational clustering in the case of cross-section independence is proposed. Among the various scores of humanistic exchanges between Chinese and Russian youths, the academic self dimension score of self-perception is positively proportional to the materialistic desire dimension score of materialism, with a correlation coefficient of 0.376. From the test of the differences in interpersonal trust and cooperative behavior between Chinese and Russian youths, Chinese youths’ interpersonal trust (M=5.36) and collective behavior (M=36.18) are higher than those of Russian youths’ interpersonal trust (M=4.27) and cooperative behavior (M=33.94). The combined results show that there is still a need to improve the cross-cultural adaptation of Russian youth coming to China and to enhance cooperative behavior with others.

The Influence of Internet Communications on the Formation of Political Identity and Political Behavior of Russian Youth

Introduction. The author of the article develops a theme of the Internet influence on formation of ego- and collective identity of youth ages 18–24. Materials and Methods. Behaviorism, network approaches were used as the theoretical and methodological strategy of the study, as well as systematization of results, obtained during the 14 interviews. Results. We have come to the conclusion that political identity of Russian youth ages 18–24 isn’t formed. This fact can be one of the causes of low political participation of the studied age group. In order to set a trend for sustainable political identity of youth forming, we need to create a unified communication system, which will help to create conditions for internalization of citizen identity values by young generations. Experts agree on the opinion, that the legitimacy of Russian government in the eyes of youth can be enhanced by implementing Internet-technologies, adapted to the young audience’s special perception of information (gamified content, short video content, preferably with the opinion leaders participation), as Russian youth, firstly, tend to rely on the Internet as the most transparent source of information, secondly, young people of Russia use the Internet more often, comparable to other generations. Discussion and Conclusion. Underdevelopment of political identity of Russian younger generations is explained by several factors: first of all, the absence of well articulated by the Russian state image of the future, secondly, too frequent to adapt to them policy changes, thirdly, increasing distance between Russian government and Russian youths and, finally, creating conditions, that decrease the possibility of professional self-realization of younger generations. Raising its socializing effect on youth and becoming more significant mean of communication, the Internet can be used as a political tool, which could help with the forming of sustainable political identity of Russian youth but only if technologies, used by political actors in cyberspace, would be transparent and available for verification.

Adolescent mental health in Japan and Russia: The role of body image, bullying victimisation and school environment.

This study examined associations between self-reported mental health problems, body image, bullying victimisation and school safety in large adolescent samples in Japan and Russia, considering the effects of gender, culture and their interactions. In both Japan and Russia, girls reported a greater number of mental health problems, less bullying victimisation and much higher body dissatisfaction than boys did. Japanese adolescents rated themselves higher on total difficulties, reported less body dissatisfaction and bullying victimisation, and rated their school safety lower than that of Russian youths. Cross-cultural differences in total difficulties and body image were qualified by gender. Body dissatisfaction, bullying victimisation and school safety all independently contributed to adolescent mental health problems. The protective effect of school safety on total difficulties was larger for girls than for boys; the strength of the association between bullying victimisation and adolescent mental health problems differed across genders and cultures. The findings indicate a need for a cross-cultural approach and provide a strong basis for targeted interventions that seek to improve adolescent mental health.

Comparative analysis: the relevance of social media networks among Nigerian and Russian youth

This article aims to compare the relevance of social media among Nigerian and Russian youths from a networking perspective. The importance of social media and its implications have attracted the attention and research interest of scholars from different countries and fields of knowledge. Nevertheless, among the plethora of sociological research, there is a lack of scholarly work on a comparative analysis of social media’s importance for young people in different countries. Therefore, in this study, the research focuses on understanding the similarities and differences of the economic and social life of Nigeria and Russia. The aim is to understand the relevance of social media networks to the youths of the two countries. The study used a sample survey method using questionnaire, 150 copies of which were distributed to Nigerian and Russian youths each. The questionnaire used the English and Russian languages for the corresponding groups of respondents. This study has shown that both Nigerian and Russian youths have much in common in their assessments of the economic and social relevance of social networks for business development, consumer behavior, and human relationship.

Socio-cultural identity of students in the conditions of uncertainty of Russian society

The article examines the socio-cultural basics of the identity of Russian students, due to the high degree of turbulence and uncertainty of public life, the introduction of digital technologies and the formation of hybrid reality. Understanding the socio-cultural identity as a “coordinate system” of identification, including a set of values, norms and patterns of behavior, beliefs and systems of representations, symbols and images of culture, authors draw attention to its multiple and hybrid character. Based on the data of the study “Students of Russia: Civic Culture and Life Strategies” conducted by the Center for Political Science of the ISPR FCTAS RAS in April — May 2023, conclusions were drawn about the growth of anxiety and unrealized expectations of modern youth that influenced the value spectrum of youth culture; about the aggravation of the ideological crisis; about a shift of support from the globalist vision to the “local” component in the value-semantic model of Russian socio-cultural identity. At the same time, Russian youths demonstrate their commitment to the democratic values of individualism, independence and freedom, which are reflected in building their professional careers with a high degree of precarization. Rapidly developing digital technologies have a significant impact on the self-identification of young people, creating multiple information flows, aggravating and distorting the already uncertain image of the future. As a result, adapting to this complex reality, young people form new hybrid forms of digital identity looking for support in the imaginary world of global virtual space, combining disparate multiple identities into a single profile. The analysis of empirical data included, inter alia, factor analysis by the principal component method and rotation by the Varimax method, which allowed us to construct identity indices and identify three groups of students with a predominance of Russian, Eurasian and global identity.

Gender, Age, Family and Territorial Features of Dietary and Physical Activity Patterns in Russian Youths.

Objective: Identifying dietary and physical activity (PA) patterns in Russian youths and examining their dependence on gender, age, family characteristics and area of residence features. The research involved 783 school students 10–17 years of age and their parents living in the cities of Moscow and Murmansk. Using the principal component analysis, four integral indices were identified that characterized the habits and dietary patterns, PA and lifestyle. Boys, compared with girls, were more likely to consume unhealthy foods but less likely to practice malnutrition. Within the age ranges of 13–15 years old and 16–17 years old, the proportions of school students with a poor sleep pattern and low PA were higher than in children 10–12 years of age. In smoking families, children were less likely to consume healthy foods and more likely to eat unhealthy foods. In Murmansk school students, compared with their Moscow peers, a reduction in both sleep time and PA was observed less often. Our study demonstrated that the most significant factors of a balanced and healthy diet, rational daily routine and lifestyle in school students were their gender and age characteristics, as well as some contextual factors.

The dynamics of video preferences of the Russian youth (on the example of YouTube)

Today the Internet has become an integral part of the everyday life of the younger generation, and the YouTube video hosting is one of the most visited sites among Russians aged 18 to 34. Therefore, the analysis of content, structure, and dynamics of video preferences is an important area of sociological analysis of the Russian youths interests on YouTube. The research aims at identification and description of the Russian youths interests on the basis of the analysis of their video preferences on SHAPE \* MERGEFORMAT YouTube. The authors conducted content analysis of Googles annual reports on the most popular videos on YouTube in Russia, of the content of these videos and their comments, and the analysis of quantitative indicators (likes, dislikes and views). 26 Muscovites were questioned in the format of the semi-structured interview; and two online surveys (in 2019 and 2020) were conducted, in which 340 respondents participated. The authors identified three groups of factors to analyze the dynamics of video preferences: micro-social (social-psychological, status-role and needs factors); macro-social (institutional - social, political, economic, cultural - and environmental); random. The analysis of all types of research data on the most popular video clips allowed to describe the dynamics of the youths video preferences in 2008- 2020, to show the relationship of social factors with the dynamics of the youths YouTube preferences, and that these video preferences are largely determined by individual characteristics, because the significant events in the Russian social-cultural space have little influence on the youths video preferences.

Measuring the fear of being laughed at in Italian and Russian adolescents

Gelotophobia, or the fear of being laughed at, is the inability to enjoy positive aspects of humor and laughter. Most studies have been carried out on adults, but recently research on gelotophobia has turned to adolescents. The present cross-cultural study aimed to get the first comparative data on Italian (N = 1098, 13–20 y.o.) and Russian (N = 388, 12–17 y.o.) youths utilizing the GELOPH questionnaire. The results supported a one-factor structure of the gelotophobia scale for both the Italian and Russian samples, and its cross-cultural invariance in terms of structure and factor loadings. The scale showed good reliability in both the Italian (α = 0.79) and Russian samples (α = 0.78). The results revealed differences in agreement to specific items, which are more or less central to the description of gelotophobia in each country. Nonetheless, more similarities than differences emerged between Italian and Russian adolescents, in line with previous studies. A complicated interaction was shown for gelotophobia, age and gender factors, which could have higher impact than the possible cross-cultural differences. Nonetheless, in general, the fear of being laughed at showed higher levels during childhood, begin decreasing with age during the period of adolescence and it becomes lower in adults. Negative correlation between gelotophobia and humor coping was found in the Italian sample, which showed significant results in girls and in 18-age-years-old boys. It could be hypothesized that gelotophobia is inherent for the period of adolescence, when it has a universal pattern. The present findings have implications for identifying adolescents who need special attention.

“The Former Prince” Vsevolod Dolgorukov as a Prototype and Reader of Dostoevsky’s Novel The Raw Youth

The article deals with the biographical, real and historical-literary aspects of the novel The Raw Youth that are related to the life and work of Fyodor Dostoevsky and Vsevolod Dolgorukov. The latter was a “former prince,” who possessed literary talents and was a member of the “Jacks of hearts” gang, which was involved in the “case of the Kumanin inheritance.” He first became the prototype of the characters of the novel The Raw Youth, and then an epigone of its author. After sinking very low in his youth, he experienced a new life surge in Siberian exile, due to sincere repentance and moral purification. Correction and “restoration” of Vsevolod Dolgorukov is confirmed by his subsequent charitable and creative activities. Like Dostoevsky, he was the “Russian youth” type from a “random family,” which, along with the heroes of Dostoevsky’s novel Arkady Dolgoruky and Sergei Sokolsky, included the young Count Nagorov, the main character of the saga novel Literary Bohemia (1890) by Vs. Dolgorukov. The memoir notes of the “former prince,” who was twice stripped of his title, largely echo the notes of The Raw Youth in narrative and ideology due to the influence of Dostoevsky’s novel on Vs. Dolgorukov. It is also evidenced by his convict-themed short story Mishka the Flea, which is typologically similar to Notes from the Dead House and the Easter short story The Peasant Marey. Based on the above, the author concludes that Dostoevsky’s hope for an encounter of “Russian youths” with the Orthodox idea was embodied in the life and work of Vsevolod Dolgorukov.

Students of the Middle Urals: The Transformation from Classical to Digital Community (Research Prospects)

Students are one of the most studied communities within the sociology context and especially the youths’ sociology and the sociology of education. Today, students are viewed both as the intellectual avant-garde force, leaders of social initiatives of the Russian youths and as a specific educational community. This study is based on the traditional method of document analysis, which allows us to identify key fields of the research. The research is devoted to the problems of changing students in the information society. The authors substantiate the need and prospects for studying students as a ’digital community’. A review of the social, political, sociocultural and other aspects of comprehensive students was conducted.
 Keywords: Actual culture, modernization of higher education, social transformation, social resource, students, digital community

The Role of Russian Youth's Media Activism in Mediatization of Politics

Mediatization of politics has a variety of theoretical and conceptual grounds, and is considered by researchers as both one-way and two-way communication between the state and the society. Foreign media researchers view mediatization of politics as a path to an open government and democratization of the state, and emphasize the need to develop civic engagement in the media environment. In national studies, mediatization of politics is still dominated by perception of media as mediator commissioned by the government to influence participants of the political dialogue. The article makes an attempt to consider the mediatization of politics as a consequence of Russian youths media activism. Today's young people are increasingly showing their interest in participating in political processes. They are particularly interested in the formation of civil society, human rights and freedoms, and justice within the framework of common European values. Media activism of Russian youth and their influence on the development of media policy was particularly pronounced in 2019, which can be seen in three cases: the Golunov case, the Voice-Children case, and the case of the construction of the Church in Yekaterinburg. The authors make a comparative analysis of publication activity based on these information events in the official media and in Instagram, which enables them to infer that the role of media activity of Russian youth in the process of mediatization of politics is increasing.

Patriotism as a key note of Russian young education in modern society

The article states that patriotism is considered to be a key note of Russian youths education, and the complex approach in the process of patriotic thinking development is highlighted. The mechanism of patriotic education consists of methods and means of development, functioning and saving moral-ethic ideology of patriotic orientation. The article proves the significance of young education that is based on such principles as respect of historical background, love for country and for national culture, as it is youth who provides productive development of a strong country and healthy society. The connection, where the core is universal values, between prosperous future of a country and youths patriotic thinking is established. It is proved that true patriotism can only be aroused, but not dictated because young generation overreacts informational pressure. In these conditions, the aim of the media is to create a high quality information product adapted to the young audience. In this regard, media activity is considered as a complex of purposeful activities based on a combination of special knowledge, skills and values which develop the senses of love and loyalty to their country, readiness to defend their people, country and its interests.

Social Pragmatism and Religiosity of Contemporary Russian Youth

It presents the results of a study aimed at defining the nature of religiosity of students of higher educational institutions and the specifics of relationship of religiosity with regard to pragmatic life goals. The data obtained illustrate the peculiarities in the perceptions of students, differently characterizing their belief in God, about a notion of a true believer, motivation of their countrymen when turning to God, the nature of religion’s influence on human beings, as well as circumstances under which interviewed subjects personally turn to God. It is established that most of the Russian youths do not think themselves true believers and express doubts about the existence of true believers, demonstrate with regard to the religiosity of their contemporaries’ skepticism and explain the appeal to religion by ignorance, fashion trend and being under human influence of significant others. At the same time, along with their peers, claiming to be true believers, they tend to view religion as a means of consolation and support, and not that of moral perfection and spiritual renewal. In addition, the facts ascertain the presence in true youth believers of egoistic religious motivation and attitude towards God from the standpoint of personal well-being, which suggests their pseudo-religiosity. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2015.v6n6s5p135

Post-Soviet collective memory: Russian youths about Soviet past

The research is focused on the image of the Soviet Union and that of its successor – the Russian Federation – in the minds of the Russian student youth. The concept of collective memory, being interdisciplinary and highly debatable, has been used in the given paper in its broad socio-cultural sense meaning the attitudes of interconnected social groups regarding the past and the present.The participants of the poll were 100 students from the leading Moscow universities. They had been born after the Soviet Union collapse, so, the majority of them have a very obscure idea of the Soviet reality, simultaneously feeling nostalgia for the Soviet political past.The results of the research show that the image of the Soviet Union drastically differs from that of Russia in the young people's minds being positive and negative, respectively.

Corruption, the power of state and big business in Soviet and post-Soviet regimes

The growth of corruption after 1991 was probably unavoidable. The privatization of the state economy created favorable conditions for corruption, which did not exist before. The feudalization of a society, with its weakening of the state and the high autonomy of its office holders, was another major factor behind the outburst of corruption. However, while these “objective” factors account for a great part of corruption's growth, the transformation of the leaders of the country to people who encouraged corruption for their own benefit—one of the major elements of feudalization—also played an extremely large role in spreading corruption inside the country.Corruption poses greater concerns to society in the long term. Russian corruption undermines labor ethics, particularly among younger generations. Russian youths firmly believe that bribes and connections are the best and perhaps only way to become successful. Widespread corruption creates a parallel, semi-feudal chain of command that competes with the official hierarchy. The weakness of law enforcement agencies, as well as the army—now almost totally demoralized—is, to a great extent, the product of corruption.

Cross-informant symptoms from CBCL, TRF, and YSR: Trait and method variance in a normative sample of Russian youths.

A large community-based sample of Russian youths (n = 841, age M = 13.17 years, SD = 2.51) was assessed with the Child Behavior Checklist (mothers and fathers separately), Teacher's Report Form, and Youth Self-Report. The multiple indicator-version of the correlated trait-correlated method minus one, or CT-C(M - 1), model was applied to analyze (a) the convergent and divergent validity of these instruments in Russia, (b) the degree of trait-specificity of rater biases, and (c) potential predictors of rater-specific effects. As expected, based on the published results from different countries and in different languages, the convergent validity of the instruments was rather high between mother and father reports, but rather low for parent, teacher, and self-reports. For self- and teacher reports, rater-specific effects were related to age and gender of the children for some traits. These results, once again, attest to the importance of incorporating information from multiple observers when psychopathological traits are evaluated in children and adolescents.

Disintegration and violence among migrants in Germany: Turkish and Russian youths versus German youths

Turkish and Russian immigrants are the two largest groups of immigrants in Germany, but there are some important differences regarding their legal status. Although most of the Turkish adolescents were born in Germany, few of them have German citizenship. In contrast, most of the Russian youths were born outside Germany, but they mostly possess German nationality because of their status as ethnic Germans. Despite these differences, both groups show a high level of violent behavior. This article investigates the causes for the different levels of violent behavior among juvenile Russian and Turkish immigrants in comparison to German youths. On the basis of a large-scale school survey with 14,301 respondents, the authors examine the causes for their high level of violent behavior compared to German adolescents. The theoretical basis is a combination of disintegration and socialization theory, as well as additional factors that are discussed as causes of violence in several theoretical approaches.In the empirical part of the article, the authors provide a systematic description of sources and levels of disintegration among the three youth groups. The empirical findings demonstrate that juvenile migrants are more disintegrated in several respects and that the higher level of disintegration explains some of the differences in violent behavior. But specific cultural orientations are also important in this context.

Russia's Political Youths

Abstract: Although most Russian youths are politically apathetic, a small cross section is engaged in political activity--mostly consisting of protest actions--in preparation for the upcoming parliamentary and presidential elections. Youth-based political and civic organizations can be defined generally by their support for, or opposition to, President Vladimir Putin and the party of power. Ideological differences between opposition youth organizations have prevented the formation of an effective civic movement. Putin's administration has employed a number of tactics, including the creation of the pro-Kremlin youth organization Nashi (Ours) to counteract anti-Kremlin youth groups such as Youth Yabloko, The National Bolshevik Party, and Oborona. Western nongovernmental organizations, along with youth alumni of the revolutions, have been helping Russian opposition youth to overcome these difficulties, much to the dismay of the Putin administration. Keywords: democracy assistance, elections, Orange Revolution, politics, youths ********** Russia's youths are preparing for battle. With the State Duma and presidential elections approaching, youth-based civic and political organizations, aided by Western nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and alumni of the so-called colored revolutions in Ukraine, Georgia, and Serbia have been gearing up for a contest against the firmly entrenched United Russia Party (YeR) and the administration of President Vladimir Putin. Meanwhile, the Kremlin has been pumping millions of rubles into its own youth groups with the hope of thwarting a Ukrainian-style revolution. Enhanced focus on youths in Russia has come mainly in response to the Orange Revolution in Ukraine. Youth-based organizations have played an important role in the colored revolutions that have swept across the postcommunist space in the last five years. The knowledge of organizational techniques and movement management developed in Serbia by Otpor and a host of Western-based NGOs has infiltrated into Georgia and Ukraine, helping to fuel the rise of democratic culture if only in response to flagrant infringements on democratic principles. In Ukraine, organizations such as Pora and Znayu not only provided the passion and sense of purpose that contributed to the spirit of the Orange Revolution, they also played a major role in mobilizing the Ukrainian people to challenge the authorities. Following their success, activist youths from Ukraine have joined their colleagues from Georgia and Serbia, along with a number of Western-based NGOs, in exporting organizational knowledge and democratic participation to other countries in the former Soviet Union. Many of these organizations have focused on Russia as a small number of youth-ased political and civic organizations prepare for parliamentary elections in 2007 and presidential elections in 2008. Activists from Pora and Znayu have held seminars on organizational techniques and movement development with their counterparts in Russia. NGOs from the United States and Europe have provided funding for these activities in addition to running their own programs for Russia's youths. These efforts have drawn the ire of the Putin administration, which has launched its own campaign targeting Russia's youths in an attempt to counteract a potential Orange Revolution in Russia. I have conducted an investigation into the activities of Russian youth-based political and civic organizations and their support network of Western NGOs and colored revolution alumni to assess their political effectiveness in confronting the political monopoly of the Putin administration and YeR in 2007 and 2008. Although an opposition youth movement in Russia has been developing some of the elements that made groups such as Otpor in Serbia and Pora in Ukraine successful civic mobilizers, internal divisions, public apathy, resource deficiencies, and countermeasures by the authorities have all undermined its ability to wage a successful civic campaign. …