Selezneva Antonina

Transformation of National-State Identity of Russian Youth in the Post-Soviet Period: Values' Foundations and Symbolic Representations

The article presents generalized results of the study of the national-state identity of the Russian youth in the post-Soviet period. Political-psychological approach was employed as a theoretical-methodological foundation for the analysis. On the basis of the empirical data collected during the implementation of the long-term research project Formation of National-State Iden- tity in Modern Russia, T.Evgenyeva and A.Selezneva trace changes in the value-symbolic space of the youth’s identity — from the “emptiness” of the 1990s to the contradictory fragmentation of the 2010s — and document key psychological problems associated with this process. In their opinion, the “Crimean consensus” failed to become a sufficiently solid ground for the construction of the Russian nation and is gradually losing its significance as a factor of civil self-identification. In this situation, civil self-identification among young people can take the form of searching for alternative social and political projects, increasing interest in images and symbols offered by opposition politicians.

DOI: 10.30570/2078-5089-2017-87-4-48-64

Pages: 48-64

"ENEMY IMAGE". AS THE FACTOR OF THE FORMATION OF MODERN RUSSIAN YOUTH`S NATIONAL IDENTITY

One of the specifics of modern Russia became the actualization of the "enemy image" in the mass consciousness. It is in particular expressed in the growth of radical nationalism and xenophobia especially among the youth. On the basis of social identity theory the authors hypothesize that this tendency is the consequence of the Russian youth`s value vacuum that came after the USSR disintegration. They believe that this was the absence of the system of meaning around which the society could unite that created a favorable medium for negative identification through the "enemy image".

DOI: 10.30570/2078-5089-2007-46-3-83-92