Political morality of modern Russian youth: values, representations, attitudes

Abstract

In modern socio-humanitarian science, there is a certain lack of research on the moral priorities of young Russian citizens as regulators of their life in the state and society. The study presented in the article was aimed at identifying the political values, ethical representations and attitudes of young people that guide them in assessing the sphere of politics and in their relationships with the state and other political actors. The theo-retical and methodological basis of the study was the political-psychological ap-proach, in which values, ideas and attitudes are considered from psychological posi-tions in the structure of moral and political consciousness. The empirical basis of the study was the materials of the All-Russian questionnaire survey and focus group dis-cussions with young people conducted in 2020-21. The results of the study show that young people consider moral values and norms to be a measure of political relations, albeit a rather relative one. It imposes on politicians the moral demands of sincerity, honesty, work for the benefit of citizens, concern for the public interest. Young peo-ple leave politicians the right to make mistakes, they are ready to forgive politicians for many mistakes, except for those that are associated with a threat to life and health of people and have serious consequences. Young people consider corruption, wars and violence, violation of laws and rights of citizens to be immoral actions in politics themselves. The meaning-forming foundations of the moral assessment of the sphere of politics by young people are the political values of freedom, human rights, justice, security, self-realization. Young people's representations about duty are differentiat-ed: they recognize the duty of a person, but reject the duty of a citizen. Young people are not ready to take responsibility for others, and sometimes for themselves too. They place the responsibility for providing public goods and satisfying their needs on the state. This reflects paternalistic attitudes, traditional for our political culture. The political morality of youth is contradictory and often relativistic.