A Hundred Thousand “Me” in One “We”: Collective and Individual in the Russian Youth Worldview

Abstract

Today, the question of the relationship between the collective and the individual in their consciousness and worldview occupies a special place in the study of modern Russian youth. Young people tend to want to separate themselves from society in order to understand their personality and belonging to various social groups, to accept or not accept the values, norms, ideals of the society in which they are located, in general, to understand their place in it. At the same time, our political culture is considered collectivist, oriented towards the ideas and values of conciliarity and solidarity. In this regard, the study was aimed at identifying attitudes and orientations towards the collective and individual in the minds of modern Russian youth. The empirical base of the study was made up of data from the All-Russian representative survey of citizens aged 14-30 years ( n = 2,500) conducted in the fall of 2022. The qualitative part of the study is presented by the materials of 8 focus groups conducted in the fall of 2023, the participants of which were young people aged 14 to 30 years living in all federal districts of Russia. The general conclusion of the study was the results of the study allow us to say that the so-called We-worldview is characteristic of modern Russian youth, which is a complex set of contradictory but interrelated values, ideas, orientations and attitudes towards inclusion in public relations and relationships. Its peculiarity lies in the fact that it simultaneously manifests elements of the collective (solidary, conciliar, communal) and partly individualistic principles that are traditional for the domestic political tradition. Young people retain attitudes towards unification and solidary social relations. At the same time, social groups, society, the state and interaction with them are perceived by young people only through the prism of the “I” as defining the context, conditions and circumstances of their life and creating opportunities for their self-development, self-expression and self-realization.

Keywords

• youth
• collectivism
• individualism
• traditional values
• political values
• worldview