Some features of youth patriotism in the context of escalation of current international situation and conduct of the special military operation

Abstract

Background. 2022 – the beginning of Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine, when there were dramatic shifts in political, socio-economic and socio-cultural spheres that affected the entire Russian society and showed significant “margin of safety” both from state in terms of stable and consistent development, and from our fellow citizens demonstrating support for course and growth of patriotic orientations. The purpose of the study is to analyze attitude to some events related to conduct of the special military opera-tion by the most dynamic group, student youth. Materials and methods. Author’s sociologi-cal research among young people, including students of Penza and Saratov (2020–2023) on peculiarities of youth patriotism and survey materials of VTsIOM, FOM and a number of regional studies. Results. Some features of patriotic orientations and patriotic self-identification of student youth, their attitude to the events of 2014 in connection with reuni-fication of Crimea with Russia and 2022 in connection with start and conduct of the special military operation were considered. Conclusions. According to the research, it was revealed that since 2022 there has been increase in patriotic self-identification of student youth, in-cluding its positive relationship with attitude towards political decisions made by the coun-try’s leadership. Young people warmly support the President of the Russian Federation, positively assess decisions made regarding Crimea and new territories. Most of students are neutral on sanctions, as well as positive and neutral on special military operation. Some differences were identified in the estimates of events related to special military operation depending on the age of the respondents.

Keywords

• patriotism
• crimea
• nato
• special military operation
• sanctions
• student youth
• russians
• consolidation