Heroes, Antiheroes of Modern Russian Youth

Abstract

The article examines the issue of the formation of group identity among young people. Heroes of the time act as symbolic value-behavioral complexes, they are part of the conceptual apparatus for analyzing changes in attitudes towards historical personalities, historical memory as the basis of solidarity. The current state is char-acterized by trends of changes in value attitudes among Russian students, which inevitably affects social soli-darity. The theoretical apparatus is based on an appeal to the classics of sociology (E. Durkheim), the concept of anomie is considered in relation to the current period. A hypothesis of the causes of the state of disunity is formulated based on the destruction of the feedback mechanism in traditional methods of forming social soli-darity. In his cultural forms of behavior, a person relies on eternal truths, formulated in the form of moral imper-atives, captured in traditional forms (songs, fairy tales) and institutional practices of conveying meanings and patterns of behavior (upbringing, education). Heroes and anti-heroes act as triggers for the fragmentation of youth and Russian society. The article presents the results of a 2022 pilot survey of university youth, character-izing attitudes towards personalities of Russian history (authorities). The results obtained are compared with secondary data from 2023 surveys.