Features of Political Socialization of Youth in a University City

The article considers a topical issue of political socialization of youth. Protest moods, mass demonstrations and specific actions show that currently, in many countries, young people are becoming more active and focused on "criticism by action" of traditional political institutions. On the other hand, these institutions lose youth support in the elections and in the party building process. Classical ideologies and the ideology as a form of mind control fail in the clash with modernity. Thereby, there is a need in an underlying cause to nominate and theoretically substantiate new sociopolitical phenomena, such as populism, post-truth, fake news, and others. According to the author of the article, this cause is a change in the public paradigm, which was considered by Zygmunt Bauman, Nikita Moiseev, Krzysztof Nawratek, Manuel Castells and Emma Kiselyova, Philip Cooke, Guy Standing, et al. The article reveals the difference and constructs general provisions of the new social world. The place of youth in this future is traditionally associated with the mechanism of socialization, in which political relations, as one of the areas, always occupy pride of place. The author recalls the basic theories of political socialization, noting that all of them were connected with institutions that performed a systemic function. By this, in theoretical and methodological terms, he tests various theories of political socialization for the possibility of their integration in the design of a new society. To verify it, in the summer of 2019, the author and his research team conducted a survey among students of Tomsk, one of the four Russian university cities in the Top 100 of the QS Best Student Cities ranking. They also developed and conducted an expert survey of theorists and practitioners of political socialization in all four Russian cities from the QS ranking (Moscow, St. Petersburg, Novosibirsk and Tomsk) on the effectiveness of existing institutions of political socialization. The results of the empirical studies complement each other, correlate with the theoretical assessment of the current state of society, and have a significant scientific and practical value at both the federal and city levels.

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