Psychological Analysis of Political Values in Contemporary Russian Public:Generational Aspect

Today the problem of valuescontent of political reality is actual and is discussed in scientific community. Research of politicalvalues of different generations of Russians is based on the concept of R. Inglehart. According to histheory the global shift of values system of humanity from materialism to postmaterializm has occurred.Thus change of values consciousness from materialism to postmaterializm goes from one generation toanother. The researches which has been conducted in Russia in the beginning of the 1990s, confirmthis notion.However, the results of our research show, that the most actualized political values in all generationsof Russians today are "values of safety", which are a part of materialistic values (in Inglehart'sterminology).As a result of verbalization these values are expressed in such concepts as "peace", "order", "legality","sovereignty", "patriotism", "freedom", "justice". It is neither unusual nor typical for Russiaonly. This complex of values defines priorities of every democratic state. But there are specific interpretationsof these concepts by Russians, caused by features of a life of our country in the last 15-20years.The necessity of peace, order, legality we fixed is a reaction to real living conditions of citizens intransformation's period characterizing by a randomness of public processes, instability of economy,corruption of officials.Thus, we can conclude that in a modern Russian society the united system of group political valuestakes place. The requirement for safety (personal, economic, political), that finds the expression inthe values conditionally and is designated by us as «values of safety», is characteristic for all groups ofthe Russian society without dependence on age. This notion is very important, because, on the onehand, It indicates that there is a deep economic and socio-political crisis in our country, but on theother hand «values of safety» create a content of the Russian political-cultural space.

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