Education as an institution of national identity formation

¹ Lomonosov Moscow State University, Faculty of Political Science, Department of Public Policy, Moscow, Russia
² Institute for Social and Political Research, Federal Research Sociological Center, Russian Academy of Scinces, Center for Social Security and Riskology, Moscow, Russia

^* Corresponding author: oshabr@mail.ru

Abstract

The article touches upon the problem of the crisis of national-state identity of young Russian citizens. Digitalization fundamentally changes the functioning and reproduction of the culture, which underlies group, ethnic, national, and state identity. These changes may cause significant risks of destabilizing the state and its main institutions. The authors discuss the role of educational institutions in the reproduction and formation of new social values among young people and the following formation of the national-state identity. The empirical part of the study is aimed to identify the basis of national-state identity, which is the structure and content of social ideas about Russia among various groups of users of social networks aged 14–35 years, selected according to their gender, age, and educational background. The article presents the results of the empirical study of respondents’ social representations about Russia. It explains the correlation between the national-state identity and social representations of one’s country and indicates the structural-functional and contentmorphological characteristics of the social ideas of young people about Russia. It also reveals the differences in the social representations of young people from different population groups. The results make it possible to clarify the understanding of the pattern of Russian young people’s social thinking, which is responsible for the choice of identification images and predetermines the strength and direction of political attitudes that affect the political stability of Russia.