Students about the Great Patriotic War (based on a survey results of students at universities in Moscow and Astrakhan)

About the authors:

Vera V. Diakova, Cand. Sci. (Soc.), Associate Professor, Department of Humanitarian Sciences and Psychology, Astrakhan State Technical University; vvdyakova@yandex.ru; ORCID: 0000-0002-3715-1393

Ekaterina V. Kargapolova, Dr. Sci. (Soc.), Professor, Department of Political Analysis and Socio-Psychological Processes, Plekhanov Russian University of Economics, Moscow, Russia; k474671@list.ru, https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2892-3953

Uliya A. Davydova, Cand. Sci. (Hist.), Associate Professor, Department of Political Science and Sociology, Plekhanov Russian University of Economics (Moscow); ylkadav@mail.ru; ORCID: 0000-0001-5660-328X

Abstract:

2020 is marked by the celebration of the 75^th anniversary of the Great Victory. This event is significant both for individual citizens, whose families include (or included) veterans of the war and home front, and for the state as a whole, since patriotism is an important factor in ensuring the stable development of the country, the continuity of generations, and the consolidation of the population. That is why the relevance of this topic is beyond doubt.

The Russian Society of Sociologists initiated the next wave of the monitoring project “Modern Russian Students on the Great Patriotic War” (the method of collecting information — online questionnaires on Google Forms, N = 10 065; the results were processed using the Vortex software package), the results of which will not only allow studying the opinions of young people on this topic, but can also be used to analyze the value orientations of young people over the past 15 years and make forecasts. This article describes some of the results of this project, obtained in Moscow and Astrakhan.

Students’ opinions are analyzed according to a number of indicators: memory of the war, sources of knowledge about the war, family relations with the war participants, personal and family involvement in understanding the events of the 1941-1945 war, participation in festive events and their assessment. The characteristic is given to the value attitudes and orientations of students, which emphasize the importance of the memory of the Victory over fascism as a form of upbringing of patriotism and family tradition.

The authors have compared the students’ opinions in universities of the two cities through the prism of “capital — region (province)”, which resulted in the conclusion about greater personal and family involvement in festive events for the Victory Day of the students of Astrakhan.

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