The dynamics of the value orientations of the Kuban youth

The article presents the results of a three-year sociological study of the causes of social tension among the youth in Kuban as a polyethnic region. Based on the results of the survey of high school students, university students and young workers, the authors consider the youth’s attitudes to the current government, priorities of state policy, events in Ukraine and Syria, assess the state of interethnic relations in the North Caucasus and the role of Cossacks in Kuban. The article emphasizes that the inconsistency of worldviews and attitudes of the Kuban youth to these issues increased in 2017, i.e. the potential for conflicts on national and political grounds increased, which lead to the growth of social activity of participants in both patriotic actions and social protests. Today, the rejuvenation of social protests is obvious for more and more schoolchildren and teenagers take part in them. There is a growth of both the youth support for state patriotism and radical anti-state protests, and in general the number of the youth indifferent and detached from social processes declines. There is a danger of polarization and radicalization of the youth and accumulation of latent conflict potential. The state patriotic education aiming to ensure the traditional value of sacrifice for the country is eroded by the propaganda of liberal individualism and consumerism which deny such a value; the promotion of volunteerism and mutual aid comes into conflict with the ideas of leadership and competitiveness, and the values of interethnic and inter-religious friendship and respect - with the ideas of interethnic and interfaith tolerance. The return to traditional values proclaimed by the state faces the westernization trends, which determines the youth’s worldview inconsistency.