Civic and Political Activism of “Oppositional” Youth in Saint Petersburg: Meaning, Practices, and New Challenges

Civil and political activism has long been an attractive object for research in various fields of social and human sciences. The development of new information and communication technologies makes significant changes to the public sphere, affecting both the activist field and transforming it. The object of this study is the civil-political "opposition" activists - young people aged 19 to 33, living in St. Petersburg at the time of the study. The subject of this study is activist practices and barriers that arise in the process of activism and tension lines. The purpose of this work is to analyze the practices of civil activists as modern forms of political participation and identify existing barriers. Before conducting the research, the key question was formulated as follows: what new forms of political participation are used in activist practices, and also to what barriers and stress lines do these forms lead to? The work includes: the theoretical part contains an overview of key works, a description and analysis of theoretical approaches and concepts; The methodological part includes the analysis of documents and official reports on youth policy and the activities of youth associations, an analysis of current political processes relevant to activism in this field, as well as a description of methods, the "field" and its main features. The empirical part contains an analysis of the activist youth space of St. Petersburg in the sphere of civil-political opposition activism. In conclusion, the main conclusions of this work are given.