Subcultures and Youth Cultural Policy in 2000-2019: Conflicts and Cooperation (on the Example of Saint Petersburg and Nizhny Novgorod)

In modern Russian society, the study of the problems of socialization of youth has important theoretical and practical significance. Social-political processes, which are taken place in Russia nowadays directly influence its socio-cultural foundation as beliefs, values and perception of prestige what leads to completely different sociocultural identifications. Youth is a special status group with its own characteristics of social development and value orientations, the formation of which is influenced by the sociocultural environment. The socialization of youth as a formation of value orientations, is an objective process of its entry into the social sphere and there is an institutional, targeted impact on youth in the form of upbringing of the younger generation. The strengthening of the youth factor in all spheres of society, especially the problem of increasing the political activity of youth, its formation as a subject of political activity, largely determine the fruitful prospects for stabilizing social development. The problem of youth socialization is especially relevant in the context of the projected modernization of the socio-political system of society and a paradigm shift in the sociocultural values of modern Russian society. Consequently, the need to nurture responsibility, civic duty, social and political initiative in youth is highlighted by the youth policy. But, in case of Russia, youth policy development has different vector of development. The main and key meaning of which is to make young generation be loyal to the regime and adopt the law of ruling power in the country. Thus, young people, who are not likely to be “covered” by the governmental youth policy because of the political and civil objectives, and they have to find alternative way of participation in processes taking place in the society. In this situation, subcultures stand up as means to express critical opinions and to deliver certain information to the youth. the process of socialization in the condition of a subculture, youth gets the opportunity to realize their creative potentials, stand out from the crowd, show their personality. In our work, we would like to analyze the key and interesting aspects of creating youth policy in cities such as Nizhny Novgorod and St. Petersburg, as well as analyze the attitude of the youth, representatives of subcultures, in relation to youth policy and political participation in general.