Legal awareness dynamics of the population of the south of Russia: cognitive aspect

Introduction: the integration processes in the South of Russia are complicated by the ethno-cultural heterogeneity of the macroregion, different levels of socio-economic development of the subregions and differences in the societal values of the ethno-territorial communities. In these conditions, a similar legal culture serves as the basis for the consolidation of different groups of the population. The purpose of the paper is to analyze the dynamics of the legal culture cognitive component of the population of the multi-ethnic territories of Southern Russia. Methods: the empirical basis of the study was formed as part of comparative sociological research, when more than two thousand people were interviewed in the Rostov region, Adygea and Kabardino- Balkaria in 2001-2019. Results: as a rule, the legal culture of a civil-activist type should dominate in a modernized society, when the population understands and recognizes the priority of human rights and freedoms, legal responsibility, shows respect for the existing laws. Therefore, the study of the cognitive components of the legal culture of South-Russian residents includes the analysis of knowledge and perceptions of the respondents about the basic signs of the legal state, the permissibility of limitations of human rights, the degree of importance of the rights of different actors in society, the status of law, legislation in the case of administrative arrest and witness testimony. Conclusions: the empirical tests show a rather low level of specific legal knowledge of the population in all the considered territorial subjects of the South of Russia. Moreover, from the first to the last stages of the study, the dynamics of the knowledge level is decreasing. The priority of the right is not always manifested in the attitudes of the surveyed residents in the macroregion. Against this background, in the Rostov region at different stages of the study a stable group of respondents (about half of the respondents), for whom the legal norm is a legitimate regulator of behavior, was recorded. In the republican segment, the situation is volatile; the lagging dynamics of legal systems of a civil type in the Republic of Adygea and the accelerating one - in Kabardino-Balkaria are revealed.