The heritage of Alexander Nevsky in the perception of modern Russian youth: an experience of a psycholinguistic research

The article presents the results of a study aimed at establishing the degree of development in the linguistic consciousness of Russian schoolchildren of the concept of Alexander Nevsky and the peculiarities of their perception of the heritage of the great Russian commander. The research was based on materials obtained in the course of work with respondents (students in grades 4, 5, 7 and 9 of secondary schools in Miass, Chelyabinsk Oblast); research results of Russian and foreign historians, sociologists and political scientists; and journalistic texts. The methodology was based on the approaches used in corpus linguistics, as well as a psycholinguistic free associative experiment and a questionnaire. The survey data underwent a two-stage processing, interpretation, grouping, and clustering. The associative experiment was carried out in order to clarify the results of the questionnaire. It has been established that among young people the name Alexander Nevsky is losing its precedent nature. The first most frequent reaction to the stimulus Alexander Nevsky is a human, which speaks of the devastation of the concept. More than a third of the respondents do not know anything about Alexander Nevsky. It has been determined that more than a half of the respondents associate the precedent name Alexander Nevsky with the patriotic segment of the linguistic picture of the world: with a victorious army, with the first persons of the state. The identified reactions form two clusters: 1) the statuses of high and highest statesmen; 2) phenomena, persons and objects related to the war. It is noted that the image of a far-sighted, sagacious, and flexible politician, a saint, a defender of Orthodoxy is not reflected by the schoolchildren at all. Based on her observations, the author concludes that Russian cultural heritage is being reduced and eroded; one of the largest historical figures in Russian history is losing completeness and versatility and is even completely absent in the linguistic consciousness of many schoolchildren. A change in the repertoire of precedent names and a transformation of the national linguistic consciousness of young Russians are stated. An opinion is expressed about the need to popularize Russian history; a whole range of measures is proposed to actualize the precedent Alexander Nevsky in the linguistic consciousness of schoolchildren. According to the author, the thesis about the danger of the perception of Prince Alexander Nevsky as a myth, not a historical figure, is of strategic importance. This interpretation is a politically motivated modernization of historical reality.