Features of historical memory of Russian province students

The work continues the cycle of publications devoted to the analysis of historical memory of Russian students. The study involved representatives of students' youth from 18 regions of the Russian Federation. Its results revealed the peculiarities of the semantics of historical memory of provincial students. Almost a third of respondents know practically nothing about the life of their line, their family before the Revolution of 1917, have insufficient information about the life of relatives in 20-40 years of the XX century. Among the respondents, one in three shares socialist views, slightly more than a third of people feel a religious identity. Most agree with the statement that the life of their family in the 30-50s of the XX century was dysfunctional. A quarter of respondents among provincial students consider the activities of dissidents and A.D. Sakharov as a “political evil”. Young participants of the study highly appreciate the quality of life of relatives in the 1960s-80s and they believe that life in the USSR was prosperous, based on the principles of social justice, which is the basis for the formation of a nostalgic myth about the USSR among students. Many have chosen the personality of Peter the Great as a representative of the “political good”, so we can conclude that Russian youth tend to reforms, development, modernization. This is confirmed by the majority of respondents who positively assesses the lives of relatives in the 1990s, during reforms and changes. However, another part of respondents negatively perceive this period. Informants call serfdom and Stalinist repressions a “political evil”, which indicates a high level of modernization values among the younger generation.