Social mobility of Russian provincial youth

The social mobility of Russian youth is considered in the post-Soviet period from the theoretical and practical perspective. The interest in this period of Russian history has intensified because of the need for accelerated development and modernization of the domestic economy and social sphere. Young people born after the 1990s are the main resource for changing political and ideological strategies of the Russian Federation. The future of Russia depends on their mobility (dynamics). The theory of social stratification by P.A. Sorokin (1927) provides the methodological basis for the analysis of the social mobility of provincial youth. The authors show the transformation of the importance of types and channels of mobility associated with both the shift in social and economic system and the anomie of the restructuring era in the late 1990s. The study notes the factors influencing the mobility. They are caused not only by the impact of the external environment of individuals (political, economic, family and domestic, cultural ones) but also by the prevailing social identification (the characteristics of age, nation, sex, psyche, character, motivational pre-ferences, and education of individuals). In the researchers’ opinion, these factors determine the type of channel and the choice of the elevator of social mobility. The authors reveal the leading pathways and channels of the social mobility of Russian youth. The research was conducted in the provincial cities of the southern Tyumen region of the Russian Federation within the state grant. This allows us to extrapolate the research findings to the majority of small municipalities in Russia.