Cultivating youth in the spirit of serving the fatherland as a key task of the educational system and national security of the country

Introduction. The article is devoted to the comprehension of the accumulated problems of cultivating and educating domestic youth in the context of ensuring Russia's national security. They have been sharply actualized in the Russian society in connection with the special military operation in Ukraine. The multidimensional nature of the problem field requires its system-based analysis and identification of those "bottlenecks", the impact on which can improve the situation. The aim is to comprehend the problem field of cultivating the country’s youth in the spirit of service to the Fatherland in modern conditions. Results and Discussion. The basic concepts of the topic (spirit, spirituality, service) were analyzed, with a focus on the phenomenon of conviction - the basis of patriotism and civic-mindedness. "Bottlenecks" in cultivating young people are seen as poor use of a large amount of accumulated scientific knowledge of the theory of educational systems, unbalanced relations in the systems "family-school-children’s organizations" and "science-university-school", lack of correct guidelines for the work of social institutions (culture, sports, mass media, social networks) due to lack of ideological monism traditional for our country in the past. Today it is compensated primarily by the expansion of religious basis in the sphere of domestic cultivating and educating youth.