Political and Legal Consciousness of Young People in the Region (a Case Study of Jewish Autonomous Region)

The paper deals with particularities of political and legal consciousness of young people in view of a region against the background of the general standpoint of the Russian citizens and Russian youth in questions of the political and legal spheres. The opinion of the young people and citizens of the country as a whole is evaluated based on the results of authors' sociological questionnaire surveys conducted in Jewish autonomous region and questionnaire surveys of the population of Russia conducted by Levada-Center and the Public Opinion Foundation. The political and legal consciousness in a social relations subject is formed under the effect of the entire complex of factors and is determined by the historical, political, economical and other conditions of the subject's life activity. In it, both the emotional and the rational, experience and traditions, moods and stereotypes are interweaved. While performing a number of regulatory, communicative etc. functions, the political consciousness is a kind of indicator that allows understanding, estimating the place and role of this or that subject (population as a whole, a social group, an individual) in politics. Legal consciousness is the most closely associated with the political one. It reflects political and economical interests, knowledge and evaluations of the laws, standards, social relations regulators accepted in the society.