YOUTH AS POTENTIAL FOR FORMATION AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE MIDDLE CLASS IN MODERN RUSSIAN SOCIETY

Abstract

The article provides methodological grounds for identifying the middle class in general and the representatives of the youth middle class in particular. It is especially noted that representatives of the middle class serve as the state support in the socio-political sphere, as they have a high level of legal consciousness, civil and political culture, are the main driving force of reforms and innovations in the socio-economic sphere, bearers and disseminators of highly cultural and moral values in the spiritual -cultural sphere of modern Russian society and actively relay all of the above to other segments of the population. Accordingly, expanding the boundaries of the middle class is one of the primary tasks for Russian society, and young people are the immediate potential for its development. All of the above determined the purpose of the work - on the basis of the developed methodology, to identify the characteristics of youth as the potential for the formation of the middle class in modern Russian society, to draw up a portrait of young representatives of the middle class. The article presents a comprehensive methodology for identifying the middle class in general and its young representatives in particular, as well as its theoretical model, including the core, semi-core, near and far periphery. This model involves the use of such criteria as socio-professional, self-identification, leisure and recreational and the criterion of personal responsibility. The aprobation of the presented methodology was carried out in the sociological laboratory of the Department of Sociology and Social Technologies as part of the study “Youth as the potential for the development of the middle class.” An analysis of the youth middle class according to all the stated criteria allowed us to assert that it is this social group that has the immediate potential for the development and expansion of the Russian middle class.