2021 Issue №1

The article studies the development of Russian-language school education in independent Latvia from 1992 to 2020, as well as the process of reforming this system by official authorities. At the time of declaration of independence and withdrawal from the USSR, a bilingual education system which was formed in Latvia, made it possible to get education at all levels (from kinder­garten to technical school and university) in both Latvian and Russian lan­guages. The rise to power in the 1990s. nationalist politicians and the percep­tion of the Soviet period as a period of "occupation", made it impossible to keep the Russian-speaking school unchanged. The transformations were not long in coming — already in 1995 amendments to the law on the primary school and gymnasium were adopted, proclaiming the need to introduce sev­eral subjects in the Latvian language in schools for national minorities. The largest reforms were carried out in 2004, when high school in Russian-language schools (grades 10—12) was required to study in a 60/40 ratio — at least 60 % of subjects in Latvian and no more than 40 % in Russian. The sec­ond package of reforms began to be implemented in 2017, when the high school (of national minorities) completely switched to the Latvian language of instruction, and the secondary school was only partly switched to the Latvian language. The Latvian authorities explain the need for these reforms by the desire to increase the level of knowledge of the state language among national minorities, primarily Russian-speaking. The reform continues and will be completed only in 2021. This article is the first attempt at understanding the reform of the Russian school of Latvia, taking into account the latest trans­formations. The work uses statistical data from public organizations and the Ministry of Education of Latvia, as well as sources in the Latvian language, which are introduced into research space for the first time.

The article touches upon the issue of state-civil identity of student youth. Theoretical analysis of the provisions of social constructivism made the author focus on the fact that state-civil identity is an element of the value component in the structure of the political consciousness ethnopolitical construct of the subjects of politics. Through the implementation of a comprehensive socio-political study, an assessment of the level of state-civil identity of student youth in some federal districts is given, which turned out to be possible thanks to the use of the mass survey method. As a result, it was revealed that the study participants demonstrate a high level of state and civic identity. The fo­cus-group method has shown its consistency in studying how this value ori­entation in the political consciousness of student youth develops. For the re­search participants, statehood is the semantic identity category. The research group also noted that the state-civic identity of university students formed an advantage in affective and cognitive aspects, while the conative component is not sufficiently represented in their narratives. It indicates a certain lack of state-civic identity in the structure of the ethnopolitical construct of student youth.