The article, based on the results of an empirical study, devoted to some features of the formation of modern youth planning horizons. The images of the country’s future in the next five and ten years were considered and compared. Young Russians’ planning horizons are mostly blurred and include assumptions about many risks and challenges that the country may face. Young citizens rarely see themselves as an active actor participating in the creation of the fate of the Motherland. The obtained results allow us to state that when forecasting the future of the country, the topics of transformation of the political system are more relevant for young Russians than the topics of economic, technological and cultural development. The image of the future is noticeably politicized. There is a significant differentiation of young people with respect to political orientations. It determines optimism and pessimism in assessments of the future of the country. The study allows us to speak about the preservation of problems, at the moment supported by the generational specificity of political socialization, requiring attention in the formation of national and state identity in Russian society.

The article demonstrates the possibility of identifying discrepancies between respondents’ perceptions of what constitutes their personal success and what they consider to be the indicators of success for future Russia, through the use of reversible modes of stimulus material presentation. The materials of empirical research are presented, confirming the validity of the assumption that the productivity of identifying the true political preferences and expectations of our fellow citizens can be increased by using visual stimuli demonstrated through eye trackers, with which respondents work in a reversible mode. The obtained data also indicates that the use of such modes allows for the identification of even those components of personal representations that, according to the respondents, may contradict the most socially desirable ones.

The article analyzes textual descriptions of youth policy at Russian universities participating in the Priority 2030 program. The study sample consisted of 119 universities with diffe rent status (federal universities, national research universities, flagship universities, etc.), as well as of different institutional affiliation. Computer text analysis using the Python programming language was used to analyze models of youth policy.
The article substantiates the point that universities’ youth policies are overly differentiated and poorly integrated both within the university community and in terms of its compliance with federal regulatory documents regulating state youth policy. The author points to the fact that the youth policies of Russian universities do not have a unified socialization vector, and this, in the context of escalating geopolitical tensions, could become a factor of social disintegration and a decrease in the level of solidarity within Russian society.
As the conducted research has shown, the values of individualism, personal success and self-realization, orientation towards ‘world’ models and patterns are implicitly embedded in the models of youth policy. This circumstance may reduce the effect of educational influence on the younger generation, contributing to the formation of absenteeism and low civic and social activity.

The article presents the results of a comparative study of BRICS countries’ science diplomacy conceptual foundations. Science diplomacy is a system of interactions in building foreign policy, solving regional and global problems, establishing international scientific ties for the development of joint activities of the world scientific community aimed at increasing knowledge, and promoting the constructive international dialogue. This phenomenon is analysed in the article primarily as an instrument of foreign policy. As a result of operationalising the conceptual foundations identified by the qualitative content analysis, instrumental characteristics were formulated in each case to establish which approach to defining science diplomacy a state adheres to. These approaches were correlated with the roots of science diplomacy and considered in the context of contemporary conceptualisation of BRICS countries’ foreign policies.

The article analyses two opposing approaches to the study of modern Russian diplomacy. In foreign literature diplomacy is seen as an instrument of foreign policy, traditionally belonging to the international relations theory. As a result, most of the works are reduced to the study of different schools (neorealism, neoliberalism, constructivism, etc.) in order to construct models applicable to describing diplomatic activity (for example, the ‘two-level game model’). At the same time, such models do not take into account the narrow professional specifics of diplomatic institutions and, consequently, can be used on limited historical material. At the same time, Soviet and Russian researchers tend to favour empirical works of practicing diplomats who considered applied aspects of foreign policy through the lens of their professional experience. This paradigm is suitable for analysing specific country situations, but cannot be the basis for developing universal theoretical models that can be applied in foreign policy planning. In this regard, it is necessary to develop a comprehensive vision of Russian diplomacy by combining the international experience of fundamental research with the domestic school of applied analysis.