Patriotic Upbringing of Youth as a Field of Interaction between Political Institutions and Civil Society in Russian Regions

This article contains analysis of experience of regional, municipal and local administrations when organizing activities with the youth in collaboration with political parties and public organizations based on field research performed by the author in a number of Russian regions in 2013-2015. The various approaches to interpretation of the meaning "civil society" and their heuristic potential in studying social realities of Russian regional and local communities are also discussed in the article. Organization of efforts on patriotic upbringing is shown as an example of interaction between different social forces and governmental agencies that do not compete but complement each other. The three main areas of patriotic upbringing in the regions are described as follows: military and patriotic (primarily based on the memory of the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945), regionally historic, and artistic. The article demonstrates that such work affects a fairly large number of young people, namely students in the regions of the Russian Federation. Although the number of these activists is small, they have created a favorable atmosphere for the younger generation be proud of the history of their country and love their homeland. The article also sets out the main points of the concept of teaching national history, which, in the author's opinion, fully meets the practice of patriotic upbringing that exists in the regions. Based on this analysis, the author concludes that it is not the institutions but the actors who determine the life of local communities in Russia. The efforts on patriotic upbringing serve as a particularly clear example of this conclusion.