Religious identity and confessional security through the eyes of student youth in the Russian part of the Caspian Sea region

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Abstract

The issues of collective, cultural or, in some cases, religious identity have become an important factor for both confessional and societal security since the end of the last century. Such studies focus on specific societal communities or specific social spaces. The present article studies the student youth of the Russian part of the Caspian Sea region and focuses on the influence of the level of religious identity on the confessional security of student youth in the Russian part of the Caspian Sea region. The starting point was regional studies of the past 10 years carried out by experts from the Republic of Kalmykia, Republic of Dagestan and Astrakhan Region. The purpose of this article is to identify the level of confessional security of the Russian student youth in the Caspian Sea region. For this purpose, sociological research was carried out in November and December 2020 among students of higher educational institutions in the Russian part of the Caspian Sea region (N – 732). Primary sociological information was obtained through a handout
electronic questionnaire using the Survey Studio service. The sampling error was up to 3%. The research tools and matrix were developed by the authors. A fairly high level of students’ religiosity was revealed in the course of the study, mainly due to Dagestan and Kalmykia. The main factor in the formation of religious identity was the human and institutional factor, manifesting itself most clearly in Kalmykia, and the virtual one – in Dagestan. The study results showed that the youth of the Caspian Sea region is in tune for tolerance but does not feel sufficient reciprocal tolerance at both the national and regional levels. They consider their own educational institutions having the highest level of tolerance. Though they do not recognize the societal future of religion as a systemic regulator, the vast majority of students, both believers and non-believers, recognize it as a kind of guarantor of security.