Hardiness and Self-activation of Russian and Belarusian Youth in Transitive Society

The article presents research data on the personal resources of young people from Belarus and Russia, who grew up in new cultural and historical conditions after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The study involved 206 participants, 104 of them from Minsk and 102 from Moscow aged from 17 to 26 years. The groups did not differ by gender and age, and no age differences were found between the representatives of the female and male samples. The age range corresponds to the period of the autonomous development of two countries: Russia and Belarus (from 1991 to the present) and is considered sensitive for the formation of macro-social identity in modern conditions. Personal resources include self-activation for studying independence, physical and psychological activation; hardiness for studying commitment,control, and challenge; personal dynamism for studying a person’s readiness for changes, aspirations for transformation and creating new relations with the world; self-control for studying personal and motivational resources to regulate impulsive desires. The analysis of the similarities and differences in the manifestation of the personal resources of Belarusians and Russians showed that young Belarusians have a lower level of all personal resources in contrast to Russians. To study and to compare the structures of personal resources, we used cluster analysis (k-means method) and multidimensional scaling. The results of statistical analysis demonstrate that hardiness is distinguished in the structure of personal resources of young Belarusians; self-control and self-activation are associated with personal dynamism; independence is related to self-control, risk taking, involvement and psychological activation. In the structure of personal resources of young Russians, the hardiness is consistent with personal dynamism; self-activation is related to self-control; independence as one of the characteristics of self-activation is connected with risk acceptance, involvement, psychological activation and control. The similarity of both structures is found in the allocation of such components as independence and physical activation (characteristics of self-activation). These characteristics as components of self-activation that contribute to the realization of opportunities in a modern environment can become key features for the youth of Russia and Belarus. Thus, we can conclude that personal resources are a flexible and dynamic system that can vary significantly depending on cultural and historical conditions. The transitivity of modern world is becoming not only an external, but also an internal, psychological problem, and requires the activation of many personal resources of youth, among which the key resources are hardiness and self-activation. The prospects for this research are the study of hardiness, self-activation and other personal resources of different generations of Belarusians and Russians.