Functional Features of the Cultural Memory of Students in the Multicultural Educational Space of a Modern Russian University

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Functional Features of the Cultural Memory of Students in the Multicultural Educational Space of a Modern Russian University

Yulia N. Avdeeva and Ksenia A. Degtyarenko

Siberian Federal University Krasnoyarsk, Russian Federation

Abstract

This study examines the problem of the development of students' universal competencies at Russian universities related to the diversity of cultures and the ability to enhance intercultural communication in professional field and everyday communication. The development of this competency is significantly influenced by the content of the cultural memory of students. Modern universities are a multicultural space where various persons and communities with different collective cultural memory interact. The objective of the study is to identify the functional features of the students' cultural memory at Russian universities that are historically characterised as a multicultural space. The main method involved focus groups and a theoretical interpretation of the data obtained. The results obtained from two focus groups of students from several universities located in the Krasnoyarsk Territory are presented. The total number of focus group participants was 14 bachelor's and master's degree students. The focus groups consisted of students belonging to the first- and second-generation migrants from among ethnocultural groups with high ethnodemographic dynamics in the Krasnoyarsk Territory. The study showed the need for special programme activities for adaptation and integration of students belonging to the second-generation of migrants into the multicultural university community.

Keywords: universities, migrant students, cultural memory, focus group, adaptation, integration, multicultural space.

Аннотация

Функциональные особенности культурной памяти студентов в поликультурном образовательном пространстве современного российского вуза

Ю.Н. Авдеева, К.А. Дегтяренко Сибирский федеральный университет Красноярск, Российская Федерация

В данном исследовании рассматривается проблема развития универсальных компетенций студентов российских вузов, связанных с многообразием культур и способностью выстраивать межкультурную коммуникацию в профессиональной деятельности и повседневном общении. На развитие этой компетенции существенное влияние оказывает содержание культурной памяти студентов. Современные университеты -- это мультикультурное пространство, в котором взаимодействуют различные люди и сообщества с различной коллективной культурной памятью. Целью исследования служит выявление функциональных особенностей культурной памяти студентов российских вузов, которые исторически характеризуются как мультикультурное пространство. Основной метод включал фокус-группы и теоретическую интерпретацию полученных данных. Представлены результаты, полученные в двух фокус-группах студентов из нескольких вузов, расположенных в Красноярском крае. Общее количество участников фокус-группы составило 14 студентов бакалавриата и магистратуры. Фокус-группы состояли из студентов, принадлежащих к мигрантам первого и второго поколений из числа этнокультурных групп с высокой этнодемографической динамикой в Красноярском крае. Исследование показало необходимость специальных программных мероприятий по адаптации и интеграции студентов, принадлежащих ко второму поколению мигрантов, в многокультурное университетское сообщество.

Ключевые слова: университеты, студенты-мигранты, культурная память, фокус- группа, адаптация, интеграция, мультикультурное пространство.

Modern universities are a multicultural educational space where teachers, employees and students originally belonging to different socio-cultural spaces meet and interact. This determines the emergence of the cultural specificity of a large number of educational practices. This cultural specificity is also a complex platform for the interaction of cultural values, norms, rules, pedagogical communication styles, the choices of educational priorities, as well as the means, methods and techniques of educational activities. One of the significant factors of the multicultural educational space of a modern Russian university is the cultural memory of students, which in itself is a significant component of their self-identification. Self-identification of modern students has a complex structure and includes a range of identification processes, such as civil, cultural, ethnic, religious and others. In turn, the identification processes of students determine the conditions for the development of their universal competencies related to the diversity of cultures and the ability to take into account the complexity and diversity of cultural processes in historical, social, philosophical and other contexts.

Despite their name, the universal competencies are mastered by students belonging to different socio-cultural communities. In modern Russian universities, the educational space has a pronounced multicultural character. It is possible to distinguish special cultural groups of students, which include first- or second-gen-eration migrants, foreign students, as well as students coming to a regional university from other Russian regions which have pronounced socio-cultural and ethnocultural features. Persons with quite different cultural identities interact within one educational space.

Modern pedagogical studies on the cultural specificity of university students and the degree of influence that this specificity has on various educational practices are quite extensive. This is one of the most significant global trends in the science of education, the content of which has many aspects. In this connection, in a journal with a characteristic title European Journal of Futures Research, Spanish researchers E. Cores-Bilbao, M. C. Mйndez-Garcia and M. Fonseca-Mora (2020) express concern about the growing nationalist tendencies in European universities and present the results of a qualitative study of the European students' civic and cultural identity, revealing the idea of European values in the university student envi-ronment. Considering the importance of video games to today's students, M. Cwil and W. T. Howe (2020) carry out a quantitative study of the cultural features of Polish and American students who identify themselves as gamers. The cultural features of the students manifested themselves in the choice of the game types, game platforms or different styles of playing video games. The influx of a significant number of students from Asia to American universities has led to the emergence of studies of the racial, ethnic, and cultural identity of these students. In this connection, in an article by L. Wang, Wong, Ko, Deng and Chung (2020), a qualitative study of complex cases of cultural identity (a combination of Chinese and Taiwanese identities) of undergraduate students is carried out, and conclusions about the influence of these psychological features on the educational process and its results are made. In turn, Russian researchers Bakulov, Silenko, Polomosh- nov and Anisimova (2020) and co-authors revealed the characteristics of national cultural identification among students of various fields. The authors found that national cultural identity was the most significant for history and philology students, and the least significant for mathematics students.

Modern universities have students who originally belong to various religious and cultural groups. Scientists in Russia and abroad actively study the importance of the religious component for the cultural identification of students. For example, Russian scientists Badmaev, Ulanov, lamazhaa, Bicheldey, Antonov and Ochirova (2020) investigate the Buddhist religious identity of students from Tuva, Buryatia and Kalmykia and reveal vague ideas about the Buddhist tradition and a low degree of importance of the Buddhist religion for the students. Croatian scholars K. Malenica, V. Kovacevic and G. Kardum (2019) base their study of the relationship between social distances in the student environment and the students' type of religiosity and their attendance of church services on the complex multicultural type of social space existing in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The authors conduct an extensive sociological study to analyse the high level of social distance and the reasons for this distance in the interactions between students. E. Walker (2019) studied different types of religiosity and the influence of the family on their development in the upbringing of American university students, and was able to demonstrate the influence of several family factors (high level of parental conflicts, divorces and religious het- erogamy of parents) on the subsequent irreligiousness of young university students.

The multicultural space of a modern university comprises young people having various types of ethnic identity, among which Russian researchers I. Luchinkina and N. Senchenko (2020) distinguish the monoethnic, biethnic, zero and marginal groups. The authors use extensive empirical research to claim that the fact of belonging to these groups predetermines the multicultural competency of students. Indeed, the phenomenon of complex identities, among which complex ethnocultural identities are of great importance, is highly characteristic of modern students. This is evidenced by studies of the complex identity of people from various ethnocultural groups in the Krasnoyarsk Territory, conducted by N.P Koptseva and Y.S. Zamaraeva (2020), as well as by the analysis of the content of the ethnocultural identification processes of the indigenous peoples in Central Siberia, undergoing a transition from the traditional type of society to the modern type, performed by V.I. Kirko and N.P Koptseva (2014), K.I. Shimanskaya and N.P Koptseva (2018), N.P Koptseva and A.A. Sitnikova (2018) based on extensive field research. For several countries and communities, the processes of students' complex cultural identification associated with their racial origin are of great importance. Therefore, the quite large number of studies of this aspect is not accidental. American researcher M.K. Blake (2019) examines situations of students' complex racial identification and compares them with situations where racial identification has a single quality. Complex or singular racial identification has a specific impact on the processes of becoming an adult, which American college students undergo. Differences in how these processes occur among different student groups are directly related to the content of the students' racial and ethnic ideas about themselves. cultural memory students educational

Modern universities develop international cooperation, which results in educational migration processes at various levels of university education. The steady educational migration of Chinese graduate students has led to the emergence of a special type of transnational Chinese researcher. The fixation of this type of complex academic ethnocultural identity and the development of a transnational virtual dias-pora of Chinese graduate students are studied by L. Lei and Sh. Guo (2020), who show that the combination of a transnational research position and ethnic Chinese cultural identity is characteristic of modern virtual spaces and using digital technologies for communication.

The lives of such graduate students are radically changing. The support of their ethnocultural identity allows to strategically plan their return to Chinese universities for the purpose of increasing the academic efficiency of these universities in the context of the Chinese state educational policy. It is interesting that the authors use the concepts of transmigration and transmigrants to denote specific processes of inter-country interactions in the modern educational space.

A similar term, transcultural identity, is used in the work of E. Kim and D. Shammas (2019) to clarify the reasons for several conflict situations in which immigrant students from Asian countries studying in American colleges are involved. Recording the exponential growth in the number of such students and paying attention to the fact that some Asian-born students go through the processes of becoming adults in colleges dominated by `white people' (the term used by the authors of the article), the researchers identify several factors of the social environment that lead to the development of a bicultural identity, ethnic identity and transcultural identity of immigrant students in their first two years of study at American university colleges. The authors rightly believe that the significance of this period in students' education for their socialisation and subsequent cultural identification has been underestimated until now.

A very interesting problem that has just begun to appear in the Chinese higher education is studied by Ya. Hu and K. Dai (2021), who analyse the characteristics of the cultural self-identification processes of students from among Chinese immigrants who returned to their historical homeland to get higher education there. For these students, it is important that universities properly organise the processes of their social and cultural adaptation, including overcoming language barriers, activating historical and cultural memory, consolidating cultural values, expanding international communications and increasing the number of academic exchanges. Similar processes, but this time in the interregional educational spaces of Russian universities, are studied by Luzan, Koptseva, Zabelina, Kurnosova and Trushina (2019) and co-authors, who analyse the complexity of adaptation processes for students from among the indigenous peoples of the North, Siberia and the Far East of the Russian Federation living in areas with an extreme Arctic climate and with strongly pronounced traditional ethnocultural features prior to receiving higher education.

One outstanding example of a multicultural (multilingual, polyethnic, polyconfessional) region is the territory of the modern Balkan Peninsula. The extremely complex processes of ethnocultural and religious identification affecting the historical and cultural memory of young people and students are investigated in an extensive monographic study by J. Rock (2019), which captures the current forms of biethnic and bilingual identities on the example of the ethnoreligious group of Sephardim who live in Sarajevo (Bosnia and Herzegovina). Obviously, a different historical and cultural genesis predetermines the complexity of the sociocultural space of Australian universities. Nevertheless, Carter, Hollinsworth, Raciti and Gilbey (2018) believe that this complexity and intercultural integration can form the basis of university solidarity and even become a university brand. They view the university through the lens of the locus concept, as a sum of per-ceptions and interactions, when students and teachers endow a specific university space, a locus, with certain meanings built on the basis of psychological factors and emotional affects. Based on a locus study of Australian universities in which Australian indigenous students were invited to participate, researchers identified the ability of university learning spaces to influence the cultural identity of young people and thereby contribute to their successful social adaptation at the university. At that, the possibility of artificially constructing university loci for these purposes by scientists, who perform the functions of teachers and mentors of young people, is emphasised.

Among the factors determining the characteristics of the students' sociocultural adaptation to the university education processes, scientists highlight the special significance of historical and cultural memory. Fundamental research on collective memory was initiated by renowned historian, cultural and religious scholar Jan Assmann (2010), who distinguishes three main aspects of collective memory: communicative, cultural and political. J. Assmann (2010) defines communicative memory as `the material of socialisation and communication, as a collective consciousness and language acquisition; cultural memory is an externalisation and objectification of memory that is individual and experienced as “native”, confirmed by symbols such as texts, images, rituals, landmarks, and other memories'. According to J. Assmann, political memory intersects with cultural memory by its externalised symbols, but also depends on political organi-sation, while cultural memory is formed over centuries as a result of the interaction between an uncontrolled self-organising social growth “from the bottom up” and a controlled “upper” socio-political level that seeks to link a particular cultural process with a particular political organisation. Having studied certain aspects of collective memory, Jan Assmann singles out cultural memory as the most significant for a person, as a specific ability arising at the intersection of time and identity.

The concepts of collective memory, historical memory, and cultural memory have turned out to be in great demand in modern socio-humanitarian knowledge. The number of scientific works in the field of Memory Studies is now estimated at hundreds of articles and monographs every year. In addition, research on the factor of cultural memory in pedagogical science is being actively developed, for example, to study possible ways to increase the effectiveness of the educational process among students with special development conditions of sociocultural identities. A part of this research is related to the impact of the family on the educational success of students. In this connection, leading modern researcher of cultural memory Astrid Erll, relying on the sociological concept of collective memory by Maurice Halbwachs, examines the factor of small family memories, which together are capable of breaking and qualitatively changing national memory or, conversely, supporting the actual processes of the development of national cultural memory. To understand the essence of these processes, she analyses the dynamics of memorisation in families using qualitative methods of semi-structured interviews (Erll, 2011).

Students' cultural memory is activated by the influence of symbolic mediators functioning as cultural memory carriers, which is a certain mode of transmitting cultural meanings, as Y.N. Avdeeva, K.A. Degtyarenko and N.P. Koptseva (2020) propose: spaces of museums, archives, libraries, works of art, liter-ature, cinema, etc. are cultural memory storage units, while rituals and traditions are the main ways of transmitting cultural memory. In the modern world, it has become important to train lecturers to be able to use the pedagogical process to ensure their students' “cultural stability”. Innovative pedagogical technologies are being developed for these purposes. In this connection, in a study conducted by Spanish scholars M.P. Molina-Torres and R. Ortiz-Ur- bano (2020), a training programme for the initial period of university education is proposed for lecturers to give them the tools to cultivate in first-year students a solid understanding of the cultural heritage of the region and country where their particular university is located. The goals of the sustainable university education are understood by the authors as a balanced and long-term maintenance of natural and cultural resources and processes in a particular area. They believe that education for the sustainable development of a particular region involves a three-pronged approach: environmental education, social science education and civic education. Furthermore, education focused on cultural heritage is not associated with future specialists' training in any specific academic discipline. On the contrary, the purpose of this type of education is to arouse students' curiosity and a sense of belonging to a place based on the knowledge of the surrounding cultural locations. By activating the cultural memory of students, researchers substantiate the formation of civic responsibility in the context of caring for the sustainable development of the region.

Several researchers who have carried out studies on the significance of students' cultural memory for educational purposes also suggest using traditional technologies of transmitting cultural heritage, for example, telling stories and fairy tales. Based on the practical experience of the CRAFT summer school during Art Biennale 2019 in Venice, A.M. Fisker and A.E. Heilmann (2020) show how these cultural prac-tices stimulate the creative imagination of students and analyse their impact on the content of students' works.

Russian researchers S.D. Lebedev and co-authors (2020) analyse the historical and cultural memory of students in the context of information wars and the active influence on this memory by the modern mass media. Scientists reconstruct the historical and cultural narratives characteristic of students in universities located in the border regions of Russia, and identify problem areas of fostering historical and cultural memory in the educational environment of Russian universities (Lebedev et al., 2020). In the same problematic vein of the information conflict arising in the interpretation of the events and results of the Great Patriotic War, N.D. Sorokina (2020) analyses the dynamics of the historical and cultural memory of students (Sorokina, 2020). She draws attention to the fact that the traditional mechanisms for supporting cultural memory, built on personal meetings with veterans and relatives who participated in the war, are naturally becoming obsolete. The author calls for the creation of new technologies to support historical and cultural memory with state support for the activities of civil society institutions focused on these types of activities.

The experience of foreign colleagues related to the renaming of university locations and the transformation of academic classrooms into a toponymie workspace is of particular interest (Alderman and Reuben, 2020). D. Alderman and R. Reuben (2020) develop three strategies for renaming locations on a university cam- pus:1) tracking and displaying historical and ideological genealogies of landscape prehistories associated with the practice of naming university spaces; 2) documenting and empathising with the emotional affection of educational toponyms associated with historically marginalised identities, memories and struggles; 3) discussing procedural justice issues under the previous policy of naming universities and locations on university campuses. One may agree that this practice will indeed have a significant impact on the processes of cultural memory and cultural oblivion.

The development of international educational migration, in which many countries are active participants, has generated enormous research interest in the influence of students' cultural memory on their learning outcomes. One of the most cited articles on this issue is the scientific article by S. McKay and S. Wong dedicated to the multiple cultural identities of Chinese-born students of American universities (McKay and Wong, 1996). It can be assumed that the significant influence of this study on subsequent studies is associated with the fixation of multiple and contradictory identities in the same persons participating in the educational process, which was a significant discovery for pedagogical science in the mid- 1990s.

The Russian Federation ranks among first in the modern world in accepting migrants. Moreover, processes of active educational migration are also characteristic for our state. One could expect research on the cultural memory of immigrant students to also gradually increase. However, at present, the problems of educational migration are considered in the context of the sociocultural adaptation of foreign students to the conditions of the host society. Innovative methods of teaching Russian as a foreign language are studied. The topic of the influence of the cultural memory of migrant students and students with Russian citizenship on the characteristics of the educational process remains outside the field of active interest of Russian pedagogical science. At that, the phenomenon of this influence is recorded and its significance is not disputed.

Students of different types of cultural identities study at Russian universities. These identities are conditioned, inter alia, by different forms of cultural and historical memory. These processes are yet to be examined in sufficient detail.

The objective of the article is to identify the functional characteristics of students' cultural memory in the multicultural educational space of a modern Russian university. This basis will be used to make several recommendations for improving the efficiency of the educational process, which takes place in the format of the interaction of complex cultural identities of students with each other, with teachers, and with non-university communities and persons.

Materials and Methods

The authors of the article repeatedly tested an integrative methodological strategy associated with a combination of empirical methods and theoretical interpretation of the obtained data. The method of critical analysis of modern scientific literature, the method of determining grand theories, current approaches and trends, highlighting basic concepts and ideal types necessary for studying the functional characteristics of students' cultural memory in modern Russian universities were used for the conceptual support.

The characteristics of the content of the students' cultural memory were identified using a qualitative focus group method. For this, a special questionnaire was compiled taking into account analogue questionnaires adopted in the modern scientific environment that proved their effectiveness. An Associate Professor of the Department of Cultural and Art Studies of Siberian Federal University Y.S. Zamaraeva (2020) and a graduate student of Siberian Federal University А.А. Shpak (2020) participated in the organisation and conduct of the focus groups, for which the authors of the article express gratitude to them.

Two focus groups for studying the cultural memory of students were held. The students included those who identified themselves as Azerbaijani and Armenian ethnocultural groups. Four men and three women aged 17 to 30 years attended both focus groups. These were typically 1-4 year students enrolled in undergraduate programmes, studying Construction, Law, Economics, Management. The older students studied Law in their master's programme. To participate in the focus group, people ready for cooperation and open dialogue and willing to have the focus group recorded be means of a voice recorder and / or video were invited. All focus group participants were informed about the recording, which would later be used for academic purposes. The authors of the article acted as moderators of the focus groups. The total duration of each focus group was two hours (120 minutes). In discussions concerning thematic issues, none of the participants were familiar with the focus group techniques and / or had previously participated in such pro-cedures. None of the focus group participants were acquainted with the moderator, nor were they professionals who studied the subjects of discussion. The focus group participants were not friends, relatives or groupmates of each other or of the moderators.

The two focus groups were tasked with the common goal to identify the characteristics of the cultural memory of university students who have the same ethnocultural identity. Participants who identified themselves as Armenians attended one focus group. Another focus group had participants who identified themselves as Azerbaijanis. The fact of belonging to the first- or second-generation of migrants did not matter and was clarified during the discussion, if this circumstance mattered to the focus group participants. The duration of residence of the focus group participants in the Krasnoyarsk Territory had no preliminary significance. During the discussion, it was found that the duration of residence was significantly different and varied from the situation when the Krasnoyarsk Territory was the birthplace of the participant (in this case, it was a second-generation migrant) to 5-10-15 years of residence in the region. All students studied at universities in Krasnoyarsk from their first year, and none of the respondents had been transferred from other universities.

For the purposes of the discussion, the moderators asked the following thematic questions:

1) historical events that are important for the discussion participants;

2) cultural and other characteristics of the respondents' homeland;

3) cultural characteristics of the region in which the respondents live;

4) characteristics and problems of the educational process at the university;

5) characteristics of intercultural communication with other students and teachers;

6) knowledge of native languages and Russian, the influence of language competence on the effectiveness of educational results.

The moderators were tasked with developing a plan and structure for the focus group. The chronological structure included sequentially: an introductory word, definition of the goals and objectives of the focus group for its participants, organisation of intragroup communication (acquaintance), the first questions designed to lead the respondents to mutual dialogue, increasing problematisation in the dialogue, asking questions about ways to solve the identified problems, determining the results and outcomes of the meeting.

The moderators managed the emerging dialogues, strove to problematise the topics discussed, directed the discussion content in line with the preliminary plan, and made efforts to make the discussion topics meaningful and important for all focus group participants. The moderators also maintained a relaxed and free communication style, as well as a calm and friendly atmosphere. Questions were asked and commented on in spoken Russian, a language that all communication participants understood. The moderators used two-level communication technologies when the most general topic was then developed and specified, as well as flexible dialogue system methods when the literal logic of the preliminary plan could be partially violated, but at the same time fundamental questions were stated and a reminder of the need to follow the planned scenario strictly would not be awkward or would not interrupt an interesting discussion.

The moderators did not waste time presenting many theoretical versions of the discussed problems, since the purpose of the discussion was to obtain specific and precise answers that could be interpreted in the only possible way. The discussion was channeled towards a specific direction and developed around the content of the cultural memory of the students belonging to the ethnocultural groups of Armenians (in one case) and Azerbaijanis (in the other case). The moderators adhered to the principle of respect for cultural traditions and tried to ensure that this principle was respected by all participants in the discussions.

At the end of the focus groups, the audio texts of the respondents were converted into a written text and analysed by placing fragments of the text into thematic tables. Thereafter, a generalised content was identified on the discussed topics and then analysed in the context of identifying the characteristics of the cultural memory of students belonging to the two different ethnocultural groups of Armenians and Azerbaijanis. At the final stage of the research, this content was given a corresponding theoretical interpretation.

Results and Discussion

The cultural memory of students of Russian universities located in the Krasnoyarsk Territory (Siberian Federal University, Krasnoyarsk State Pedagogical University named after V.P. Astafiev, Krasnoyarsk State Agricultural University, Krasnoyarsk State Medical University named after Prof. V.F. Voino-Yase- netsky), where some of the students consider themselves to belong to the Armenian and Azerbaijani ethnic groups, has several structural similarities. The statements of the respondents of both focus groups can be systematised according to three main content vectors: 1) collective images of the historical homeland (Armenia and Azerbaijan, respectively); 2) collective ideas about the “ideal family”, which “prevailed” in the historical past and which “is facing a crisis” today; 3) the transfer of grounds for the modern manifestation of the so-called everyday nationalism in the historical and cultural past. We will now consider these meaningful vectors in more detail.

All focus group participants, without exception, made statements that they wish to return to their historical homeland. At that, 71.4% of focus group participants belonged to second-generation migrants, that is, they were born in the Krasnoyarsk Territory. Their families typically came to the region during the period of active development of the Siberian territory on the communist (Komsomol) shock construction projects in the 1960-70s. The remaining 28.6% of the discussion participants were first-generation migrants; they arrived to the Krasnoyarsk Territory with their families, migrant workers, who are currently employed in the professional spheres of construction, commerce, sociocultural activities, and law. Both the participants of the first-generation migrants and the participants of the second-generation migrants made several statements about their strong desire to return to their historical homeland. A characteristic statement was made by an Armenian focus group participant: `When I return home to the Krasnoyarsk Territory, why am I drawn to Armenia again? Because I believe that this is really my home, this is really the place where I want to be. This is where I am drawn to. The second reason, in my personal opinion, is that if you have been there once, you will return there again. You will live there for two years, learn every corner of Armenia by heart, leave and still be drawn there...'.

Azerbaijani students talked a lot about the fact that as soon as life in Azerbaijan `got better', they would immediately return with their families. In their cultural memory, the economic, political and military problems facing Azerbaijan are presented as `accidental' and `not typical for the history of Azerbaijan'. The post-Soviet past of Azerbaijan is seen by the first-generation migrant students as potentially more prosperous than in the `cold' Siberian regions. In this connection, a first-year graduate student of Law called herself a Decembrist performing a `feat' by arriving to the Krasnoyarsk Territory to her husband. The characteristics that Armenian students gave to the ancient history of Armenia were quite unexpected. During the discussion, one respondent spoke about the race of the ancient Armenians, about their `northern' appearance, that the Armenians acquired their modern appearance as a result of the centuries-old `yoke' and that their present appearance was not originally typical for them.

Both groups of respondents associated the “special” characteristics of the historical homeland with the quality of being the ancestral home of all humankind, a territorial centre where people first appeared, and a place having a global and transcultural significance instead of a local or regional one. This testifies to the mythologisation of the students' cultural memory, even archaisation, and the absence of academic reflection. Most likely, either these students do not know about scientific studies of the history of Armenia or Azerbaijan, or they reject them as `unreliable'.

The degree of rootedness of the respondents of each focus group in the host country can be compared based on their desire to `stay' or to necessarily `return'. A statement by one Azerbaijani first-year student of Economics is quite characteristic: `I certainly consider Krasnoyarsk my hometown, both because I was born here and because I spent all my childhood - all 18 years, here. Well, as they say, home is where you feel good. I feel good here. Everything is fine by me.' This attitude is perhaps associated with the great number of Azerbaijanis in the ethnic structure of the Krasnoyarsk Territory in the late-20th - early-21st centuries. What is more, the share of this ethnic group in the overall ethnodemo- graphic structure of the region has been constantly increasing since the 1990s. While the number of Azerbaijanis in Russia as a whole increased during the intercensal period of 1989-2002 by 1.9 times, in the Krasnoyarsk Territory alone, it grew by 2.6 times. The 2010 census recorded almost 16.34 thousand Azerbaijanis in the Krasnoyarsk Territory, over 10 thousand of which are men (63%). The same high ethnodemographic dynamics is characteristic of the Armenians of the Krasnoyarsk Territory. From 1989 to 2010, the number of Armenians in the Russian Federation increased by 2.2 times, and in the Krasnoyarsk Territory by 3.6 times. However, in absolute terms, the number of Armenians in the region is 1.6 times less than Azerbaijanis (16.3 thousand against 10 thousand people, respectively). At that, Azerbaijanis make up about 15% of the population of such a developed regional industrial centre as the polar city of Norilsk. This objective situation is of course reflected in the self-identification ethnocultural processes of students; it predetermines both the vectors of their cultural memory and the vectors of life plans and preferences.

The content of the cultural memory of the respondents in both focus groups is largely concentrated around the image of the “ideal family” that “existed before” and that “prevails” in their historical homeland, in contrast to the image of the family that, according to their ideas, is characteristic of the modern Krasnoyarsk Territory. The respondents associated the vast majority of the positive characteristics of their ethnocultural groups with the `ideal' and traditional structure of their families. The discussions revealed that for female Azerbaijani students, even now, the choice of a future husband completely rests with the family, the father. When the moderator asked why modern girls agree with this arrangement, the respondents answered that in this case, the responsibility for an unsuccessful marriage also lies with the father, that he is obliged to take his daughter back and support her financially if her marriage collapses because of a bad husband. The Azerbaijani respondents pointed out that in accordance with Islamic religious traditions, in their families even in the Krasnoyarsk Territory, the apartments or houses are divided into female and male halves, each having its own set of rules. Moreover, the concept of an “ideal family” applies not only to blood relatives, but to all the people of the ethnic group. A first- year Armenian student of Management shared the following recollection: `We have strong national kinship feelings. This is extremely important for my family. In New York, I was quite surprised when I was just walking down the street and two guys came up to me and asked me in Armenian: “Are you Armenian, brother?” Yes, they hugged me like a relative, and the whole day we walked, had lunch and dinner together, talked.'

The Azerbaijani focus group showed a rather calm attitude towards inter-ethnic marriages. Several judgments were made here that `both earlier and now', Azerbaijanis can marry girls of a different nationality, but it is highly undesirable and even `impossible' for an Azerbaijani girl to marry a `non-Azerbaijani'. One of the respondents actively expressed this position, which did not meet any counter-objections from other respondents. Based on cultural memory, a respondent of the Azerbaijani focus group proudly stated that Azerbaijanis have `the strongest families in the world', since `even according to statistics, the number of divorces does not exceed 3%'.

100% of respondents in both focus groups declared their religiosity and active performance of the relevant religious rituals, including visiting a mosque by the Azerbaijani students and visiting an Armenian church (such an opportunity exists in Krasnoyarsk) by the Armenian students. The respondents did not explain their religiosity in any way, apparently taking it for granted. They a priori believed that this contributes to their moral improvement.

A fairly large number of the respondents' judgments were associated with the painful fixation of the so-called everyday nationalism manifestations. The topic of “everyday nationalism” was extremely actively discussed in both focus groups. Moreover, the respondents compared the level of everyday nationalism towards their ethnic groups in different Russian cities. The expression `it has always been that way' was often used in relation to Moscow and St. Petersburg. Krasnoyarsk was noted as the least `aggressive' Russian city. This is how the first- and second-generation migrants explained the choice of this city for residence. The students showed skills in analysing these phenomena and pointed out how the level of migrant phobia and xenophobia is related to the level of income of the population: the lower the income of the population, the more difficult their inter-ethnic communications, and the more aggressive people are towards `foreign' ethnic groups.

At that, the respondents themselves made characteristic statements in relation to other ethnocultural groups; in particular, they linked the behavior of some ethnocultural groups with the formation of a negative opinion about others. This statement by a respondent is quite characteristic: `And this negativity that is now associated with these people from the Caucasus, yes. All this does not come out of the blue, you know. Because that is how they act. Where do we see them? At the market, where there is a crowd, where there is a jostle, where you can be tricked. You see? That's how they treat us'.

The collective cultural memory of both focus group respondents in 100% of cases retained the idea of the Soviet period of history as a period of `the friendship of peoples'. The respondents either referred to the family memory of parents, grandparents, and other people of the older generations, or to the content of symbolic mediators - films, books, textbooks of the Soviet period. Not a single critical or dubious judgment was made that there could possibly have been manifestations of racism or everyday nationalism of the `Soviet peoples' towards each other in the Soviet historical period. The cultural memory of the Soviet period in Azerbaijani and Armenian history is equally positive in both focus groups.

Summing up some of the results, it is important to note a strongly pronounced characteristic of the students' cultural memory, namely its mythologisation, which manifests itself in reliance on the same mythologised family legends and an unconditionally positive image of the historical homeland, which is thought of as the most “ancient” country in the world, as the centre of the human universe, as having “ideal” nature and “ideal” family relationships. The respondents also perceive their education at Russian universities in the Krasnoyarsk Territory as a kind of mythologised “exodus” justified by some tragic events that threaten the lives of their parents or close family members. However, the respondents make their forecasts of their future much more realistically. They associate the future with the achievement of prosperity where it is possible. `Returning home' is possible under the condition that the former prosperity and power of the historical homeland is restored. Some elements of these students' cultural memory content can be characterised as archaic, since they demonstrated syncretic ideas that did not have an internal structure, with no separate narratives or images of “cultural heroes”. They shared the same unquestionably positive and infinitely ancient, primary image of “Mother Earth”, which unites all people, regardless of where they are at a given time. She endows her “children” with positive qualities, the main of which remains the creation of an “ideal family” with strong traditional foundations.

Future studies of the students' cultural memory require using a comparative analysis of different demographic groups, including by studying the cultural memory content of first-generation migrants who actually came to the Krasnoyarsk Territory because of extreme vital necessity.

Attention is drawn to the choice of educational fields made by the students, among which Economics, Management, Law and Medicine were the most common. It is possible that it is precisely the lack of academic social and humanitarian knowledge in these educational programmes (and in school education) that determines the mythologisation of the students' cultural memory, formed, as a rule, in family communities, less often in the religious environment of co-religionists, and even less often when visiting theatres, museums, concerts, libraries. The names of “cultural heroes”, carriers of standard ethnocultural qualities, almost were not mentioned. The collective cultural ideal was the aggregate land, the “Motherland”, which, as it were, “unconditionally” forms the best traditions and the best social qualities in all its “children”.

A rather important result is the revealed discrepancy with sociological surveys conducted earlier on the issue of the religiosity degree of students in these communities. The surveys did not reveal a high degree of religiosity. Only the focus groups showed a positive attitude towards traditional religions (100% of the focus group participants spoke about their traditional religiosity, about participation in rituals, visiting temples and mosques).

Conclusion

Our research has shown that the topic of the cultural memory functioning of students in Russian universities, including those belonging to second-generation migrants, is relevant and significant. The content of cultural memory predetermines intercultural communication in the university educational space and in future professional spheres. We agree with the researchers who actively develop and implement new social adaptation methods and technologies for migrant students. However, it is important to note that social adaptation programmes should be focused not only on first-generation migrant students who came to Russia for the first time to study at Russian universities. A special sociocultural group includes students who are the children of first-generation migrants, who grew up in a bicultural space of their families and other social institutions (schools, universities, other institutions) typical of the territory of their current residence. As this study has shown, the cultural memory of second-generation migrant students is mythologised or even archaised, and contains elements of clear oppositions “here” and “there” as “bad” and “good”. One should not underestimate the possible negative consequences of this archaisation and mythologisation and the formation of the extreme sociocultural assessments of “ours” and “theirs”. It is important that programmes for the social and cultural adaptation of migrant students, currently being implemented today at Russian universities, also include activities aimed at specialised work with this group of students.

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