Belarusians, Russians and Ukrainians concepts of the contemporary world: Technical aspects of sociological survey (on the example of PFUR)

The contemporary world brings the problems of international relations that have reached the global scale to the forefront, because political actions inevitably affect relations between peoples of the countries involved. The article presents the results of the sociological research aimed to identify mutual perception and concepts of the contemporary world among citizens of Belarus, Russia and Ukraine on the example of Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia. Belarus, Ukraine and Russia are Slavic countries with common history, united by the Russian language, and forming the basis of the “Russian World”. However, the tragic events of 2013-2014 in Ukraine and global political processes raise the question of how close the peoples of these countries are now and how similar their concepts of the contemporary world are. The authors used the semantic differential method, method of associations and projective questions and focused on the categories «attitude towards countries» (Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and the global leaders), «attitude towards peoples of the countries» and «attitude towards the language», which formed the basis of the matrix showing the key concepts of the contemporary world among Russian, Belarusian and Ukrainian students of the Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia.