Personal and social strong / weak resources (start-up capital of social origin, level of education and material security, living in a large city / the backwoods, adaptive abilities, number and character of formal / informal contacts, personal networks, level of aspiration, etc.) that have an impact on human behaviour and modernization potential are being analyzed in this paper. There is introduced a notion of personality’s modernization capital proposed to be understood as an aggregate of social resources and individual personality peculiarities that form individual predisposition to what is commonly called the modern type of behaviour and facilitate successful mastering of appropriate values, behavioural patterns. There are considered issues that facilitate transformation of modernization potential into modernization capital. It is shown that personality’s modernization capital is one of the key conditions of the social and economic development of society. It is argued that belonging to the high-resource population group («modern» social environment) increases chances of individual «modernization» and adaptation to new social conditions. In general, our findings showed that the post-Soviet young people possess certain modernization potential; they are ready for social modernization. The author suggests that in the future, under favorable external environment, youth can become a driving force for changes and modernization of Russian society.
modernization of Russian society; social resources; modernization potential; modernization capital; post-Soviet youth.