“…The development of civic consciousness is assumed to happen through socialization at educational institutions, with family/friends, and through mass media. Participatory experiences and engaged learning rather than acquiring specific knowledge may be most useful in developing civic consciousness (Benjamin-Alvarado, 2015;Cheung, Lee, Chan, Liu, & Leung, 2004;Ichilov, 2013;Shechtman, 1993). It would not, therefore, be unexpected that an authoritarian country like Russia that does not respect basic human rights and where the government has almost full control of mass media may not offer the best environment for developing democratic consciousness in students from former Soviet countries.…”