This article reports on an empirical study of young Russians' participation in political life and how they view the influence of politics on their lives. This study investigates, first, the extent to which young people are interested in politics compared to other spheres of public life. Second, it looks at the extent to which political participation has become part of their everyday life and concerns--the extent to which social institutions are perceived as being useful, the expectations and responsibility they assign to the authorities, and the extent to which these expectations are met. The main proposition in the study was the assumption that politics are of no interest to young people, since this sphere is crowded out by others in which they are directly involved. In the survey, the respondents were asked about the level of their interest in various events, in the immediate vicinity or reported in the mass media. An important indicator signaling basic important differences was the "regularity" of interest: how often the individual pays attention to these events. This study shows that in the mind of young people, politics affects their life to the same extent that it relates to the environment, where their main social connections and relations are established. In other words, their mind is specifically oriented; the importance of events and the way that they affect their lives depend on the extent to which they actually take place. Accordingly, politics is of interest to young people only if it affects their everyday lives and is of immediate, real benefit to them. (Contains 1 figure, 7 tables and 3 notes.)