Russia historically developed as a multiethnic Eurasian state, and this feature quite reasonably could lead to serious threats of the extremist nature. The article is devoted to the temporal analysis of the characteristics of political consciousness, perception of the «other», «foreign» on the example of the Altai youth. In recent years, their interest in politics and trust in important sociopolitical institutions decreased and remains low. Moreover, now among young people there is the growth of crime, including crimes motivated by ethnic intolerance. Having analyzed the results of the opinion polls, the authors of the research state that such trends depend on economic, political and sociocultural factors and also on psychological peculiarities of young people. The research of the ethnic tolerance level among students of Altai State University revealed the duality of the students’ position to ethnopolitical problems. Consequently, it is necessary to carry out targeted ethnocultural policy to increase the level of ethnic tolerance in the university.