The social and economic transformations of Russian society in the post-Soviet period not only inflicted a "cultural trauma" (P. Sztompka) on the mass consciousness of the people of Russia, deforming it and erasing the old stereotypes, but they also had an impact on the generation of the young men and women between the ages of 17 and 20 whose socialization took place during the years of the reforms, and also on even younger people between the ages of 15 and 16 who had been born during the era of perestroika. In this article, the author explores what this "Next generation" represents--its values, its stereotypes in life and its models of behavior. An empirical analysis of the internal structure of the "Next" generation shows that there have been abrupt dynamic changes in the distribution of social roles between them. The author concludes that the "Next" generation is a generation of independent and purpose-driven individualists who are devoted to communicative freedom, who are "romantics" of consumption, young people who have been emancipated and are self-assured and ambitious. (Contains 4 tables.)