SUMMARY
This article analyzes the meaning of the word freedom and the dynamics of its semantic content in the individual image of the world of young people of Russian culture. The study was performed in line with the psycholinguistic research. Significant attention is paid to basic characteristics of the concept: its abstractness, axiological essence and symbolism. It is underlined the significance of the phenomenon of freedom for Russian culture, because it serves as one of the most important key words with high emotional intensity and broad associative field.Dynamics and changes in the content of the word freedom are handled though data analysis of explanatory, encyclopedic and associative dictionaries, the data corpus of the Russian language, chat rooms, blogs, Internet, uses of the word freedom in the media. It is complemented by the analysis of the results obtained during experimental studies. This approach of research is due to the psycholinguistic understanding of the associative field being viewed as a fragment of an image of the world of a particular ethnic group reflected in the consciousness of the "average" media, culture, motivation, evaluation and cultural stereotypes. These characteristics of associative fields give not only the opportunity to deeply investigate any phenomenon but to consider its conceptual, figurative and value components. The mail aim is also to identify the factors that determine faults or failures in interpersonal communication.The analysis allowed proving that the meaning of the word freedom appears and creates new components that is steadily replacing the old, which causes substantial changes in the individual image of the world. The main conclusion the authors made based on the results obtained is the following: the accumulation of changes in the way the world of a certain generation in the future will lead to fundamental changes in the ethnic image of the world and in the Russian culture. Thus, the work outlines possible ways of studying the dynamics of meaning, the results of which will be relevant to predict future vectors of development of modern society and national cultures.