Purpose to identify students' perceptions of the political leaders of the Soviet / Russian state that functioned from 1953 to 2018; to consider the dependence of ideas about the images of state leaders on the personal characteristics of social groups perceiving this image. The ideas about the image of political leaders are correlated with significant events in the country's foreign and domestic policy that arose from their reign. the object of study is a group of students of St. Petersburg State University in the amount of 245 people. Results: on the basis of the methods, the features of the relationship between students' perceptions of political leaders of different historical periods and the personal characteristics of young people were identified, a conclusion was made on the existence of a set of personal properties that determine the image of a politician and his activities. Scientific novelty: for the first time on the basis of the use of a complex of methods for studying students' perceptions of politicians in historical retrospective, the dependence of the political image of the politician’s personality on the personal characteristics of youth is studied. It was possible to establish the existence of a connection between the complexes of personal characteristics of students and the image of a politician perceived by them, their attitude to his political activity. The intellectual and emotional independence that is characteristic of Russian students indicates that this ensures the formation of a norm for evaluating real activity, and not reactive political activism. Practical relevance: the main provisions and conclusions of the article can be used in political technologies for shaping the image of a politician. Conclusions allow us to expand the scientific understanding of the features of the image of an ideal politician among the representatives of the young generation, which are determined not only by individual and personal properties, but also by value orientations.