More than two and a half years after Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a "special military operation" in Ukraine, the disproportionate effects on Russian youth have become apparent. At home, young people face pervasive indoctrination and greater restrictions on freedom. Many try not to pay too much attention to her, and the few who openly express their displeasure, or do things like try to set fire to an army recruiting center, are sometimes given heavy prison sentences despite being young.
Military service, which applies to all Russian men between the ages of 18 and 30 who are not exempt from military service, has become particularly risky. Although by law conscripts (unlike volunteers, contract soldiers and those who are specially mobilized) cannot end up in a war zone, not everyone believes that the army respects this restriction. In other words, the basic characteristic of the conflict is that Putin and his aging Politburo decide for the younger generations not only how they will live, but also how they will die.
Observers outside of Russia have often assumed that young Russians are dissatisfied with Putin's regime and that any real change in the country's political culture will require a generational shift in its governing structure. These youth never experienced life in the Soviet Union, it is believed, they grew up with open borders and market capitalism in an era when individual rights and freedoms became normal. If young people could just take power, everything would be different.
The reality is more complicated. Namely, young Russians have never known anything but Putin: they have not experienced normal democracy or even qualitatively different leadership. They also learned the benefits of customization. Along with the growing crackdown, the Putin regime uses a wide range of rewards to keep young Russians loyal — including offering special privileges to those who serve in the military, work in the military-industrial complex or otherwise demonstrate diligent rule-following. It also seeks to use patriotic youth movements and social networks to shape their attitudes and build their loyalty.
The basic characteristic of the conflict is that Putin and his aging Politburo decide for the younger generations not only how they will live, but also how they will die.
The cumulative effect of this mix of brutal repression and aggressive adulation on young people is, at least for now, quiet: there are few signs of any significant currents of resistance among Russian youth today. Instead, many of them appear to be passive or active conformists, taking advantage of the opportunities that the still-present market economy or large corporations provide to young careerists. Sometimes they are far from the ideal Kremlin, according to which young people should be obedient workers in the military-industrial complex, soldiers and mothers with many children, followers of traditional values. But even these archaic perspectives do not seem meaningless to many. While outward behavior may be only one part of the story, it points to just how big the challenge of breaking with Putinism can be.
Reluctant loyalists
The story of Russian youth in the last two and a half decades since Putin came to power is in many ways contradictory. Until about 2018, younger Russians, especially those between the ages of 18 and 24, were generally the most loyal to the regime, according to polling data by the independent Levada Center. This finding is paradoxical only at first glance. At the beginning of Putin's rule, when today's XNUMX- and XNUMX-year-olds were still at a tender age, Russia enjoyed strong economic growth - the result of a market economy built in the XNUMXs and high energy prices in the early years of this century. So they grew up in a more comfortable era of booming markets, new means of communication, open borders and consumerism.
However, this generation was hardly exposed to democracy, which the government mercilessly restricted. Becoming ultra-modern consumers, many young Russians, like many older generations, never became fully modern citizens. They did not understand the value of power rotation, and thus of free elections: the regime already provided consumer benefits. For most Russians, loyalty to the system was not evident through active support for Putinism, but through their indifference to politics.
However, since 2018, there has been a noticeable shift. Russia was becoming more and more closed, which was disturbing for a generation that grew up in a modernized and relatively open society. The very style of the government and Putin, whom they began to call, and not for sympathetic reasons, "grandfather", seemed hopelessly outdated. Young people have become more aware of the narrowed political space in Russia and have become more skeptical of the regime.
The change in attitudes was also influenced by the new trend of protest, which took root among young people. Although lawyer and activist Alexei Navalny was one of the figures of the mass protests of 2011-2012, his emergence as an opposition leader and inspiration to young people came later in the decade, when he built an effective organization and began to set the tone for a new form of political engagement. More than a symbolic representation of Russia's future, it served as a model of behavior and speech. He spoke in a modern, informal, youth-friendly language that was very different from the bureaucratic language of Putin and the ruling class, and he pointed out problems, including corruption, that were understandable to many, naming and shaming certain members of the government.
At the same time, for young Russians in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and other major cities, the expansion of an advanced capitalist economy and exposure to global cultures and ideas have fostered a growing diversity of thought and behavior, including in politics. This made them more likely to question the values promoted by the state.
For the regime, these events were not an immediate threat. Russia's aging population meant that older generations outnumbered younger ones. They were also more likely to vote in elections. However, the possibility of young people leading political activism was worrying. After 2018, sociological research clearly showed that younger Russians, especially teenagers and young adults, thought differently about the state: they supported the government less, were more free, more open to the world and new information, and were more inclined to support the kind of opposition that was represented by Navalny.
The Kremlin, now increasingly authoritarian, could not allow this youth culture to flourish. He began to compete with the opposition for this new generation by, among other things, actively indoctrinating with "patriotism", offering tools for self-development in youth organizations and encouraging interest in military service as a springboard for a future career. And when he couldn't coax submission, he used his fist: the Kremlin's brutal crackdown on protests and the free media, which were still active at the time, and the direct tightening of repression made any protest activity dangerous.
After launching a "special military operation" in 2022, the regime further stepped up these steps. The authorities simply blocked or banned independent media, such as Novaya Gazeta, Meduza, Echo of Moscow and TV Dozhd, as well as social networks such as Facebook and Instagram. These years have also slowed down YouTube. Russians can now access those platforms only by using virtual private networks. The emigration of many of the most politically active young people made it easier for the Russian authorities to impose silence.
Trapped minds
The war itself gave the regime new reasons to nurture its youth. Russia needs soldiers, IT experts, workers for the military-industrial complex, and a submissive new generation indoctrinated with revanchist and simplistic history propagated in new textbooks. The Kremlin is now less interested in targeting older generations with propaganda - state television can handle that. A significant part of the state's efforts and power is now directed at their children. The result is that, while younger generations are not particularly enthusiastic about the war, they mostly agree with it.
Look at the legions of volunteers and contract soldiers who now go to the trenches for money or out of a false sense of duty to their country. In the first half of 2024 alone, according to official data, 190.000 people signed service contracts. Although the statistics are not broken down by age, and many older men apply, it can be assumed that there are many young people among the volunteers. Since the summer, regions across Russia have been competing to offer the highest payouts for new recruits.
In Moscow, the richest city, someone who volunteers can now receive up to 5,2 million rubles in the first year of military service - about $55.000, including a signing bonus and then a monthly salary of about $2.700. For young adventurers or even new fathers, that's a lot of money. But the growing scale of payments also suggests that men are not willing to sell their bodies for a low price.
Pupils and students are also involved in the war effort. Many are tasked with weaving camouflage nets and making candles for use in the trenches, for example. Some Russian high school students are now assembling drones, meaning that children learn this particular skill starting at around 16 years old. (Putin recently met with some of them.) Significant are the large youth organizations that the state has built to unite young people behind the regime. These include the Junarmia, or Young Army; Movement of the first; and student clubs "Ponosan sam", which now gather millions of young and very young Russians.
The young army was founded two years after the annexation of Crimea in 2014, when Putin's Kremlin had already begun its totalitarian turn. The beginning of the "special military operation" sharply accelerated this process, with the formation of the Movement of the First in 2022. Although young Russians are not yet required to join them as was the case in Soviet times, these organizations draw on Soviet models such as the Young Pioneers and Little Octobrists, which aimed to include and indoctrinate all youth.
Satisfied comrades
If the younger generation of Russia has become more and more present in the country's patriotic manifestations, for now it noticeably avoids resistance. Young actors, writers and artists remained silent while the state systematically destroyed the old theater, old cinematography and independent literature. They stood by while educational and cultural institutions and schools were destroyed or when prominent professionals who had been respected for decades were stigmatized and persecuted.
The young actors remained silent in the spring of 2023, when state prosecutors forced the legendary actress Lija Akhedzhakova (86) to resign from the once famous Sovremenik theater, where she had performed for decades, because she spoke out against the war. They did not protest even in July 2024, when the state sentenced director Evgenia Berkovic and playwright Svetlana Petrichuk to six years in prison for allegedly promoting extremism in a play that had won the country's highest theater award just two years earlier.
The same applies to professional and economic life in Russia. Hardly any of the young people employed in state corporations, courts or ministries dare to oppose the leadership regarding government policies. Many keep their heads down and continue to work for the regime, insisting that they are only following orders. So far, only one person has publicly taken such a position against the state - Russian diplomat Boris Bondarev, who explained his disagreement in the magazine "Foreign Affairs" in 2022.
It is a paradox: at the beginning of the war, many young people grumbled and were in shock, and now they serve the regime. And the longer the war goes on—the more it seems that what is happening can go on indefinitely—the more zealously they seem to serve. Once upon a time, during the heyday of "Putinism", many ambitious young people dreamed of working for Gazprom, the state energy company, or some similar powerful firm, where they could pursue promotions and wealth. This was the economic conformity of the still relatively peaceful era when the fossil fuel economy ruled. To get the desired job today, however, it is no longer enough to be a good or ordinary professional: it is also necessary to show absolute political loyalty and sometimes even publicly demonstrate it. As many young people see, it is better to disconnect from real information and embrace the logic of learned indifference.
Since 2022, Putin has continued the practice of organizing meetings with young patriots across the country: nuclear physicists, innovators, defense industry workers, entrepreneurs, students and even schoolchildren. In turn, these brilliant young people are not at all uncomfortable with who they meet. They don't allow themselves to think too much about what their president has done to the country and the world.
Judge Yuri Masin, who handed down the brutal sentences to Berkovich and Petrychuk, was two years old in 1985 when Mikhail Gorbachev came to power and began opening up the Soviet Union. He was nine when the reforms that built the Russian market and ultimately fed the country began and 13 when Putin came to power. When Putin returned to power in 2012, after the presidential mandate of his close associate Dmitry Medvedev, the future judge Masin was 29 years old. Since his teenage years, he has been a pure product of Putin's system. And there are millions of such judges, investigators, officials, corporate employees and simply indifferent or fiercely loyal young people and many of them are not even old enough to remember the Soviet Union.
In order to get the desired job today, it is necessary to show absolute political loyalty and sometimes even publicly demonstrate it
Starting in the fall of 2023, the regime intervened more directly in the education system, with a new history textbook for high school students and a mandatory "Fundamentals of Russian Statehood" course for college students. However, some ideologues close to the regime believe that this is not enough. Alexander Dugin, the ultra-conservative head of the Ivan Ilyin Higher Political School, an institute at the Russian State University for the Humanities founded in 2023, claims that most Russian universities follow curricula that were established under the "direct control" of Russia's Western enemies in the 1980s and 1990s. - them. To eradicate this liberal virus, he called for the full "militarization of education."
Limits of repression
Despite all the worrying evidence, it is dangerous to generalize the story of young people in Russia. There are millions of wonderful young people in the country who do not accept Putin's unnatural policies and who are horrified by the war. They understand that they are being asked to die for their country instead of living for it, that they are being taught to hate their neighbors instead of being friends with them. They yearn for a different life. And occasionally they show real heroism, even when taking a stand means destroying their prospects - and sending them to the military or even prison.
There are even occasional attempts at civil resistance, showing that collective action is possible despite a harshly repressive environment. One such episode is connected with Dugin's Ivan Ilyin school itself, which bears the name of a famous Russian émigré philosopher from the beginning of the twentieth century who had ultra-nationalist and even fascist views and whom Putin likes to quote. In April 2024, less than a year after the school was founded, more than 5.000 people, mostly students, but also outraged intellectuals of different ages, immediately signed a petition against the school's name.
When news of the petition began to spread, the number of signatures quickly jumped to more than 25.000, as both people outside the Russian State University for the Humanities student body and those with no connection to the university joined. The response of the rector of the university and Dugin was predictable and in line with current political customs: they angrily speculated that the petition was organized by pro-Ukrainian forces, "foreign agents" and supporters of "enemy countries".
Although younger Russians still support a "special military operation," they do so to a lesser extent than their older peers: In July, for example, the Levada Center found that 80 percent of respondents over the age of 55 supported the Russian military's actions, while only 66 percent of those from 18 to 24 years old. (A quarter of respondents in the latter category said they did not support military action.) Young people in general were also more attracted to the idea of peace talks to end the war—in an August poll by the Levada Center, 64 percent of them said they were in favor, compared with the national average. of 58 percent. Cautious generalizations are possible here, but young Russians, just like any generation, clearly have a wide range of views and opinions. Among this generation are the beneficiaries of Putinism, but also those who have lost everything, including freedom.
Here's what's indisputable: the change of generations in Russia will not automatically change the political atmosphere in the country or the character of its leadership. That would be too simple. The transformation required goes much deeper than the year of birth. It's about thinking and behaving. It is about the human environment. In the last two and a half years of this chaos, the regime has returned Russia to the habits and mentality of the Stalinist era. However, the Putin regime will never be able to achieve complete control over the younger generations in Russia, including those who are still in school today.
So, the most realistic hope is that many young Russians will learn to do two things simultaneously: adapt to the rules of the system, but still think differently. Eventually, the external political environment will change, and when it does, this widespread double consciousness may allow them to shed the constraining system they've known. As rosy and far-fetched as this scenario may seem now, it is probably more feasible than any simplistic theory about generational change. One day, it could also lead to the normalization, if not the democratization, of Russia.
The author is a member of the Scientific Advisory Council of the Finnish Institute for International Affairs
The article was published in the magazine "Foreign Affairs"
Prepared by: A. Š.
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