The Quest For An Ideal Youth In Putin S Russia Ii

The so-called Democratic Antifascist Youth Movement “Nashi” represents a crucial case of a post-Orange government-organized formation whose values have broad support in Russian society. Yet, at the same time, in view of the movement’s public scandals, Nashi was also a phenomenon bringing to the fore public reluctance to accept all implications of Putin’s new system. The Russian people’s relatively widespread support for his patriotic policies and conservative values has been evident, but this support is not easily extended to political actors aligned to these values. Using discourse analysis, this book identifies socio-political factors that created obstacles to Nashi’s communication strategies. The book understands Nashi as anticipating an “ideal youth” within the framework of official national identity politics and as an attempt to mobilize largely apolitical youngsters in support of the powers that be. It demonstrates how Nashi’s ambivalent societal position was the result of a failed attempt to reconcile incompatible communicative demands of the authoritarian state and apolitical young.

This book analyzes the dubious role of the Democratic Antifascist Youth Movement "Nashi" in contemporary Russia. Part of the Putinist project of political stabilization, Nashi mobilizes young Russians through its emotional appeal, skillful use of symbolic politics, and promise of professional self-realization.

Julie Hemment provides a fresh perspective on the controversial nationalist youth projects that have proliferated in Russia in the Putin era, examining them from the point of view of their participants and offering provocative insights into their origins and significance. The pro-Kremlin organization Nashi ("Ours") and other state-run initiatives to mobilize Russian youth have been widely reviled in the West, seen as Soviet throwbacks and evidence of Russia's authoritarian turn. By contrast, Hemment's detailed ethnographic analysis finds an astute global awareness and a paradoxical kinship with the international democracy-promoting interventions of the 1990s. Drawing on Soviet political forms but responding to 21st-century disenchantments with the neoliberal state, these projects seek to produce not only patriots, but also volunteers, entrepreneurs, and activists.

The contributors to this book discuss the new conjunctions that have emerged between foreign policy events and politicized expressions of Russian nationalism since 2005. The 2008 war with Georgia, as well as conflicts with Ukraine and other East European countries over the memory of the Soviet Union, and the Russian interpretation of the 2005 French riots have all contributed to reinforcing narratives of Russia as a fortress surrounded by aggressive forces, in the West and CIS. This narrative has found support not only in state structures, but also within the larger public. It has been especially salient for some nationalist youth movements, including both pro-Kremlin organizations, such as "Nashi," and extra-systemic groups, such as those of the skinheads. These various actors each have their own specific agendas; they employ different modes of public action, and receive unequal recognition from other segments of society. Yet many of them expose a reading of certain foreign policy events which is roughly similar to that of various state structures. These and related phenomena are analyzed, interpreted and contextualized in papers by Luke March, Igor Torbakov, Jussi Lassila, Marlène Laruelle, and Lukasz Jurczyszyn.