An Unattainable Ideal: Youth and Patriotism in Russia

Abstract

The chapter discusses patriotism’s role and future prospects in Russia in relation to its principal target, Russia’s youth. Beneath the overall conformism with the Kremlin’s patriotic policies, youth’s relatively marginal engagement with any fixed patriotic identity is to be found among a variety of patriotic activists who prefer a distinct patriotic position to the state and the rest of society. In generational terms, Russia is witnessing a deepening gap between the policymakers of patriotism and the youth. On the one hand, the state repeatedly attempts to strengthen patriotism as an ideological tool in controlling societal and cultural processes, while, on the other hand, youth’s departing views from Soviet-like modes of patriotic education ignite demands to increase the role of patriotism further. Over the course of the next 10–15 years, it is very likely that an change in the balance between Soviet-era and post-Soviet cohorts of policymakers and conductors of patriotic policies will have a significant impact on the role and meaning of patriotism in Russian society.