Are Russia's youth buying into the 'genocidal language of the state' — or is there hope for a better future?
Strong beliefs that war in Ukraine is 'morally right,' limiting prospects for peace
As Ukraine's allies wait and wonder about what gains its military's much-anticipated counteroffensive against Russia could bring, a Canadian researcher is looking beyond the battlefield to the war's eventual end.
And what he sees is dire.
Ian Garner, a cultural historian and Russia analyst from Queen's University in Kingston, Ont., is touring the United Kingdom discussing his new book, Z Generation: Into the Heart of Russia's Fascist Youth, and his conclusions about the prospects for a lasting peace with Russia are pessimistic, to say the least.
His gloomy message is that with or without Vladimir Putin as president, support for his regime's toxic outlook is deeply pervasive, including among young people, who have typically been seen as the most "Western-friendly" Russians.
Garner said he spent months reaching out and interacting with younger Russians on social media sites, such as Telegram and VKontakte, who support their country's war of aggression against Ukraine.
Out of the hundreds of people he tried to connect with, eventually a few dozen agreed to engage with him — and Garner said he came away with the conclusion that fascism is firmly entrenched.
"I found ... an alarmingly large number of young people who were engaging [using] the genocidal language of the state," Garner recently told an audience at the Pushkin House cultural centre in London.
"They wanted me to understand that they are the good guys, that when they talk about killing Ukrainians to save Ukraine, they genuinely believe it and that it is the morally right thing."
Ukraine seen as 'disease' threatening Russia
Garner said he was repeatedly told that the most dangerous "disease" that threatens Russia is Ukraine.
"If we can cut off the tumour [Ukraine], maybe we can destroy the disease," he said, referring to the twisted logic that is being indoctrinated into Russian youth groups and the state education system.
If Garner is correct, the implications for a permanent, peaceful resetting of the relationship between Russia and its Western neighbours after the fighting ends are profound.
"When Putin goes, or if the war were to end tomorrow, when you look within Russia, we still have a problem that is sitting there and that is the Russian people as they exist today," he told CBC News in an interview.
Russia's invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, has resulted in the most vicious, destructive conflict in Europe since the Second World War.
Entire Ukrainian cities such as Mariupol and Bakhmut have been razed to the ground from Russian attacks.
Thousands of Ukrainian civilians have been killed in bombardments and airstrikes, including unrelenting Russian attacks over the winter on Ukrainian infrastructure, such as power generating stations.
The United Nations has concluded that Russian troops committed widespread war crimes, in cities such as Bucha, by torturing, raping and executing civilians.
And the International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for Putin himself, accusing him of ordering the illegal deportation of children and the unlawful transfer of people from the territory of Ukraine to the Russian Federation.
Most young people oppose war: pollster
Garner's assessment about the extent to which Russian youth have embraced fascism has its detractors, however.
Andrei Kolesnikov, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, who continues to live and work in Moscow, said opposition to the war remains highest in younger demographics, and many young people have taken enormous risks to demonstrate that.
"The best of them are resisting courageously, and the brightest are leaving Russia for work and education abroad," Kolesnikov told CBC News in an email.
Others note that Russian people, in all age groups, are largely non-political and often just go along with the authorities because they are presumed to be the people who know best.
Denis Volkov, one of the few independent public opinion pollsters remaining in the country, said his research with the Levada Center, where he's the director, suggests that among Russians under 30, only 10 per cent are hard-core supporters of the war.
"They are more resilient towards propaganda and more critical of the government," Volkov told CBC News in a Zoom interview.
Likewise, British researcher Jeremy Morris, a professor of global studies at Aarhus University in Denmark, said he believes the views of younger Russians are not especially dissimilar from young people in Europe or even the United States.
"On issues like drug use, sexuality, divorce, abortion, tolerance towards minorities, for young Russian people there is no evidence that there is some 'fascist-ization' going on," Morris said in an interview.
There are inherent difficulties in extrapolating broad trends about youth behaviour, he said, when only the most fervent believers of the war agree to take part in a study, such as Garner's.
Morris, who continues to travel to Russia, said he was doing field work in the country as recently as October 2022.
Fears of war's impact on young minds
None of the experts CBC News reached out to ultimately disputed Garner's gloomy assessment of the difficulties in reconciling Russia's future relationship with Western nations.
"Young Russians are being pressed from both [sides]," Volkov said. "From the Russian state and from the West — they are being rejected by the West as well.... They are in a hard situation."
In his book, Garner tries to identify several paths forward, however challenging.
If the online environment has helped to emphasize genocidal aspects of Russian fascist ideology, then perhaps social media can be turned around to create more positive "alternate realities" for Russians, too, he said.
"Russia under Putin has searched for things to destroy that are holding back the country," Garner told the Pushkin House gathering.
"We can nudge people to different identity pathways. We have to be there to support them, as hard as it is to do the psychological hand holding."
For Denis Volkov, the danger is that the longer the war in Ukraine goes on, the more success Putin's regime will have at converting younger people to a destructive mindset. Even so, he still sees some glimmers of optimism.
Russian people in general — and young people in particular — see the war largely as a clash between governments, not nations, Volkov said.
Indeed, even at this point, 15 months into Russia's catastrophic invasion, he said, surveys suggest Russians continue to hold fairly significant goodwill toward Americans and Europeans.
"The majority thinks ordinary people can come to terms, but the governments are not able," Volkov said.
Whereas Garner argues that the deeply entrenched moral rot within Russian society will confound efforts at reconciliation, Volkov suggests that Russia's masses are likely to do what their leaders — Putin or someone else — tell them to.
"More depends on [Russia's] elites, not so much on ordinary Russians," the pollster said.
Of course, it's impossible to find anyone who expects that Vladimir Putin will willingly exit Russian politics because of the war and the difficulties his military has faced.
Indeed, Putin has given every indication he intends to keep the war in Ukraine going for as long as possible — as conflict with the West has become an intrinsic part of Russia's cultural identity.
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