Youth in Eastern Europe: Transnationalism and Political Attitudes

• In Event: Youth Activism, Attitudes and Ideology in Russia and China

Abstract

Russian youth remains an insufficiently understood player in contemporary Russian politics and society. On the one hand, it has been very visible in recent political protests across the country, but on the other hand, there is also evidence that the young are one of the most conservative and loyal constituencies. In the official discourse youth has played an important role as a stabilizing pillar of the regime, first through state-sponsored youth organizations and now through a mixture of measures, such as educational reforms, attempts to mobilize young voters and highly visible repression of young anti-regime activists. Based on original survey data from a two-part on-line survey in fifteen regional capitals conducted in 2018 and 2019, this paper analyzes trends in the political attitudes and behavior of the younger generation across Russia. The analysis focuses on the role of transnational experiences, such as travel and migration, that may shape the contradictory trends apparent in the survey data, namely considerable political interest vs. low political engagement, the parallel existence of high trust in state institutions and non-governmental organizations, higher living standards and anti-corruption as the main expectations vis-à-vis the government, foreign policy orientations towards the West vs. Asia, and national vs. civic or multicultural values. Evidence from further on-line surveys conducted by the author in Belarus, Latvia and Poland (2019) will put the results in comparative perspective. Conceptually, the paper contributes to the discussion about transnational influences on regime types and transitions as well as the impacts of social and political migrant remittances.

Author

• Gwendolyn Sasse, University of Oxford