Bring'em Young: Minds and “Souls” of Children and Teens as an Ideological Battlefield in Contemporary Russian Literature and Media

Session Submission Type: Roundtable

Brief Description

This roundtable focuses on how the Russian state aims to brainwash the youngest generation of Russian citizens and impose on them ideas of patriotism and martyrdom as loyalty to the state, the president, and the motherland. To this end, we consider various types of state-sponsored and alternative media and literature (including TV programs, videos, songs, book text and illustrations, TikTok, and other social media). We analyze TV shows and news videos featuring how a positive image of war and death for the "right cause" is created in the minds of children and what new activities and rituals have emerged in the school milieu in the times of SVO. We look at a TikTok debate occurring on the technically banned platform: Aimed at teen boys, space-sponsored influencers and young men who oppose them argue about what it means to be a "real Russian (young) man," with radically different conclusions and reach. We also analyze the opposite tendencies, looking into the strategies writers use to distance themselves from this military propaganda, and the means they deploy to undermine it from inside the field. Finally, we explore how small children’s book publishers in Russia and in exile strive to resist the dominance of an official culture that glorifies war.

Sub Unit

• Arts I: Visual Culture, Material Culture, Applied and Fine Arts

Chair

• Kelly Herold, Grinnell College

Roundtable Speakers

• Olga Bukhina, Independent Scholar

• Kelly Herold, Grinnell College

• Anastasia G Kostetskaya, U of Hawai'i at Manoa

• Bella Delacroix Ostromooukhova, Sorbonne U (France)