Paul Goble
Staunton, Aug. 1 – Russians in all age groups combine a desire for more personal freedom and a belief that Russian must have a strong hand at the helm to keep order and present the collapse of public order and even the disintegration of the country, Nina Seliverstova and Yuliya Zubok of the Moscow Institute of Sociology say.
The findings of the two scholars are presented in a new article entitled “Young People’s Ideas about ‘the Optimum State’ for Russia” (in Russian, Monitoring of Public Opinion 3 (2025): 243-269) and are discussed in detail by Yevgeny Dobrenko at svoboda.org/a/bunt-podrostkov-evgeniy-dobrenko-o-gordosti-i-resentimente/33485004.html.
Dobrenko says that the two Moscow sociologist have found in Russians “a high level of individualism and a low level of trust in strangers.” Such a combination, they argue, leads to “a demand for ‘a strong leader’ capable of … controlling a poorly managed population, preventing if from falling into complete anarchy and the country from disintegrating territorially.”
According to Seliverstova and Zubok, this combination, one that is found among all age cohorts, is “based on the understanding that without violence neither this nation nor this country can survive.” But at the same time, they say, this same population wants for itself what may be called “anarchic freedom.”
“For the most part, Dobrenko continues, this pattern “reflects the contradictory coexistence of traditional and modern cultures and at least he vagueness and infantilism of political consciousness” because those who have haven’t resolved this contradiction remain incapable of taking responsibility for their actions.
Instead, Russians and many other peoples who share this combination which has arisen because of the rapidity of the spread of modernity mostly passively obey an authoritarian ruler but occasionally rise in revolt when they become convinced that that ruler is directly threatening their personal interests.
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