Young People in Sverdlovsk Ready to Support Separatist Agendas ‘Under Certain Conditions,’ New Study Shows

Paul Goble

            Staunton, August 15 – The Free Urals portal has reposted a study by scholars at the Urals Federal University that shows relatively few young people in Sverdlovsk Oblast know anything about the Urals Republic of the 1990s but that a larger fraction of them are prepared to support economic and potentially even political separatism “under certain conditions.

            The study by A.N. Novgorodtseva et al (“The Attitude of Young People to Economic Separatism” in Kultura, Lichnost, obshchestvo v sovremennom mire (Yekaterinburg, 2017) pp. 866-875, is available on line at elar.urfu.ru/bitstream/10995/46618/1/klo_2017_100.pdf and at freeural.org/otnoshenie-molodezhi-k-jekonomicheskomu-separatizmu-na-primere-sverdlovskoj-oblasti/).

            The survey of 500 young people found that just over half (55 percent) had heard of the Urals Republic, mostly from the media and regional politicians, that half were indifferent to regionalist ideas, but that more favored them than opposed them (32 percent to 23 percent) when they were exposed to them.

            In reposting the article, the Free Urals portal observes that the results are both curious and encouraging from its point of view, curious in that such a study has been carried out at a time when Moscow is fighting all regionalist ideas and encouraging because it suggests that despite that official opposition, support for regionalist ideas exists among young people.

            And it implies that the more these young Russians are exposed to the ideas of regional economic and political separatism, the more support such programs will garner.