The growth of the protest sentiment of young people began yesterday and is part of the overall increase in public discontent, disappointment in power and willingness to protest, which are observed over the past two or three years. During this time, the ratings of the power institutions lost an average of 20 percentage points, the pessimism intensified about the future, three times increased readiness to participate in protest actions. All this happened against the background of increasing problems in the economy, the exhaustion of the Crimean consensus and increase retirement age.
Young people turned out to be exposed to the same change of sentiment as all Russian society. However, there were faster changes here, and the disappointment in power turned out to be stronger than that of representatives of older generations. And today, people aged 20-30 make up one of the most critical social groups in relation to power. Russians who have reached the retirement age, on the contrary, remained largely among the faithful supporters of the regime. Why?
A special role in this process seems to have played the Internet and social networks that have become a kind of catalyst for the growth of critical sentiment in the youth environment. It is no coincidence that the described changes in the public climate coincided with the explosive growth of the number of Russian users YouTube and Instagram. The audience of these platforms, mainly consisting of young people, has doubled since 2018 and today reaches a third of the country's population. Note that popular video clips and youTube channels entered our lives just in the last two or three years. For comparison, the audience of Tiktok, the politicization of which occurs in our eyes, covers only a few percent of the population. According to polls, it is also primarily the people who are not some schoolchildren, as it is considered.
Thanks to the growth of social networks in Russian media, a qualitative change occurred. If before the text on the Internet knows the television picture, then today video clusters on the Internet can compete with television on equal. And if Russian TV channels are still extremely controlled by power, then there is a flourishing of free journalism, the diversity of points of view, including critical in relation to power, unprecedented in our country from the end of the nineties. As a result of the agenda that Russian television and Russian Internet forms, more and more. And therefore young people and older people are increasingly using different sources of information; They have different authorities, their understanding and evaluations of what is happening will diverge further.
Sympathy against condemnationThis manifested itself in relation to Telegram locks and criminal prosecutions for reposities in social networks, which Russian young people condemned, while the elderly Russians saw in these prohibitions the manifestation of the state's care about morality, morality and security of their citizens. But especially brightly - in assessing the power acceleration of the protests of 2019, held in support of unregistered candidates for elections in the Moscow City Duma. As the polls of public opinion, and the focus group, and the citizens carefully observed at the entire country carefully for what was happening in the capital. With a number of reservations it was possible to say that in its assessment of protests, the opinion of young people turned out to be opposed to the opinion of the elderly. The first watched the unfolding events on the Internet and more often sympathized with the protesters, the second watched the TV and preferably condemned what was happening.
Young participants of focus groups then said that for them, the dispersal of protest actions was confirmed by the fact that the authorities "think only about themselves", "they do not allow new people in power," they consider them a "second-rate", "honest elections are not", but " The constitution does not work. " Many representatives of older generations, on the contrary, have already approved the actions of power services or have not seen anything reprehensible in them, considering the protest manifestation of disobedience and provocation.
In 2020, this generation fell was clearly visible in relation to all significant political events. It was in the youth environment that a negative attitude to the editing of the Constitution, the "reset of the deadlines" of Vladimir Putin and the power itself was concentrated. On the contrary, the preserving regime support among older people, their disciplined participation in constitutional voting was provided by the authorities. Young Russians - compared with the elderly - last year were much more sympathetic to the protesters in Khabarovsk and in Belarus; They not only supported Alexei Navalny (although not all), but also were ready to believe that Russian authorities cost his poisoning.
Moreover, for the first time in a long time, young Russians turned out to be the most protesting group; Last May, up to 40% of young people talked about readiness to take part in protest actions (with a general indicator 28%). By the end of the year, this readiness was somewhat dressed, but did not disappear. And in January, the young people of 20-30 years old became the main driving force of a new protest wave.
"A little more - and we will lose our youth"In this disagreement of young people with the policies of the authorities, in an increasing discrepancy of the views of the young and older generation, someone sees a source of political change: as generations change, the mode will automatically change. However, in a large number of Russians, first of all older, the inhibitory of young people causes rejection, discomfort, irritation and fear that feed the desire to give the youth protest a decisive response. And it seems that the point is not only in the readiness of Russian elites to hold their power, but also how acute the older generation is experiencing the described generation conflict today.
Examples of that mass, remember at least just the words of the Patriarch Kirill.
"Literally fall into madness"Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia Kirill:
- Today there is a so-called young generation crisis. Often, our youth literally flows into madness, losing all sorts of life guidelines. [In the soul of a child], the right thoughts should be formed, the correct beliefs that could give a worthy repulse with all destructive influences.
Over the past couple of years, the author has repeatedly had to hear such phrases from the participants of the focus groups with representatives of the older generation. The usual parents on focus groups and Russian government guys in their speeches are increasingly talking about their children and young people at all: "They are not like us." It is necessary to decipher: the unprecedented, mercantilees, prudent, nonpatariotic, naive, and therefore the journal for the propaganda of the hostile West, do not understand their lives, have not matured yet.
Through these complaints, they usually sound the words: "A little more - and we will lose our youth," and therefore, it should be returned to the path of truth as soon as possible, releasing it. The decision is often seen in the development of patriotic education, ideological pumping, returning to schools of the lessons of polystream, labor detachments. Polls show how often "parents" and "grandfathers" are ready to support various kinds of prohibitions - from censorship on the Internet before blocking social networks; This is the same, by the way, just reasoned Dmitry Medvedev.
"We have the opportunity to influence social networks"Dmitry Medvedev, Deputy Chair of the Security Council of Russia:
- If social networks behave unfriendly, if they do not want to publish Russian information if they occupy some obviously unfriendly position in relation to the country, then we have the opportunity to influence them.
Incover the opinion of young people often simply does not occur.
Hard arrests on the January rallies, most of the participants of which were young people, can be considered the quintessence of the relationship of the government to young people (and at the same time all those who went outside with her). It is important that such an approach will always find support for a significant number of Russian citizens, and above all people of the older generation. It is they who today make a social base of not only the current regime, but also the unfolding political reaction. Ultimately change generations, of course, will happen. But she, apparently, there will be no fast, nor conflict.
The author's opinion may not coincide with the position of the VTIMES edition.