What’s in a name? For Russia’s ‘Putin Generation,’ not as much as you’d think.
The name given to Russia’s so-called Putin Generation is a bit ironic. For while the segment of Russia’s population composed of young adults may have grown up knowing only Vladimir Putin as the leader, politics – and the Russian president – are low priorities.
Experts, however, have spent a great deal of time trying to understand the moods, views, and preferences of this enigmatic demographic in search of keys to Russia’s future. Because this new generation has no memory of the Soviet era of their grandparents, nor of the post-Soviet corruption and kleptomania of the 1990s of their parents.
Despite its emphasis on Communist ideology, the Soviet life experienced by their grandparents was tense, marked by enforced conformity and a daily struggle to satisfy basic consumer needs. That gave way to the desperate 1990s and the world that shaped their parents, a time when people struggled to survive, to reinvent themselves after the disintegration of Soviet economic life.
Instead, this generation, at least among those
