Graduate student analyzes youth attitudes in Russia and Ukraine (08/21/05)

Graduate student analyzes youth attitudes in Russia and Ukraine

by Oksana Zakydalsky
Special to The Ukrainian Weekly

TORONTO - One of the main observations about the Orange Revolution was that it was a youth-driven venture. Organizations such as Pora, student unions and young people in general were the ones who organized the protests, cheered the leaders and participated in the demonstrations. The support for the demonstrators shown by Kyiv residents also was widely commented on, yet most of the photos of people bringing food or supplies to the strikers were photos of women. It was women who cooked and baked and made sure the demonstrators were warmly dressed - the revolution had stirred the "mothering instincts" of thousands of Kyivans. After all, these were "their children" who filled the "maidan" (Independence Square).

This mobilization of youth against the status quo sparked the interest of graduate student Olena Nikolayenko to design and begin a study on the political attitudes of the young generation.

Critical to generational studies is an assumption that distinctive events and experiences of individuals during their formative years will have a long-lasting effect on their world views for the rest of their lives. Most theorists treat adolescence as a decisive period for shaping an individual's outlook. "By the time of adolescence, individuals have developed cognitive skills necessary to understand abstract ideas and think about political issues," Ms. Nikolayenko explained.

In the former Soviet Union, the fact that the formative years of those who are now 14 to 24 years old occurred in the post-Soviet period opens up an excellent opportunity for analyzing generational change. What does the post-Soviet generation, which grew up in the wake of the collapse of communism and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, think about politics? What does it bode for the political legitimacy of newly formed states?

"An analysis of regime support among adolescents is crucial to a better understanding of the durability of political systems in post-communist states," Ms. Nikolayenko said. "The study of this age group can throw light upon the effect of the existing regime on the political dispositions of the next generation."

Ms. Nikolayenko, originally from Konstiantynivka, Donetsk Oblast, is a fourth year Ph.D. student in comparative politics at the University of Toronto. After graduating from Horlivka Teachers' Training Institute of Foreign Languages, she worked for a year at the Kyiv Post, an English-language newspaper, and then went to the United States to undertake graduate studies at Kansas State University.

Research for her M.A. thesis on press freedom in Ukraine during the 1994 and 1999 presidential elections brought her to the Petro Jacyk Central and East European Resource Center in Toronto, and she stayed on to take advantage of the university's Petro Jacyk Program for the Study of Ukraine. She has now completed all the requirements for a Ph.D. other than the thesis, whose chosen title is "Political Attitudes of Adolescents in Russia and Ukraine."

A comparative dimension lies at the heart of this research project. "The divergent paths that the two countries have taken - the victory of the Orange Revolution in Ukraine and the increasing authoritarian practices in Russia - set the stage for the formation of the young generation," Ms. Nikolayenko said. "This cross-national study aims to improve our understanding of the extent to which regime type influences the political attitudes of adolescents."

As her dissertation topic requires field work, Ms. Nikolayenko will spend a considerable amount of time in Russia and Ukraine. In April and May she conducted a survey of Russian adolescents: starting this September she will be an exchange student at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy to continue work on her dissertation. Ms. Nikolayenko has chosen the cities of Kyiv, Lviv and Donetsk as sites for data collection in Ukraine. Her research is in part supported by the University of Toronto's Petro Jacyk Program for the Study of Ukraine.

In Russia, she conducted a written questionnaire survey of 13- to 16-year-olds in three cities: Moscow, the capital; Tula, a city in that part of central Russia that forms the so-called Red Belt, i.e. it has a large concentration of Communist supporters; and Rostov-on-Don, one of Russia's most criminalized cities in the region bordering on the Donetsk Oblast.

In each city, she chose schools in three areas - a central affluent area, a "bedroom community" and an industrial-working-class area. With approximately 300 respondents per city, a total of 925 students filled out the questionnaire, which consists of 25 questions, mostly multiple-choice with a few open-ended ones, filled out in one class period (35-45 minutes).

The school principals knew that Ms. Nikolayenko was a graduate student from Canada but, to ensure that her status did not influence their answers, the students were unaware of this fact. The questionnaire responses were anonymous, and the students were encouraged to answer honestly and promised total confidentiality. In addition to the written survey, Ms. Nikolayenko conducted semi-structured interviews with several groups of students.

Although the comparative analysis of survey data is still to be done, Ms. Nikolayenko shared some of the preliminary results. "One of the things that really struck me was the high degree of nostalgia for the USSR - 60 percent of Russian adolescents see the dissolution of the Soviet Union as a negative event in their country's history," Ms. Nikolayenko said.

"In my informal discussions with the students, I learned that most of them longed for the worldwide recognition that the USSR seemed to have during the Cold War era. Notwithstanding their understanding that a lion's share of Western contact with the Communist regime was based on the fear of Soviet military strength, the students still appreciated the fact that the USSR was considered a superpower at that time. Now they feel that Russia does not get enough respect in the West," she explained.

Yet, an overwhelming majority of adolescents (83 percent) feel proud to be citizens of Russia.

"I take pride in Russian hospitality, our traditions and culture," one of the students said. Another teenager brought up the scientific achievements of his country and pointed out that, over the past two decades, a large number of Russian scientists have moved to the United States and made a career there.

In contrast, the survey data reveal a high degree of skepticism toward politicians: 76 percent of respondents report little or no trust in Russia's Duma deputies. At the same time, almost one-third put a great deal of trust in President Vladimir Putin. The students are aware of the corruption that exists in the political sphere and believe that politicians make empty promises and employ tricks just to get into office.

It comes as no surprise that television is the most popular source of information about politics: 53 percent of Russian adolescents learn about politics by watching TV every day, 14 percent get their news from the Internet while only 8 percent read the press on a daily basis.

Although questions regarding the Orange Revolution were not included in the survey, Ms. Nikolayenko did discuss the recent events in informal conversations with some students and found that all of them believed the "official" Russian media interpretation of the events in Ukraine: the Revolution was engineered and paid for by the United States to undermine the influence of Russia in the region.

She mentioned that at the time she was in Russia, the Moscow-based newspaper Argumenty i Fakty, with a national circulation of more than 2 million, printed a front page picture with Taras Shevchenko's painting of (pregnant) Kateryna being embraced by George Bush with the caption: "The Beauty is Being Taken Away" (see Issue 15, April 2005 online at http://www.aif.ru/online/aif/1276/Cover). Barefooted, Kateryna (labelled "Ukraina") is standing on a carpet strewn with U.S. dollars, her back to the Kremlin. As most Russians haven't read Shevchenko, the probably unintended irony of this picture was lost on them.

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