Youth policy or “work with youth”? After the “Orange Revolution” in Ukraine, the Russian authorities seem to be seriously afraid for its future and seriously took up young gocution. The youth policy is far and effective in Russia, Pavel Danilin and Anatoly Ermolin argued in the editorial office of The New Times
What is youth policy and why is it needed?
Pavel Danilin : It is believed that youth policy is a state policy in relation to young people. In practice, it is not entirely true: youth policy call the activities of youth political organizations. Why do you need youth policy - this is a very long academic conversation: how to build a family, how to work with education issues, how to arrange youth leisure ...
Anatoly Ermolin: I don't think this is a boring topic. And if we talk about state youth policy, we will make a topic. I propose to talk about national youth policy, where the state is only one of the players in the clearing where various layers of society participate, including business and public organizations, regardless of the state. Youth is a gap of human life on the total dependence and helplessness of the child to the autonomy and self -sufficiency of an adult. If we agree with this, then it is clear what youth policy is. This is a system of measures aimed at turning a small, helpless child into a strong, autonomous, self -determining adult.
Loyalty principle
Can a state and national youth policy be in contradiction?
Danilin : In the most extreme case - yes. If state power is usurped some kind of clique that pursues an anti-national policy, then, of course, the national youth policy will contradict the state. But most often, such regimes do not live for a long time, for 10-15 years the maximum, therefore, I can honestly cannot imagine specific situations when state policy has contradicted national youth policy for a long time. But in principle, this is possible.
Ermolin: It is not necessary that the state will fight the national youth policy, but the state can become a restraining factor. In 10 seconds I can say what the young people want. We conducted a study: five “I want”. Young people want money, wants an apartment, wants to be effective in a social and professional sense, wants to relax cool and, what pleased us very much, wants to have a family. I have a bad attitude to the topic of money or apartments for a young family, because we will not give everyone, we will give it anyway to some units, and this is dishonest. But the effectiveness, competitiveness we can give modern youth. This should be the basis for an effective youth policy. But imagine that we taught the entire youth population of the country to such instruments of competitiveness as the ability to analyze, critically relate to everything, taught social design, management, endowed with leadership qualities, taught to build networks, interact in these networks. What happens? The vertical of power collapses. Society becomes different. I assure that many of our leaders understand what an effective youth policy is, but whether they need it, do they need a huge community of free, self -sufficient, effective young people? That's the question.
Danilin: We already have a community of young and effective, self -sufficient people. Sovereign democracy, the rise in the cost of real estate in Russia, the strengthening of the ruble, the sharp cost of the dollar, the information revolution, the availability of the Internet-all this makes youth free, instilles it with the skills of information and analytical work and the ability to build networks, even such as “in contact” and “classmates”. These new technologies allow you to very effectively build networks and become the leaders of the networks. The economic self -sufficiency of the individual in large cities is due to the highest cost of real estate: you can sell real estate, move somewhere to Mukhosransk and from this Mukhosransk via the Internet to promote their ideas. Hence the principles of youth policy. In addition to fascist Germany, no country set itself the goal of educating everyone. Raised the top. And we are now selecting active. I am very sorry that the opposition organizations have practically turned off from work with youth, but it happened. The state and pro -government structures have to, and specifically the United Russia party, build youth networks, and select youth activists. And this selection is on the principle of activity, education and skills are given to those who want. In the organization “ours” in the same way, federal commissars are selected according to the principle of activity, you come, offer a project, you are ready to protect this project, etc. Rumol is the same structure. “Local”, “new people” ... Yes, this is all pro -government organizations. It is ridiculous to expect that the “ours” will go to a disloyal person, he does not need him there, we need a person who is ready to discover his consciousness to those arguments that he can present there. The loyalty and encouragement of these organizations also determines the fact that they are more massive. Because the population as a whole supports the existing regime.
Ermolin: I do not consider youth policy youth to youth in order to support the policy of the current authorities, which all the organizations you listed are engaged in. But even if we consider the activities of “our” youth policy, then young people are deprived of a choice. While still a deputy of the State Duma, I came to the regions - and clear calls from the Kremlin came: youth not to allow Yermolin.
Danilin : You yourself were to blame. Your ability to communicate with youth would be extremely in demand if it were not for your uncompromisingly loyal position in relation to one specific commercial structure and to several people from it. I think you could be on the tip of the definition of modern youth policy.
Ermolin: I believe that I am already at the tip of modern youth policy. I never hid that all the youth projects for which I took and, as it seems to me, did a good job with them, took place thanks to Khodorkovsky. But when Khodorkovsky was arrested, our asset began to twist their hands in the regions, forced to change the name, and the brands went. I'm not going to create an opposition youth program or project. We are ready for dialogue, we are ready for joint projects. I assure Javas, we have something to say to young people if restrictions on our communication with youth from pro -government projects were removed.
Danilin: We have no doubt that you have something to say. But I do not understand reproaches to modern youth organizations. Each of them realizes a certain task in a social and humanitarian plan. Take my organization “Young Guard” - it is engaged in the involvement of young people in political activity. “Ours” perform a wider range of tasks, because it is a public organization. They involve young people in educational programs.
Ermolin: Tell me, if I come to the university to the rector and I will say: “We have a project“ League of Those ”, your graduates will learn to build relations with future employers,” - do you think they will give me a student asset, speak before them?
Danilin: The Open Russia organization has a negative reputation fleur related to the activities of structures close to Yukos. Yukos-Moscow specifically laundered money on the charitable projects of Open Russia.
Ermolin: This is a lie.
Danilin: Well, what does it mean - lies ...
The spirit of competition
Let's get out of Yukos and return to the current matters. The Kremlin projects were created as an answer to the “orange threat” to ensure the safety of parliamentary and presidential elections. The elections have passed. Do you think the Kremlin will continue to financially fuel youth projects?
Danilin : The creation of these mass organizations was not only a response to the "Orange Revolution". It became an indicator that young people advocate the current government. The National Bolsheviks is the only organization that could claim to be mass and anti -deposit, it was in a split, this is a fact. If suddenly the current pro-government youth organizations occur to someone in mind, we will receive the already established social networks that will experience frustration, dissatisfaction. To create troubles from scratch is very stupid.
Ermolin: I absolutely agree. Now the most important problem of the authorities is to answer the question of what we will offer the huge number of young people who were taken to the streets “grandfathers” to the streets yesterday. And I really expect that the authorities will think about youth policy not as a technology for drawing youth into a political confrontation, but as a system of measures helping a young man to realize.
Danilin : This is exactly what is happening on Seliger.
Ermolin: I only welcome it. But let's not be afraid of rivalry at least now, when the “orange revolution”, and you confirm this, do not threaten us. I met with Vasily Grigoryevich (Yakemenko. - The New Times). We discussed our programs and prospects for their use. We are talking about scout programs. This is the largest youth movement that has nothing to do with politics. This is a system of growing a national management elite for its countries. And Yakemenko said: “Why do you need scouts, why do you need this Europe, this West? Let's create something primordially Russian. ” I replied: “How do you want to prepare Russian elites tomorrow, without integrating them into the global world, isolating from world experience?” Yakemenko said: "Then the youth will have other authorities." But why do we think that we cannot become authorities for our children, if we allow children to choose freely?
Danilin: Ours has search engines. Actually, scouts and search engines are one and the same. Some kind of terminological, but is there a fundamental difference?
Ermolin: “Search engines” are youth associations that are looking for the unfinished remains of the dead warriors. This can easily be one of the systemic programs of the Russian movement of young intelligence officers. The trouble is that government officials who are responsible for the federal level for youth policy say: no contacts with the West, no animed borrowings, otherwise the young people will be in a situation of choice between authorities. And I say: what are we afraid of? Let's prove that we are better. Youth policy can only be built on the principles of honest competition of various youth programs. Here we are, despite the fact that Yukos is destroyed and we have no money for many years, we live, we are developing. Let's see what will happen when the financing of the “ours” movement ceases. Do you agree that there should be equal conditions that I should have the same right to communicate with youth as that of United Russia or the public organization “Our”, as you call it? By the way, I still did not understand how to relate to this, but more than 50 commissars of the Nashi movement are graduates of my new civilization program. This, it seems to me, suggests that we did not form any anti-state, antipatriotic moods among our pupils, but simply taught them to be effective.
Danilin: You can come and communicate with youth, I think no one forbids you. As for the West, Russian legislation directly limits the Western influence on non -profit organizations.
Ermolin: I had situations when activists of our youth movement were not allowed into universities. We started the project "Creative Capital" in the framework of the ATP ...
Danilin: Understand, the legislation prohibits political parties to work in universities with youth.
Ermolin : And therefore, not a single pro -Kremlin youth structure never works in universities with a student audience?
Danilin: does not conduct political work.
Ermolin: I see.
The rebellious spirit
You both agree that the “orange threat” should be opposed. But is it so bad rebellion? Is non -conformism so bad in young people?
Danilin: I see nothing good in the youth riot, the youth riot is most often stupid and meaningless. Young people have no experience to demand something correct. Of course, someone wants to command the regiment at the age of 14, but you have to be somehow more serious. What do we want: surrender to the will of youth without giving them proper knowledge? Or are we going to educate young people? In the first case, we can certainly allow all sorts of sorbonne, and in the second case we will have to work painfully with young people, create special steam output tools for them.
Ermolin : I am a hot opponent of rebellion. I was an officer of special forces and saw riots through the slot of the helmet. I know that the best, most sincere, most honest always die on both sides. Erich Fromm writes that changing the world is the natural property of man. So, if a person is not allowed to build and build, he begins to destroy. A lot of young people go to Limonovites or other organizations that use the forms not very approved by law, because they are not allowed to be realized, and a narrow corridor of “sovereign democracy” does not suit them.
Danilin: Young people are not interesting to go out into the street, that’s the point. The National Bolsheviks is two or three thousand people in Moscow and St. Petersburg, but mostly young people want to earn money.
Ermolin: And in Nalchik?
Danilin : This is a serious question.
Ermolin: This is an inability to offer an effective secular ideology and effective youth policy in the Caucasus ...
Pavel Danilin, an expert of the “Effective Policy Fund” of Pavlovsky. Member of the Political Council of the "Young Guard" "United Russia". The chief editor of the online publication "Kremlin.org". The author of the book "New Youth Policy 2003–2005"
Anatoly Ermolin - headed the youth programs “Open Russia” funded by Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Former special forces colonel. In 2004-2007 - a deputy of the State Duma from the United Russia faction. Now - a member of the Political Council of the Party Union of Right. Causes youth programs.
