New generations in Russia under Gorbachev, Yeltsin and Putin: three different stages

Real political changes in the Soviet Union (those that became known to the whole world under the name “Perestroika”) began in 1988, and took a complete and irreversible species (ended with the collapse of the USSR), as in the entire Eastern Bloc, in 1989. Over the past 20 years, the USSR/Russia has passed three major historical stages-the stage of Gorbachev’s reign, the stage of Yeltsin’s reign and Putin’s reign, de facto continuing now, because, of course, President Medvedev is an non-independent political figure. These three stages correspond to three different generations of young people who are different from each other. Each of these generations was formed at the end of the previous historical stage and did not immediately gain its sociocultural face, but the difference between generations is obvious. Conventionally, they can be called "Gorbachev Gorbachev", "Generation of Yeltsin", "Generation of Putin."

Gorbachev’s “Gorbachev Generation” was formed in the period preceding the “perestroika” and was distinguished by the total rejection of the official Soviet ideology, which completely discredited itself, was largely aimed at changing the existing social reality or which was also a common occurrence - to ignore the official social reality and the construction of its own parallel to the strength of the youth subcultures, rock scenes and similar phenomena. At the same time, despite the rejection of the official Soviet ideology in a deep attitude, this generation was quite “Soviet”: one of its main claims to the Soviet system was an outright mismatch of the declared principles and real life. First of all, this concerned issues of social and property equality. The Late Soviet Union, contrary to official relations, was already a society with very noticeable social differentiation, where the nomenclature had, albeit funny by today's standards, but according to the then ideas, serious privileges (largely illegal) caused the youth more outrage that they were combined with the gerontocracy. It is no accident that the leading purely youth opposition organizations that have developed in “perestroika” in Russia turned out to be left-wing organizations, starting with the Federation of Socialist Public Clubs (FOSK) and ending with the confederation of anarcho-syndicalists (CAS), which, questioning the socialist nature of Soviet society, criticized it on the left, and if on the right, from the standpoint of classical social democracy.

If this generation was formed in the conditions of conscious rejection of Soviet ideology and built its ideologies (there were, of course, several) independently, in a creative search, then the “Generation of Yeltsin” turned out to be totally indocated by the propaganda information shaft, which was broken by the “perestroika” controlled by the Soviet nomenclature of the media. Basically, this shaft consisted of the revelations of the crimes of Stalinism, abuse of the Soviet elite, as well as from religious propaganda and praise of a market economy. The Generation of Yeltsin appeared on the public arena not immediately after the collapse of the USSR, but in the middle-in the second half of the 90s. From its predecessor it was distinguished by “market idealism”, an enthusiastic perception of social and property inequality, which was understood as the basis of development, and the neoliberalism associated with this hobby. In the most part, (of course, in each generation there were exceptions) “Generation of Yeltsin” was focused on achieving market, property success at any cost, including (and possibly, first of all) criminal. It was this generation that ensured a massive influx in criminal structures and gave an unprecedented rise in banditism since the civil war in Russia.

The illusions of this generation crashed about real life. The market economy did not at all provide the “Yeltsin generation” with the universal prosperity and the transformation into millionaires, the prosperous was a small percentage of the population (less than 5%), and to a large extent - the former Soviet nomenclature and members of their families. The youth in the ranks of the prosperous turned out to be ridiculous - and even fewer those who “made themselves”, and did not fall into the ranks of the “golden youth” by origin. Those who went to the criminal world largely destroyed themselves in the gangster wars in the process of struggle for privatized state property, but partially turned out to be behind bars. Therefore, the next generation-the “generation of Putin”, whose face was fully formed by the mid-2000s-demonstrated the attitude to social and property inequality, excellent from Gorbachev’s “Gorbachev generation” and from “Generation of Yeltsin”: in its mass it was indignant at the privileges and way of life of the “new elite”, but it considered it to be natural and did not even try to challenge the existing situation of the case, and I was looking for ways to somehow join those who were “above”, not at all hoping for the possibility of “making themselves”. If for the Gorbachev generation the faces of creative professions were the ideal, for the “Generation of Yeltsin” - businessmen and bandits, then for “Putin’s generation” officials became the ideal, as it turned out that it was precisely the officials who have the opportunity to quickly and relatively safely enriched due to all -pervasive corruption.

“Gorbachev’s generation” as a whole was alien to the perception of the world as a world of personal competition between peers. There was no de facto of this competition. Claims were rather broadcast by senior age groups, which were perceived as a brake in the development of society in general. Covenants were perceived as representatives of different politically and ideologically not coinciding groups, which, however, jointly destroy the Soviet gerontocratic monster. However, the “Generation of Yeltsin”, having been in the real world of market competition and faced, unlike the previous generation, with mass unemployment, began to perceive others, including peers, as competitors, although he also sought to overcome this competition by unification into small groups (based on related, friendly, ethnic or diligent relations). “Putin’s generation” already unequivocally perceives peers as competitors and leads, in the words of Hobbes, the war of all against all. Friendly companies in Putin's generation are mainly built so that they have no competitors (even potential) - and if at least the possibility of competition is found, the company is breaking up.

One of the most important factors for young people as a social category that has not yet passed the process of socialization is the education, namely access to education, its quality and the perception of young people's education. The Gorbachev Generation was still caught by a universal free education based on the Soviet principle of fundamentalness, and the elimination of ideological restrictions in the education system was met with this generation with enthusiasm. The Gorbachev Generation was in the most advantageous position in relation to the next generation: today we can confidently state that a fairly high -quality and affordable education, devoid of ideological restrictions, has ensured a large part of this generation the possibility of successful socialization, qualitative growth and, very many - realization of oneself as a person. The youngest wave of this generation found at senior courses of universities the attempts of the authorities to radically worsen the quality of education (already under Yeltsin) and the quality of life of students, but in general it was successfully able to repulse these attempts. However, the “Generation of Yeltsin” has already encountered a commercialization of education and, therefore, with its lower accessibility for the poor and poor layers of the population (and under Yeltsin, the number of such exceeded 80%). At the same time - due to the "leakage of the brain" to the West, the aging of the teaching staff, a sharp decrease in financing the educational sphere and absolute chaos in the curriculum - the quality of education has catastrophically. This dramatically worsened the position of the “Generation of Yeltsin” in the labor market, but this “Generation of Yeltsin” was able to find out for the most part under Putin: it was a decrease in the quality of education, the rejection of fundamentalness and the imposition of a narrow specialization did not give the overwhelming majority of students from “Generation of Yeltsin” to correctly predict their future. The noticeable part of this generation in the conditions of the fact that later in Russia it received the name of “wild capitalism” generally abandoned higher education, having come to the conclusion (as a result of empirical observations), which can be rich without education. This was even a certain part - but the fragility and fragility of such success quickly became clear.

“Putin’s generation”, taught by the bitter experience of the previous one, is already very high - even higher than in Soviet times - appreciates education, but the education itself has become radically different. The education system broke up into two separate unequal segments: into a tiny segment of high -quality and competitive education for children of the elite and on a very low pseudo -formation for the bulk of the population. A clear imbalance was discovered between the education (in particular, in the specialties), which is given in the country, and objective market requests - more primitive. Under Putin, it was decided to fix this imbalance due to the ultimate simplification of educational programs and a narrow specialization, focused on specific requests of employers. The order of the “Big Business” was voiced, speaking on television, oligarch Vladimir Potanin: he said, too many smart ones, but there are not enough ordinary workers. Russian Education Minister Andrei Fursenko, speaking in the summer camp of the ours artificially created by the Kremlin, directly stated that the vice of the Soviet education system was the desire to form a creator, a creative person, while the task of a new education system is a mass production of qualified performers. For this, the programs and methods of education were revised, and the authorities even went to cancel the entrance exams and to replace them with a single state exam (exam), that is, tests built on the principle of “guess correctly” - and these tests are not surrendered in universities, but in schools.

As a result of the widespread introduction of the exam, a series of scandals was already erupted, as it turned out that for the most part, students accepted to universities, since they demonstrated high USE points are elementaryly illiterate, practically not read, are not able to solve the mathematical tasks of the school course and, moreover, are not able to formulate their thoughts. The fact is that the last two or three years at school they have not studied at all: instead, they were trained to correctly fill in the counts of answers in tests. Basically, “Putin’s generation” has not yet entered the labor market and does not know what difficulties await him there.

That is, we see opposite trends: improving the quality of education without a decrease in its accessibility for Gorbachev’s generation (and the last wave of this generation, which completed the education already under Yeltsin, has encountered a reverse trend), degradation of education and a sharp drop in its accessibility for the “generation of Yeltsin” and a catastrophic continuation of this trend for “Putin’s generation” - while increasing the prestige of the formation and the prestige of the formation and the prestige of the formation and formation of the formation and the prestige of the formation and formation the emergence of a segment in the education system, created specifically for the self -reproduction of the social elite.

Gorbachev’s generation was brought up in a typically Soviet tradition of respect for high culture, primarily for European culture. When ideological restrictions were removed under Gorbachev, this generation gained access to the huge mass of cultural products, which were previously inaccessible or directly prohibited. But this was little reflected in the aesthetic tastes and preferences of the generation, only a certain adjustment and diversification occurred. The Generation of Yeltsin was faced with the invasion of the “mass culture” of the Western model into the cultural environment of Russia. Moreover, initially - in its purest form , that is, with products made in the West (they did not learn to make Russian products of this kind immediately). This "mass culture" pushed the entire previous culture to the side of the cultural space. And in the time of Putin, there was a complete collapse of a single cultural environment. As a result, there was a real mosaic culture, the onset of which was predicted back in the 60s, the French sociologist and culturologist Abram Moll. As a result, today different groups of youth cannot find a common cultural language with each other. Now there are no cultural authorities, there are no single cultural stereotypes, and the situation is likely to be likely when young people living nearby, literally in the same house and on the same floor, have opposite ideas about culture: neither the names of cultural figures, nor the name of the works give them the opportunity to communicate with each other.

Under Gorbachev in the country, there was a heyday of youth subcultures. They de facto became a noticeable part of the national cultural space. In the era of Yeltsin, youth subcultures were driven into the ghetto. They decreased numerically and mainly went into the world of illusions, hitting escapism. Under Putin, youth subcultures began to be persecuted, and to a large extent not motivated. And their influence in the youth environment was undermined, or almost undermined.

Under Gorbachev, it was important for young people in general was the conquest of autonomy and independence. It was on this line that the youth of the Gorbachev generation contrasted themselves with the previous Soviet system: inert, conservative, backward, traditional. Under Yeltsin, there was simply a breakdown of the value system. The main ones have become individualism and material success. By the time Putin’s generation became something noticeable in the public arena, this process came to its finale: total atomization. My colleague from the Faculty of History of Moscow State University, who was appointed a curator of the course, was popular with students and therefore got the opportunity to participate in student blogs and Internet communities, uprighted that students are not only unable to unite in some cultural communities, and even more so collectively protect their cultural and other rights, they are not able to agree that every Friday after classes to go drink beer. The student communities that he saw on the Internet struck him, as he put it, with his schizophrenia. They were created, for example, on the principle of uniting those who like pink sneakers. But it quickly became clear that at all the rest, the community participants do not agree with each other. They quickly quarreled, and the community fell apart.

A very important factor that distinguishes one generation of young people from another was the growth of xenophobia. Throughout the history of the Soviet Union, since its foundation, there were only three generations, about which they can say that they were very few xenophobs, practically not xenophobna: this generation of the 20s (which enthusiastically perceived the idea of ​​the world revolution), this generation of “thaw” and this generation of Gorbachev. And about the last generation, one can even say that it was a generation of cosmopolitans. However, under the Yeltsin, with the outbreak of the Chechen war, numerous psychological injuries associated with the collapse of the Soviet Union and ethnic conflicts on its territory, waves of mass migration, applied to the economic crisis, caused the rapid growth of xenophobia in the population in general. Since in the conditions of the Chechen war the ruling regime encouraged and even directly imposed this xenophobia - the Chechens were identified with Muslims in propaganda, and Muslims with terrorists in general - and the Generation of Yeltsin, as I said, was distinguished by a much lower level of education and culture and in the mass could not be critical of government propaganda, this gave it The catastrophic growth of extreme right and directly fascist organizations in the youth environment. Under Gorbachev, the extreme right organizations consisted of people quite elderly and focused on the pre -revolutionary xenophobic model - on the Black Hundred. The period of Yeltsin gave growth precisely neo -fascist, neo -Nazi, quite modern theories and movements. The mass phenomenon was such a phenomenon as Nazi-Skyds who became famous for violence on racial, national, political and religious principle, as well as attacks on representatives of other youth subcultures. The number of Natsi-Skinhedov in Russia reached about 70 thousand under Putin, which is more than in the rest of the world. About 3-2.5 years ago, the number of Nazi-Skinheads began to fall, the sunset of this subculture began. В значительной степени это связано с появлением в России такого явления, как «антифа», которого в стране раньше не существовало, но которое быстро набирает популярность. Поскольку «антифа» – это конфликтная наци-скинхедам субкультура, она постепенно если не вытесняет наци-скинхедов, то хотя бы ограничивает и делает их менее привлекательными в глазах молодежи. «Антифа» – боевые группы сопротивления уличному нацистскому насилию, в значительной степени состоящие из redskins, «красных скинхедов», давно известны в Европе, но до последнего времени отсутствовали в России.

Поколение Путина оказалось первым поколением, которое столкнулось с таким уникальным явлением для нашего общества, как юнофобия. Сейчас в России циркулирует очень много негативных мифов о молодежи. Молодежь боятся, не хотят с ней иметь дело. Наблюдаются репрессии со стороны правоохранительных органов, причем ничем не спровоцированные и не мотивированные. Если при Ельцине при устройстве на работу молодость была преимуществом, то сейчас наоборот: сейчас на хорошую работу вероятнее возьмут тридцатилетнего – не потому что у него опыт, а потому что двадцатилетнего подозревают в том, что он или наркоман, или скинхед, или еще в чем-то нехорошем.

Поколение Горбачева отличал очень высокий уровень политической активности. Последняя волна этого поколения, как я уже говорил, сорвала крайне негативную для себя «реформу образования» – путем проведения в 1994–1996 годах серии крупных студенческих выступлений. Это привело к отставке министра образования. Следующее поколение, поколение Ельцина, ориентированное на индивидуальный успех, уже не смогло оказать такого сопротивления. А поколение Путина просто запугано. Потому что сейчас любая не санкционированная властью политическая активность – и крайне правая, и либеральная, и социалистическая, и анархистская – подвергается жесткому контролю и прямому преследованию. Это началось еще в период Ельцина, но особенно четко проявилось и конституировалось во времена Путина. Государство в России превратилось в закрытую от общества корпорацию, построенную по типу мафии или спецслужбы. Впервые со времен Сталина в России стали прибегать к политическим провокациям. Хотя образовательный уровень молодежи и упал, это не значит, что молодежь поголовно стала дураками, молодые видят эти репрессии, понимают их причину и боятся демонстрировать независимую позицию.

Краткий вывод. Я, не скрою, настроен очень пессимистически. Как человек, который изучает молодежные движения вот уже 20 лет, я практически не вижу положительных трендов для молодежи в моей стране. Поколение Горбачева оказалось слишком развитым, слишком умным, слишком талантливым для реальных условий постсоветского периода. Оно потому и вступило в конфликт с советской системой, что опередило ее на два шага. Это сказалось и на развитии экономики: были подготовлены кадры, которые для постсоветской экономики оказались слишком квалифицированны. В результате значительная часть их просто уехала на Запад. И у меня полное впечатление, что новый правящий класс в России, сложившийся в основном из советской номенклатуры (я этот класс называю бюрократ-буржуазией ), сделал вывод из предыдущего исторического опыта и принял меры для того, чтобы события 1989–1991 года не повторились. В том числе и потому, что в ходе событий 1989–1991 годов номенклатура прибавила к власти собственность, пожертвовав тем, что относительно небольшая ее часть (меньше 30 %) потеряла власть и социальный статус. А сейчас любые подобные события грозят тем, что новый правящий класс потеряет и власть, и собственность. Поэтому политика культурной и образовательной деградации – это сознательная политика российской власти.