RUSSIA UPDATES

RUSSIA UPDATES

Fewer Young Russians Want to Work for the State, Another Sign of Deteriorating Relations between Regime and Society, Telegram Channel Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Aug. 7 – For most of the last two decades, Russians have wanted to get government jobs because in contrast to the private sector, such positions offered a welcome stability as far as pay and benefits were concerned. But now, although the stability remains, the desire to work for the government has fallen, the Yury Dolgoruky telegram channel says.

            The reasons are simple: not only do Russians believe they can have almost as good a situation in enterprises that are funded by the state as they can in the state itself but also they are feel less positive about the government as such (rosbalt.ru/news/2024-08-08/telegram-kanal-yuriy-dolgorukiy-pochemu-molodezh-bolshe-ne-rvetsya-na-gossluzhbu-5161474).

            There are some statistics confirming this trend, the telegram channel says; but it is more important to focus on the socio-psychological state of the rising generation looking for positions. This new cohort is “much more focused on intangible values, the quality of human relations and the meaningfulness of their actions” than their parents or grandparents.

            Government employment does not meet its needs, and young people view the state as a kind of Leviathan, an entity that they know they will at some point be in conflict with but believe that it is better to put that off as long as possible, particularly by working for the private sector or for government-backed firms that are not part of the government bureaucracy itself.

            Yury Dolgoruky insists that “the situation in which the state lives in its own world and society lives in its will become even more pronounced in the coming years than it is now” and says that the state so far is unwilling to change and it is having an ever more difficult time attracting talented young people into its ranks.

Focus on Past Rather than on Future Puts Survival of Tatars as Nation at Risk, Latypov Says

Paul Goble

Saturday, August 10, 2024

            Staunton, Aug. 7 – Nations like individuals who focus on the past rather than on the future and who are primarily focused on defending what they have rather than on seeking to achieve something new are condemning themselves to stagnation and even ultimate death, Ramis Latypov, editor of the Tatar-language online newspaper Intertat says.

            His point challenges what many Tatars and many members of other nations in the Russian Federation believe but is so important that the editors of Milliard.Tatar, a Russian-language portal have translated it so that it can serve as the basis for a broader discussion (milliard.tatar/news/teoriya-zizni-i-smerti-budet-li-zit-tatarskaya-naciya-5952).

            Latypov argues that “the majority of those who are considered to be part of the Tatar intelligentsia do not speak Tatar and do not display interest in nationality questions” and that even those who do speak Tatar remain classified as members of the Tatar nationality “only because they don’t know Russian well. If they did, they would redefine themselves.

            Even among this group, he continues, “Tatars are conservative and fear everything new.” They focus only on preserving what they have and defending it against attack rather than on coming up with new things.  Almost the only exceptions are publications directed toward young people, but these are seldom read by the national intelligentsia.

As a result, “the contemporary Tatar intellectual elite lives in and by the past. This stratum of the intelligentsia is aging. Here, one is speaking not about the age of an individual but about the age of his spirt because even at 30, someone can be old in his spirit.” Thus, “it seems to me that many of our representatives of the intelligentsia are tired, morally tired.”