What we know about the Russians who came of age under Vladimir Putin
January 3, 2025
Source: Signal
Toma Gerzha / Control Refresh
“Generation Putin” is the name sometimes given to people who have lived their entire lives under Vladimir Putin’s rule in Russia. In the past decade, these people have come of age, and now make up the cohort of young adults who will inherit whatever follows Putin in Russia. It’s never easy to characterize generational cohorts, and in the tumult of Putin’s escalating domestic repression and outright military aggression in Ukraine, it’s even more difficult to paint a clear picture of Generation Putin. Meduza explains what Russia’s young adults believe, and what they might do once Putin’s gone.
This essay is adapted from an issue of Signal, a Russian-language email newsletter from Meduza. If you enjoyed this piece, stay tuned. We’ve got a book coming in early 2025!
By the end of the 2010s in Russia, a generation of people were coming of age who had lived their entire lives under Vladimir Putin. They soon acquired a collective name: Generation Putin.
Some Russian scholars used to say that around half of Generation Putin believes in the possibility of positive Russian relations with the West and that their own futures will be happy. Many members of this cohort also hold democratic values and don’t trust the current regime.
But now, three years into Russia’s full-scale military invasion of Ukraine, Generation Putin has taken on a different meaning entirely. Russia’s youth are now said, in the global mainstream media, to resemble the majority of Russians: they’re politically apathetic, tacitly supporting the war. Sociological studies continue to refute this idea, calling Generation Putin a weak point in the Russian authorities’ various propaganda campaigns. But the notion that they’re apathetic has stuck.
In reality, the truth about Russia’s young adults is hard to discern.
The bitter truth is that events in Russia affect your life, too. Help Meduza continue to bring news from Russia to readers around the world by setting up a monthly donation.
Defining a generation
The phrase “Generation Putin” on its own barely has meaning, because it can mean practically anything. If you hear that Generation Putin is apolitical or politicized, conformist or rebellious, or anything else, it’s likely just content for clicks.
The generational breakdown that has become conventional (from boomers to zoomers) isn’t really scientific, it’s more like a marketing ploy.
It does rest on real scholarly work, though, most importantly on the theory of generations developed by sociologist Karl Mannheim in the early 20th century. Mannheim argued that people between the ages of 17 and 25 are particularly impressionable. When major historical events (war, revolution, or other tears in the fabric of life) happen, they have a particularly significant social impact on people in this age group. Thus, a generation is formed, for example the “Lost Generation” (who were young during World War I), the “Silent Generation” (who were young during World War II), and so on.
For Mannheim, this was simply an observation; he never claimed to have come up with a fully-fledged theory. However, his work formed the basis for a 1990s book by William Strauss and Neil Howe called, Generations: The History of America’s Future, 1584 to 2069.
Strauss and Howe’s work is the origin of the most popular organization scheme for American 20th century generations: Baby boomers, Gen X, Millennials, Gen Z, etc. Most scholars consider this delineation of generations artificial and unproductive, because it assumes that large groups of people will share common traits simply because they are of a similar age. It takes social class, education, gender identity, and many other important factors out of the equation.
This generational breakdown did, however, turn out to be a very convenient way for companies to position brands and plan advertising campaigns.
In Russia in the early aughts, sociologist Yury Levada delineated six Soviet generations, also according to the historical setting of their “impressionable years.” His generations were defined by the revolution and Civil War; the Stalin era social mobilization; World War II; the Thaw; and the Era of Stagnation and Perestroika.
Putin and ‘Generation P’
The Kremlin wants Generation Putin’s loyalty.
Sociologist Iskender Yasaveyev told Signal that scholars approach studying Generation Putin with great caution. He points out that a united youth politics did not immediately emerge when Putin took power in Russia. Moreover, the concept of “youth,” including its legal definition, has changed several times under Putin. It originally signified people between 14 and 30 years old, then it was expanded to 35, and in the future the upper limit of “youth” may be raised to 38.
Since the mid-aughts, Russian authorities have been trying to control young Russians’ political activity. They have not been especially successful, however. The protests of the winter of 2011–2012 changed the country’s entire political situation dramatically. Since then, the authorities have markedly increased the amount of “patriotic programming” in educational curricula, and have also made more active attempts to influence young people on the Internet.
With Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the outbreak of war in Ukraine in 2014, these programs have taken on an increasingly militaristic character, Yasaveyev noted. The youth policy program for the years 2016–2020 saw the first instance of the phrase “in peacetime and in wartime,” for example.
Other scholars researching Russian youth have told Signal that it’s difficult to measure the influence of Russia’s new “patriotic education.” One Levada Center sociologist, who requested anonymity, says that opinion polls do not show that young Russians are supporters of the current government. “Surveys do not show people’s privately held opinions,” the researcher says, “but rather how prepared they are to share the opinions that dominate the public sphere.”
Support for Putin among Russia’s youth is a direct result of the war in Ukraine. Since 2022, it has become abundantly clear to everyone what can and cannot be said in public. Young people’s answers to opinion polls show not what they themselves really believe, but what they currently understand to be acceptable to believe and to say. External pressure on Russia also plays a role. “Many people who are growing up now have never been outside of Russia,” the Levada Center researcher said. “In addition, the war [against Ukraine] has seriously changed the Western world’s relationship to Russia, and the media and culture reflect this. It has an effect on the mood of the youth. The authorities’ ideological work only intensifies these processes.”
More on Russia’s patriotic curriculum
The Kremlin’s campaign to make education more ‘patriotic’ reaches English language classes with new ‘Glorious Russia’ textbook
3 months ago
Iskender Yasaveyev is certain that the main result of Russia’s current patriotic education and repressive political climate will be the formation of double consciousness, similar to the late Soviet era. “In that period, [the official] values being broadcast were assimilated at the level of rhetoric — but the backdrop was a widespread detachment from those values in everyday life. The problem with today’s patriotic education is that it is lackluster, if not entirely meaningless. Its essence is anti-Westernization, traditionalism, and loyalty to the authorities. But this is unlikely to seriously capture anyone.”
Will they miss Putin when he’s gone?
If we construct a generation the way Mannheim would, the first Putin generation would be comprised of people born right around 1980 — they were in their early 20s in the 2000s, when he first took power. Today’s 24-year-olds (who are currently in their “impressionable years”) haven’t lived under any authority but Putin’s. They’re the ones people most often call Generation Putin.
In 2021, scholar Grigory Yudin said that Generation Putin was actually made of people born around the turn of the millennium, who live in anticipation of “an event that will make them a generation.” That’s the same shock, the same tear in social fabric, that Mannheim wrote about.
This event occurred on February 24, 2022 — when Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
A number of studies continue, to this day, to show that Russian youth are distrustful of and indifferent to politics. Researchers attribute this to the fact that this generation grew up during a general “cleansing” of the political field by Putin and his allies. It’s also true, though, that people this age willingly volunteer and donate money to charity.
In 2024, the Kremlin-connected Expert Institute for Social Research put out a monograph on Russian youth. It argues that young people have “vague and fragmented ideas about Russia.” Put simply, this generation’s values and views appear so complex and contradictory that, that it’s impossible to paint a portrait that fully characterizes the whole group.
Toma Gerzha / Control Refresh
There are, however, several features that do really characterize the Putin generation, the Levada Center researcher told Signal. Young Russians are the country’s most culturally westernized group. This is primarily true because they consume the most foreign popular culture — even aggressively anti-Western domestic politics and state propaganda have been unable to slow that trend.
Russian youth also remain the country’s most tolerant demographic, despite bans on “gay propaganda” and the Russian authorities’ move to label all LGBTQ-focused groups as “extremist organizations.” They’re also progressive despite the state’s efforts — for example, though domestic policy in Russian currently aims at increasing the birth rate and upholding “traditional values,” the age at which Russians first marry continues to increase.
Generation Putin is also still young, and just beginning to come into its own. It’s impossible to predict what will ultimately happen to the young people who stayed in Russia, but many still try. The usual method is by drawing historical parallels to the people who came of age in Spain under Francisco Franco.
The Franco generation grew up in the political and economic turmoil of the 1930s, which would devolve into the Spanish Civil War. Its members were indoctrinated with a nationalist and Catholic ideology during the rise of Franco’s regime. The civil war polarized society in a way that left a permanent division within this generation. Some of its members ended up with official positions in Franco’s government, while others organized underground movements against his dictatorship.
Franco’s reign ended when he died, and the generation whose lives had been lived entirely under his rule were the ones who ushered their country into a new democratic age. Spain largely avoided mass nostalgia for the Franco regime by conducting wide-scale social research into that era’s repressions. It’s a curious but readily observed fact that nostalgia for Franco’s dictatorship is more likely among generations of people who didn’t actually live through it.
It’s possible that some future generations will miss Putin, but it’s likely that they haven’t been born yet.
Mikita Kuchinski for Signal
January 3, 2025
Source: Signal
Toma Gerzha / Control Refresh
“Generation Putin” is the name sometimes given to people who have lived their entire lives under Vladimir Putin’s rule in Russia. In the past decade, these people have come of age, and now make up the cohort of young adults who will inherit whatever follows Putin in Russia. It’s never easy to characterize generational cohorts, and in the tumult of Putin’s escalating domestic repression and outright military aggression in Ukraine, it’s even more difficult to paint a clear picture of Generation Putin. Meduza explains what Russia’s young adults believe, and what they might do once Putin’s gone.
This essay is adapted from an issue of Signal, a Russian-language email newsletter from Meduza. If you enjoyed this piece, stay tuned. We’ve got a book coming in early 2025!
By the end of the 2010s in Russia, a generation of people were coming of age who had lived their entire lives under Vladimir Putin. They soon acquired a collective name: Generation Putin.
Some Russian scholars used to say that around half of Generation Putin believes in the possibility of positive Russian relations with the West and that their own futures will be happy. Many members of this cohort also hold democratic values and don’t trust the current regime.
But now, three years into Russia’s full-scale military invasion of Ukraine, Generation Putin has taken on a different meaning entirely. Russia’s youth are now said, in the global mainstream media, to resemble the majority of Russians: they’re politically apathetic, tacitly supporting the war. Sociological studies continue to refute this idea, calling Generation Putin a weak point in the Russian authorities’ various propaganda campaigns. But the notion that they’re apathetic has stuck.
In reality, the truth about Russia’s young adults is hard to discern.
The bitter truth is that events in Russia affect your life, too. Help Meduza continue to bring news from Russia to readers around the world by setting up a monthly donation.
Defining a generation
The phrase “Generation Putin” on its own barely has meaning, because it can mean practically anything. If you hear that Generation Putin is apolitical or politicized, conformist or rebellious, or anything else, it’s likely just content for clicks.
The generational breakdown that has become conventional (from boomers to zoomers) isn’t really scientific, it’s more like a marketing ploy.
It does rest on real scholarly work, though, most importantly on the theory of generations developed by sociologist Karl Mannheim in the early 20th century. Mannheim argued that people between the ages of 17 and 25 are particularly impressionable. When major historical events (war, revolution, or other tears in the fabric of life) happen, they have a particularly significant social impact on people in this age group. Thus, a generation is formed, for example the “Lost Generation” (who were young during World War I), the “Silent Generation” (who were young during World War II), and so on.
For Mannheim, this was simply an observation; he never claimed to have come up with a fully-fledged theory. However, his work formed the basis for a 1990s book by William Strauss and Neil Howe called, Generations: The History of America’s Future, 1584 to 2069.
Strauss and Howe’s work is the origin of the most popular organization scheme for American 20th century generations: Baby boomers, Gen X, Millennials, Gen Z, etc. Most scholars consider this delineation of generations artificial and unproductive, because it assumes that large groups of people will share common traits simply because they are of a similar age. It takes social class, education, gender identity, and many other important factors out of the equation.
This generational breakdown did, however, turn out to be a very convenient way for companies to position brands and plan advertising campaigns.
In Russia in the early aughts, sociologist Yury Levada delineated six Soviet generations, also according to the historical setting of their “impressionable years.” His generations were defined by the revolution and Civil War; the Stalin era social mobilization; World War II; the Thaw; and the Era of Stagnation and Perestroika.
Putin and ‘Generation P’
The Kremlin wants Generation Putin’s loyalty.
Sociologist Iskender Yasaveyev told Signal that scholars approach studying Generation Putin with great caution. He points out that a united youth politics did not immediately emerge when Putin took power in Russia. Moreover, the concept of “youth,” including its legal definition, has changed several times under Putin. It originally signified people between 14 and 30 years old, then it was expanded to 35, and in the future the upper limit of “youth” may be raised to 38.
Since the mid-aughts, Russian authorities have been trying to control young Russians’ political activity. They have not been especially successful, however. The protests of the winter of 2011–2012 changed the country’s entire political situation dramatically. Since then, the authorities have markedly increased the amount of “patriotic programming” in educational curricula, and have also made more active attempts to influence young people on the Internet.
With Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the outbreak of war in Ukraine in 2014, these programs have taken on an increasingly militaristic character, Yasaveyev noted. The youth policy program for the years 2016–2020 saw the first instance of the phrase “in peacetime and in wartime,” for example.
Other scholars researching Russian youth have told Signal that it’s difficult to measure the influence of Russia’s new “patriotic education.” One Levada Center sociologist, who requested anonymity, says that opinion polls do not show that young Russians are supporters of the current government. “Surveys do not show people’s privately held opinions,” the researcher says, “but rather how prepared they are to share the opinions that dominate the public sphere.”
Support for Putin among Russia’s youth is a direct result of the war in Ukraine. Since 2022, it has become abundantly clear to everyone what can and cannot be said in public. Young people’s answers to opinion polls show not what they themselves really believe, but what they currently understand to be acceptable to believe and to say. External pressure on Russia also plays a role. “Many people who are growing up now have never been outside of Russia,” the Levada Center researcher said. “In addition, the war [against Ukraine] has seriously changed the Western world’s relationship to Russia, and the media and culture reflect this. It has an effect on the mood of the youth. The authorities’ ideological work only intensifies these processes.”
More on Russia’s patriotic curriculum
The Kremlin’s campaign to make education more ‘patriotic’ reaches English language classes with new ‘Glorious Russia’ textbook
3 months ago
Iskender Yasaveyev is certain that the main result of Russia’s current patriotic education and repressive political climate will be the formation of double consciousness, similar to the late Soviet era. “In that period, [the official] values being broadcast were assimilated at the level of rhetoric — but the backdrop was a widespread detachment from those values in everyday life. The problem with today’s patriotic education is that it is lackluster, if not entirely meaningless. Its essence is anti-Westernization, traditionalism, and loyalty to the authorities. But this is unlikely to seriously capture anyone.”
Will they miss Putin when he’s gone?
If we construct a generation the way Mannheim would, the first Putin generation would be comprised of people born right around 1980 — they were in their early 20s in the 2000s, when he first took power. Today’s 24-year-olds (who are currently in their “impressionable years”) haven’t lived under any authority but Putin’s. They’re the ones people most often call Generation Putin.
In 2021, scholar Grigory Yudin said that Generation Putin was actually made of people born around the turn of the millennium, who live in anticipation of “an event that will make them a generation.” That’s the same shock, the same tear in social fabric, that Mannheim wrote about.
This event occurred on February 24, 2022 — when Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
A number of studies continue, to this day, to show that Russian youth are distrustful of and indifferent to politics. Researchers attribute this to the fact that this generation grew up during a general “cleansing” of the political field by Putin and his allies. It’s also true, though, that people this age willingly volunteer and donate money to charity.
In 2024, the Kremlin-connected Expert Institute for Social Research put out a monograph on Russian youth. It argues that young people have “vague and fragmented ideas about Russia.” Put simply, this generation’s values and views appear so complex and contradictory that, that it’s impossible to paint a portrait that fully characterizes the whole group.
Toma Gerzha / Control Refresh
There are, however, several features that do really characterize the Putin generation, the Levada Center researcher told Signal. Young Russians are the country’s most culturally westernized group. This is primarily true because they consume the most foreign popular culture — even aggressively anti-Western domestic politics and state propaganda have been unable to slow that trend.
Russian youth also remain the country’s most tolerant demographic, despite bans on “gay propaganda” and the Russian authorities’ move to label all LGBTQ-focused groups as “extremist organizations.” They’re also progressive despite the state’s efforts — for example, though domestic policy in Russian currently aims at increasing the birth rate and upholding “traditional values,” the age at which Russians first marry continues to increase.
Generation Putin is also still young, and just beginning to come into its own. It’s impossible to predict what will ultimately happen to the young people who stayed in Russia, but many still try. The usual method is by drawing historical parallels to the people who came of age in Spain under Francisco Franco.
The Franco generation grew up in the political and economic turmoil of the 1930s, which would devolve into the Spanish Civil War. Its members were indoctrinated with a nationalist and Catholic ideology during the rise of Franco’s regime. The civil war polarized society in a way that left a permanent division within this generation. Some of its members ended up with official positions in Franco’s government, while others organized underground movements against his dictatorship.
Franco’s reign ended when he died, and the generation whose lives had been lived entirely under his rule were the ones who ushered their country into a new democratic age. Spain largely avoided mass nostalgia for the Franco regime by conducting wide-scale social research into that era’s repressions. It’s a curious but readily observed fact that nostalgia for Franco’s dictatorship is more likely among generations of people who didn’t actually live through it.
It’s possible that some future generations will miss Putin, but it’s likely that they haven’t been born yet.
Mikita Kuchinski for Signal
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