[lbo-talk] RE: Soviet nomenklatura privileges

[Maria Gilmore]

Sounds an awful lot like American teens & twenty-somethings to me.  And, to
an extent, like American old folks too.  As a generation they seem to have
known what it felt like to have agency in the world, and they've never
forgotten it.

---- Original Message -----
From: "ChrisD(RJ)" <chrisd at russiajournal.com>


> The fact of the matter is that you can get elderly people out to clog
> squares, whereas the only way you could get more than 10-15 Russian
> teenagers to a political event, unless they are members of Moving
Together,
> is to throw a rock concert there.
>
> Pensioners, in addition to having been the group hardest hit by "reform,"
> are used to going to demonstrations and grew up in an atmosphere of
> idealism. They were Building Communism and going from one victory to the
> next. The generation following them came of age in a climate of cynicism.
> Today's teens and 20-somethings grew up in an environment of chaos. They
are
> atomized and almost completely passive. They drink beer and party. They do
> not give a rat's ass about politics, which is perceived as something alien
> to them that the elites engage in and upon which they do not and cannot in
> principle have any influence.