With Russia at war, fascism has taken hold of its young people, Canadian researcher finds

As Ukraine’s allies wait and wonder what the anticipated military counterattack against Russia might bring, Canadian researchers are looking beyond the battlefield to the war’s end.

And what he saw was horrifying.

Ian Garner, a cultural historian and Russian analyst from Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont., is touring England discussing his new book, Generation Z: At the Heart of Russia’s Fascist Youthand his conclusions about the prospects of lasting peace with Russia are pessimistic, to say the least.

The grim message is that with or without Vladimir Putin as president, support for his regime’s toxic views is widespread, including among young people, who are typically seen as the most “Western-friendly” Russians.

Garner said he spent months reaching out and interacting with young Russians on social media sites, such as Telegram and VKontakte, who support his country’s war of aggression against Ukraine.

Of the hundreds of people who tried to connect, finally a few dozen agreed to participate with him – and Garner said he came away with the conclusion that fascism is strongly entrenched.

“I found … there were a lot of young people involved [using] language of state genocide,” Garner recently told an audience at the Pushkin House cultural center in London.

“They want me to know that they are good people, that when they talk about killing Ukrainians to save Ukraine, they really believe it and that’s the truth.”

Ukraine is seen as a ‘disease’ that threatens Russia

Garner said he repeatedly told her that the most dangerous “disease” threatening Russia was Ukraine.

“If we can remove the tumor [Ukraine]Maybe we can eradicate the disease,” he said, pointing to the twisted logic indoctrinated into Russian youth groups and the country’s education system.

If Garner is right, the implications for the permanent, peaceful reset of relations between Russia and its Western neighbors after the war ends too.

“When Putin leaves, or if the war ends tomorrow, if you look at Russia, we still have problems that are there and that is the Russians as they are today,” he told CBC News in an interview.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, sparked the most violent and destructive conflict in Europe since World War II.

Ukrainian cities like Mariupol and Bakhmut have been devastated by Russian attacks.

Thousands of Ukrainian civilians have been killed in bombings and airstrikes, including Russia’s ongoing winter attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure, such as power stations.

The United Nations has concluded that Russian forces committed widespread war crimes, in towns such as Bucha, by torturing, raping and executing civilians.

And the International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for Putin himself, accusing him of ordering the illegal deportation of children and the illegal transfer of people from the territory of Ukraine to the Russian Federation.

Most young people oppose the war: pollsters

Garner’s assessment of the extent to which young Russians have embraced fascism has its detractors, however.

Andrei Kolesnikov, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, who continues to live and work in Moscow, said opposition to the war remains highest among younger demographics, and many young people are taking huge risks to demonstrate.

“The best thing is to resist courageously, and the brightest thing is to leave Russia for work and education abroad,” Kolesnikov told CBC News in an email.

Others note that Russians, in all age groups, are generally non-political and often only get along with the authorities because they are considered to be the people who know best.

Denis Volkov, one of the few independent public opinion polls still in the country, said research with the Levada Center, where he is the director, suggests that among Russians in the 30, only 10 percent of hard-core supporters of the war.

“They are more resistant to propaganda and more critical of the government,” Volkov told CBC News in a Zoom interview.

In addition, British researcher Jeremy Morris, professor of global studies at Aarhus University in Denmark, said that the views of younger Russians are no different from those of young people in Europe or even the United States.

“On issues like drugs, sexuality, divorce, abortion, tolerance of minorities, for young Russians there is no evidence that there is some ‘fascis-ization’,” Morris said in an interview.

There are inherent difficulties in extrapolating broad trends about youth behavior, he said, when only the most fervent believers agree to take part in the study, such as Garner’s.

Morris, who continues to travel to Russia, said he is doing fieldwork in the country starting in October 2022.

Fear of the influence of war on young minds

None of the CBC News experts ultimately disputed Garner’s bleak assessment of the difficulty of resolving Russia’s future relations with Western nations.

“Young Russians are under pressure from both sides [sides]”said Volkov. “From the Russian state and from the West – they were rejected by the West as well…. They are in a difficult situation.”

In his book, Garner tries to identify some ways forward, but it is challenging.

If the online environment has helped emphasize the genocidal aspects of Russia’s fascist ideology, then perhaps social media can be turned to create a more positive “alternative reality” for Russia, he said.

“Russia under Putin has been looking for things to destroy that hold the country back,” Garner said at the Pushkin House meeting.

“We can nudge people to a different identity path. We must be there to support them, as it is hard to do psychological hand holding.”

For Denis Volkov, the danger is that the longer the war in Ukraine lasts, the more successful the Putin regime will be in converting young people to a destructive mindset. Even so, he still sees some glimmers of optimism.

Most Russians — and young people in particular — see the war as a conflict between governments, not states, Volkov said.

Indeed, even at this point, 15 months into the catastrophic invasion of Russia, he said, surveys suggest that Russians continue to hold quite significant goodwill towards America and Europe.

“The majority thinks that ordinary people can agree, but the government can’t,” Volkov said.

While Garner argued that the moral decay inherent in Russian society would hinder efforts at reconciliation, Volkov suggested that the Russian masses would do what their leaders — Putin or anyone else — told them.

“It depends [Russia’s] elite, not so much in ordinary Russia,” said the pollster.

Of course, it is impossible to find anyone who expects Vladimir Putin to withdraw from Russian politics because of the war and difficulties faced by the military.

Indeed, Putin has given every indication that he wants to keep the war in Ukraine for as long as possible – as the conflict with the West has become an intrinsic part of Russian cultural identity.