Youth Politics in Putin's Russia: Producing Patriots and Entrepreneurs

277 Pages·2015·2.8 MB·English

by  Julie Hemment

YOUTH POLITICS IN PUTIN’S RUSSIA
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Youth Politics
in Putin's Russia
Producing Patriots and Entrepreneurs
Julie Hemment
This book is a publication of Manufactured in the
United States of America
Indiana University Press
Office of Scholarly Publishing Library of Congress
Herman B Wells Library 350 Cataloging-in-Publication Data
1320 East 10th Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA Hemment, Julie.
Youth politics in Putin’s Russia :
iupress.indiana.edu producing patriots and entrepreneurs /
Julie Hemment.
© 2015 by Julie Hemment pages cm
Includes bibliographical references.
All rights reserved ISBN 978-0-253-01772-7 (cl : alk.
paper)–ISBN 978-0-253-01779-6 (pb : alk.
No part of this book may be reproduced paper)–ISBN 978-0-253-01781-9 (eb)
or utilized in any form or by any means, 1. Youth–Political activity–Russia
electronic or mechanical, including (Federation) 2. Youth–Government
photocopying and recording, or by any policy–Russia (Federation) 3. Youth–
information storage and retrieval system, Social conditions–Russia (Federation)
without permission in writing from the 4. Post-communism–Social aspects–
publisher. The Association of American Russia (Federation) 5. Putin, Vladimir
University Presses’ Resolution on Vladimirovich, 1952- I. Title.
Permissions constitutes the only excep- HQ799.R9H46 2015
tion to this prohibition. 305.2350947–dc23
2015010639
The paper used in this publication
meets the minimum requirements of 1 2 3 4 5 17 16 15 14 13 12
the American National Standard for
Information Sciences–Permanence of
Paper for Printed Library Materials,
ANSI Z39.48–1992.
For
Valentina and her students
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Contents
· acknowledgments ix
· Introduction 1
1 C ollaborative Possibilities, New Cold War
Constraints: Ethnography in the Putin Era 41
2 N ashi in Ideology and Practice: The Social
Life of Sovereign Democracy 70
3 Seliger 2009: “Commodify Your Talent” 104
4 F rom Komsomol’tsy-Dobrovol’tsy to Entrepreneurial
Volunteers: Technologies of Kindness 141
5 “ Arousing” Patriotism: Satire, Sincerity,
and Geopolitical Play 177
· Conclusion 214
· notes 223
· bibliography 239
· Index 253
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Acknowledgments
I have incurred numerous debts of gratitude in the
course of this book project.
I’d like to first express my deepest gratitude to my friends and col-
leagues in Tver’–Valentina Uspenskaya, Dmitry Borodin, and other
colleagues associated with the Center for Women’s History and Gen-
der Studies at Tver’ State University, and of course the members of the
student research team. The opportunity to work with you so closely for
this long has been so very enriching and inspiring. I am appreciative
of the support of other administrators, faculty, and staff at Tver’ State
University, and to the local officials, activists, and young people who
participated in our research and generously shared their time with us.
Thanks to Grigory Uspensky and the rest of the Uspensky family for
their hospitality and friendship over the years, and to Oktiabrina Cher-
emovskaia and family also.
I am lucky to have been supported by grants from a number of in-
stitutions. I am grateful to the Marion and Jasper Whiting Foundation
and the Provost’s Committee on Service Learning at the University of
Massachusetts, which provided seed money to get this project started.
A short-term fellowship at the Kennan Institute enabled me to begin
library-based research on youth voluntarism during the summer of 2006.
A National Research grant from the National Council for Eurasian and
East European Research (NCEEER) and a short-term travel grant from
the International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX)–both funded
by the State Department through the Title VIII Program–supported
the pilot study I undertook in the fall of 2006. Research between 2008
ix