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strana.ru
June 27, 2002
Winners and Losers as Russia Fell Apart
Lost generations and values crisis mark a people's struggle for survival, says
major study
By Michael Stedman
Social scientists probing how Russia's disparate population goes about living have peeled back a graphic gauging the pain and gain of a society enduring more than a decade of turmoil.
The experts have charted change seen through the eyes and common experiences of three generations, all living in times of profound upheaval, all telling their own stories about how they've tackled the turmoil.
Their tales have been assembled as one key chapter of a Russian "human development" report from the United Nations Development Program, unveiled in Moscow last night (Wednesday.)
The 120-page study, seventh in a series, looks at attitudes to life among three age groups, "soviets, parents, and children." Heavy research text reflects the scientific basis of the profiling.
But it reveals, too, some intensely intimate assessments of what Russia's transformation has meant to citizens seeing their life courses change direction and what this has meant to their own perceptions of "self worth" and personal esteem.
Study teams in the project set their sights on "the crisis associated with the disintegration of values under the impact of socio-historical change."
Their findings portray a people traumatized within their own shaky identities. The "soviet" generation born in the 1920s - "predominantly industrial workers with a "peasant' mentality rooted in their geneology " - have been most under attack.
The once-heroic "builders of a new type of state" now have the feeling of "being pushed to the sidelines of public life," the report observed. More deeply still, "predominant is a feeling of depression, close to that of a kind of social outcast."
Even the middle generation of those born in the 1950s displays a "deep socio-emotional crisis" affecting its health. It's an age group going through what the report said was a turning point in social and cultural development - but at a later stage in life than in more usual formative years.
"The present generation of 50-60-year-olds may be regarded as a generation "lost' in the waves of transformation and the "struggle for survival,'" said the sad analysis. "Comparison between past losses and personal achievement" makes these people feel "victims of perestroika, feeling nostalgia for their unrealized aspirations."
Caught between two epochs and seeing themselves as industrious, hard-working and conscientious, abrupt social change at a mature age makes this group feel "prematurely old" and "sacrificed," though many are still active in social and production processes, and in government.
Their associations remain with "wartime children," "the Soviet people" and "Komsomol" (youth league) times, the report noted.
Enter, therefore, on a squeaking stage, younger ones who nevertheless "increasingly feel themselves as the active generation" in contrast to those who complain of being "passive victims."
These are evident in the driving seat today, the researchers found, noting in another chapter that in recent years, male workers between 25 and 34 have the highest average per capita incomes, while in Soviet times, personal prosperity peaked at between 50 and 60.
"Refusing to live the way our parents lived" was identified as the motor pushing those born in the early and middle 1970s to reject continuing education for a wide choice of jobs in small business.
Their level of well-being was found now to be higher than any other age group over the past decade, recording successful adaptation to a changing world and expecting further improvement still ahead.
So far, "the victors were those who took advantage of the historical chance to avail themselves of these opportunities," the report said.
Fate has yet to determine the paths of those making up a still largely "silent" generation, unaware of what preceded Russia's race to the market economy and democratic reform.
"This is the first generation which has no opportunity to compare the potential advantages and disadvantages of the two social systems on the basis of their own experience," the researchers said.
"Orientation towards the past or nostalgia for it do not apply to this age group," they added. "Its daily life experience in the formative period is accumulated against the background of a demonstrative inequality in incomes, living standards and lifestyles.
"A wide choice of consumer goods has appeared (in contrast to their chronic shortage which lasted for decades) but most people cannot afford to buy these goods because of the low standard of living."
The chapter ends with a passage readers may take as warning that a new identity crisis may loom within another sector of Russian society. Signs are already that the age group still largely silent may be raising a disturbing and unpredictable voice, as extremist youth violence has shown in recent times.
"It is precisely the youngest age group that may be regarded as a possible source of confrontation among the generations in society," the analysis said. "This confrontation is still at the embryonic stage since the "new generation' is still in the process of entering adult society," a cautionary note observed.
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