Redefining Need, Reconfiguring Expectations: The Rise of State-Run Youth Voluntarism Programs in Russia

Abstract

This article investigates the restructuring of the Russian social welfare system by interrogating Putin-era state-run projects to promote youth voluntarism. Set up in the aftermath of liberalizing social welfare reform, these organizations are interesting hybrids: at the same time as they honor the Soviet past and afford symbolic prominence to Soviet era values, they simultaneously advance distinctively neoliberal technologies of self-help and self-reliance. In dialogue with recent studies in the anthropology of neoliberalism and the anthropology of postsocialism, I consider the implications of these intertwined logics. Focusing on the interpretive work undertaken by one provincial voluntary organization, I argue that it offers a symbolic salve and a measure of recompense to those most disaffected by neoliberal reform, while at the same time inculcating new models of subjectivity and citizenship. In so doing, it encodes a new vision of the common good that has interesting hybrid features and draws on the models that the Putin administration ostensibly disparages.

Neoliberalism

“…Unlike "late capitalism," which is a temporal and descriptive marker devised by scholars to characterize transformations in the nature of capitalism (Harvey 1990, Lash & Urry 1987, neoliberalism is an ideological and philosophical movement-what economic historians refer to as a "thought collective" (Mirowski & Plehwe 2009)-that emerges at a particular historical moment and can be traced to the networks of specific intellectuals and institutions in post-World War I Europe and the United States. The aim of these intellectuals, mostly economists and philosophers, was to oppose what they saw as a rising tide of collectivism, state-centered planning, and socialism and to develop an agenda that was distinct from classical liberalism.…”

Indigenizing “civil society” in Serbia What local fund-raising reveals about class and trust

“…Th e rise of local fund-raising could extricate civil society from its dependence on foreign donors and their exogenous priorities. It could also provide a decentralized alternative to another tendency that dissolves the "portable model of civil society" in the postsocialist world: the growth of quasi-nongovernmental organizations dependent on the nation-state, for example, in Russia (Hemment 2012). All in all, we could perhaps allow ourselves to see these changes toward the indigenization of NGOs with some cautious optimism.…”

Gendered and Classed Activist Identity in the Russian Oppositional Youth Movement

“…Even though youth have played an important role in many political struggles, for example, in the ‘Colour Revolutions’ in Central Europe and in the former Soviet Union (Kuzio, 2006; Laverty, 2008), youth activism has attracted little attention until very recently (however, see Pilkington et al , 2002; Omel'chenko, 2005). The existing studies have mainly dealt with the pro-Kremlin youth movements, such as Nashi (Atwal, 2009; Blum, 2006; Hemment, 2009, 2012; Lassila, 2011, 2012), while youth oppositional activism has been little studied (for exceptions, see Gromov, 2009; Lyytikäinen, 2011; Robertson, 2009; Sperling, 2012; Schwirtz, 2007).…”

“…However, recent research on pro-Kremlin youth movements has questioned this thoroughly state-managed nature of youth participation and also shown how pro-Kremlin activism is more complex than that. It has described the activists as agents in the civic field and elucidated how some activists use the movement as a tool to create better chances in life for themselves (Atwal, 2009; Hemment, 2012).…”

“…While Oborona activists refer to their parents and the 1990s' reformers as their ‘heroes’, Nashi's manifesto refers to them as ‘defeatists’ who sold out the country. Instead of their parents' generation, Nashi represents their grandparents' generation and especially the World War II veterans as their ‘heroes’ (Hemment, 2012). However, both anti-and pro-Kremlin youth movements articulate their position as the active ‘new’ generation with a promise for an active and dignified subject position that differentiates their activists from what are seen to be the apolitical contemporary young Russians.…”