In this episode of the podcast, we take a look at the generational forces driving recent protests across Russia. To put those protest movements in context, we’ll look at the cultural, technological and especially demographic forces at play with Stratfor Senior Eurasia Analyst Eugene Chausovsky.
Chausovsky recently authored an insightful analysis on the topic for Stratfor Worldview, our premier digital publication. More than 25-years after the fall of the Soviet Union, this new generation is coming of age across Eurasia, the region it once dominated, and challenging Russia’s long-standing influence there.
Transcript
Ben Sheen [00:00:12] Hello and thank you for joining us for this edition of the Stratfor podcast, focused on geopolitics and world affairs from stratfor.com, I'm your host Ben Sheen. As we watch growing protests across much of Russia, it's important to know that the root causes are not only political in nature. To put recent protest movements in context, it's necessary to look at the culture, technology and especially demographic factors at play today. More than 25 years after the fall of the Soviet Union, a new generation is coming of age across Eurasia, the region the Kremlin once dominated. Young people that never knew life under communism are now challenging Russia's longstanding influence. To learn more about this generational shift and what it means going forward, Stratfor's Senior Eurasian Analyst, Eugene Chausovsky joins us for this edition of the Stratfor podcast. He's examined this dynamic in detail and will help us understand what it really means for Russia and others in the region. Thanks again for joining us. Eugene, thank you for joining me today.
Eugene Chausovsky [00:01:21] Thank you for having me.
Ben Sheen [00:01:23] Eugene, something we've been talking about recently and certainly something we've been seeing evidence of on the ground is this generational shift that appears to be underway in Russia. I was wondering if you could give me a little bit of context and background to what we mean when we talk about this generational shift, certainly in the former Soviet Union.
Eugene Chausovsky [00:01:40] Absolutely, it's been about a quarter century now, about 25 years since the collapse of the Soviet Union. In this 25 years, there's been a lot of changes that have happened within Russian society and within the society of all of the former Soviet states. They had a lot in common obviously during the Soviet era given that Moscow was in central control, that essentially a lot of elements of society, political, economic, were very much controlled by the state and it was a very centralized apparatus. Russia was obviously the dominant player there and the Russian language was used by all administrative and essentially social purposes, but now, 25 years later, that's given a lot of time for things to shift and I think that's what we're starting to see really come to the floor just now.
Ben Sheen [00:02:28] It's certainly been a challenge for the Russian core hasn't it, to maintain its influence in all these outlying regions, especially when some of them are getting pulled almost beyond the Russian orbit and starting to carve their own path. But also, there is this sense of whether is this core Russian ideology relevant in the modern age and that seems to be something that a lot of countries and individuals are struggling with right now. Yes, absolutely. Essentially there's two elements here in terms of what we're talking about with this generational shift. One being the cultural shift underway. As I mentioned before, Russian language was a key part of Soviet life, if you wanted to, whether it was in the administrative, the political apparatus or just in every day conversations, certainly between the different Soviet nations, Russian dominated. That is now starting to change in a gradual way as countries have shifted towards their national languages
Eugene Chausovsky [00:03:25] of course but even when you're talking about foreign languages, Russian is starting to become deemphasized whereas other languages like English of course, but even languages like French, German, Chinese even in central Asia, these are starting to become studied and more practiced. The other aspect is, and this is the big one, is the political changes that have been taking place, both within Russia and in the Soviet belts, the former Soviet belts which is a change in the way that governments interact with their citizens and vice versa. We're starting to see these changes really rise up in terms of protests and not just protests over specific issues like we've seen in the past, but protests over general things like corruption or over the economic situation. Especially with younger people becoming more active in protests and using tools like social media. These are changes that are really testing and really challenging Russia's position both at home and abroad.
Ben Sheen [00:04:22] There are a couple of interesting angles on this I'd like to explore a little deeper. One is the social media aspect, but before then, the fact that actually protests are being allowed in the first case is kind of, it's a real breakthrough. Certainly when we think about the Soviet Union pre-Gorbachev, the various reforms and policies that allowed Russians to really be able to question policy in general, protest was unimaginable. If you stepped out of line or spoke against the state, you'd very quickly be taken out of commission. Whereas now, even being able to protest seems progressive in many aspects.
Eugene Chausovsky [00:04:55] Absolutely, but we should keep in mind that it took a while for us to get where we are now. Because as you mentioned, during the Soviet Era, protests were pretty much unthinkable. If they happened, then they were immediately met with either detention, deportation or in the worst case, death. People were still very much, even after the collapse of the Soviet Union, people were very much hesitant to protest because those kind of aspects, those kind of ingrained characteristics are hard to overcome so we started to see some protests, they were typically very small but security forces were very quick to crack down on them. But over the course of the last decade and especially the last few years, people as living standards have risen and as people's expectations of what the government does for them and how they interact with the citizenry has changed, we're starting to see protests becoming increasingly common, people are no longer as afraid of the government and of security forces as they used to be, but that's still very much a work in progress, this is not Western Europe. There's still crack downs on protests in certain cases. It's very much in the evolutionary process.
Ben Sheen [00:06:17] We'll return to our conversation with Stratfor's Senior Eurasian Analyst, Eugene Chausovsky in just a moment. But if you're enjoying the conversation, you should read his extended analysis on worldview.stratfor.com, it's called In Eurasia, A New Generation Challenges Russia's Dominance. We'll include a link in the show notes and if you're not already a Worldview member, consider subscribing if you want sober, unbiased analysis on world affairs. As Stratfor's premier digital publication, Worldview brings global events into valuable perspective with a unique methodology grounded in the study of geopolitics. Individual, team and enterprise subscriptions are available at worldview.stratfor.com/subscribe. Now let's get back to our conversation with Stratfor's Eugene Chausovsky on the demographic shifts across Eurasia challenging Russia's dominance in the former Soviet sphere of influence. You have a whole generation of young people in Russia who were either very very small when the Soviet Union fell apart or weren't even born in the early 90s. They're now coming of age in a radically different Russia to the one that their parents and their forebears really knew and coupled with that over the last few years, we've seen a real explosion in technology, specifically the internet, social media and having this ability to share information and access communication networks which cannot really be clamped down by the state. It seems like a number of factors are really coalescing in Russia at the moment and that seems
Ben Sheen [00:07:50] to be a problem for the Kremlin.
Eugene Chausovsky [00:07:51] It's very much of a problem and not just for the Kremlin but we've seen it in other countries throughout the region. The Euromaidan Uprising in the Ukraine was really a breakthrough moment because if you go back and look at what prompted that revolution, it started with a small protest. After the then government of Yanukovych, he basically abandoned a pro-EU integration deal that they had been negotiating for several years. But at the very last minute, he basically decided to drop that and put his lot in with Russia. This created some protests, especially amongst younger people initially. It wasn't very big, maybe a few dozen, hundred people came out onto the central square in Kiev, but the way that the government chose to react to those protests and that was through security crackdown, the police came in, knocked a few heads around and this created this huge reaction, where with the help of social media, with the help of word of mouth, hundreds of thousands of people came out onto the streets because people felt like this was not how they wanted to see their country anymore. This was no longer the Soviet Union and Ukraine, especially younger people wanted a different future for themselves, the differing expectations combined with the use of technology, the internet, social media especially, is what got a lot of people out onto the streets and several months later, the government was overthrown. That kind of opened up a lot of different, it just changed the way that people viewed how to protest and how to accept government norms
Eugene Chausovsky [00:09:25] and we've seen that now spread to other places, in Belarus even which is a fairly centralized and fairly authoritarian country, we saw protests happen over several months over unpopular tax policy. In Russia even, we've seen protests now happen tens of thousands of people and a lot of them were either teenagers or in their twenties, came out because they were just fed up with corruption and the status quo. It's had this spreading effect and governments, as you mentioned, are having a very difficult time of dealing with it because they can't use the same old methods that they used to.
Ben Sheen [00:10:00] It's not necessarily for want of trying, we've already seen Russia attempt to try and crack down on social media usage in its own borders, but this is the problem, when you talk about networked communications that route through the internet as opposed to regular channels that you can simply jam or interfere with, it's very, very hard to break up those kind of networks. It seems like you have an ability for these messages to disseminate but also as you mentioned, a very strong motivation and certainly in the case of Ukraine, it was a very strong response in return by the Russians which led effectively to the annexation of the eastern part of Ukraine and of Crimea. The question I have now is where do we see this going? There is the ability for a younger demographic to mobilize in Russia and in the Russian periphery and we see this protest movement not really dying away so where does it go from here? To what extent can they actually shape the direction of politics beyond traditional methods and to what extent can this be controlled by the powers that be?
Eugene Chausovsky [00:11:04] shape is the key word here because it's impossible to completely control these kind of avenues of communication and there's a few different things that some of these governments are trying to do. For example, you're seeing in Ukraine, social media is so widespread amongst the younger generation and especially Russian, despite the conflict that Ukraine has, the ongoing conflict in Eastern Ukraine which is supported by Russia, a lot of people in Ukraine use Russian social media outlets. In fact I think 80% use vcontact which was the most popular social media platform. Ukraine has now gone and blocked that use, this happened a couple of weeks ago, basically citing national security concerns that this is metadata that Russia can use, by studying the use of social media and trying to manipulate the government and manipulate society in that sense. They can block external social media platforms. Even with that, there's a lot of ways to get around it, using VPNs, so it's not a surefire method but you can certainly limit it and in that sense, distance the population especially the younger generation from Russia. Russia too has tried to control or at least shape its own younger generation, just as we've seen a lot of young people come out and protest, Russia is really fostering the new generation with its own media propaganda. There's these youth patriotic movements which just recently held a rally during the victory day parade. Russia is basically trying to steer these younger people
Eugene Chausovsky [00:12:45] away from protesting out onto the streets and more toward acting within the regime's interest. It's a very complex, fluid situation and every situation has to be dealt with differently.
Ben Sheen [00:13:01] Putting this into context Eugene, where does this fit broadly into our geopolitical forecast for Russia?
Eugene Chausovsky [00:13:08] I think from Russia's perspective, there's a few different issues which are challenging its influence in the longer term. As we mentioned, there's the decline of the Russian language as a primary language in this belt of former Soviet states. Then we have the evolution of how citizens are interacting with their governments which is making it more difficult to control things from a centralized perspective and finally, one thing that we didn't mention but that is really important is that Russia's demographic outlook is also going to be a big challenge for Moscow moving forward. By 2050, Russia's projected to lose about 10% of its population and this comes as other powers within the region, countries like Turkey, Iran and even the US have much more favorable demographic outlooks. Just as Russia's being challenged by the political, by the cultural changes that are taking place in the former Soviet periphery, so will it face challenges within its own population and its decline. I don't think that this means that Russia is going to collapse anytime soon or even that Russia will be completely eliminated as a regional player, but certainly it will face a decline and it will face challenges to preserving the influence that it's had for all of these years.
Ben Sheen [00:14:25] Very much so and if you're interested in reading more on this subject, you can actually check out Stratfor Worldview, a companion piece to this which is In Eurasia, A New Generation Challenges Russia's Dominance. Eugene thank you so much for joining me today to talk through this topic.
Eugene Chausovsky [00:14:39] Thank you for having me.
Ben Sheen [00:14:47] That concludes this episode of the Stratfor podcast. If you enjoyed today's conversation about the role shifting demographics play in challenging Russia's regional influence, you can read our extended analysis at worldview.stratfor.com. We'll include a link for that along with some related reading in the show notes. If you have a question or a comment about the podcast, or even an idea for a future episode, let us know. You can call us at 1-512-744-4300, extension 3917 or reach us by email at podcast@stratfor.com and don't forget to leave us a review. We really appreciate your feedback and your review also helps others discover the podcast. It just takes a few moments and you can leave a review on iTunes or wherever you subscribe to the podcast. For more geopolitical intelligence, analysis and forecasting that brings global events into valuable perspective, follow us on Twitter @Stratfor. Thanks for listening.
