Z Generation

Allyson Edwards, Jennifer G Mathers and Oleh Smal

“Patriotism is something that is absorbed with mother’s milk”

As this remark by Nikita Mikhalkov, Chair of the Russian Fund on Culture, demonstrates, officials in Putin’s Russia believe that key values should be cultivated almost from birth. The Kremlin promotes the idea that patriotism is closely associated with Russia’s military and with victory in wars: past, present and future. The memory of the “Great Patriotic War” (the Soviet experience of the Second World War) is carefully preserved in officially-approved narratives that emphasize not only the glory and heroism of the Soviet people who participated in that conflict but that people living in Russia today are the biological and spiritual heirs of those wartime heroes.

Our research into youth militarisation in Russia focusses on the various ways that the state encourages young people to regard war as a necessary and normal occurrence and participation in war as a sacred act. Youth in Russia encounter this message in a wide variety of settings, including school lessons, theme parks, popular culture and the activities organised by patriotic youth groups like the Youth Army and the Victory Volunteers. Some parents even dress their babies in costumes that look like military uniforms and decorate their prams with the letter “Z”, to demonstrate their support for Russia’s war in Ukraine. Although these actions do not necessarily cause children to grow up to be soldiers, they do push young people further down what Cynthia Enloe calls the “militarisation highway”. In our work, we argue that the ultimate goal of the state in Putin’s Russia is to make militarised patriotism a normal part of everyday life to ensure a war-supportive society and a steady crop of recruits for the armed forces for generations to come.

About the academic

Allyson Edwards is a Lecturer in Global Histories at Bath Spa University. She is a specialist on Russian history, politics and society, with a focus on the uses of history and memory, cultural militarisation and patriotic education. You can find out more about the research that inspired this cartoon by reading this short piece that Allyson and Jennifer recently wrote for The Conversation

Jennifer G. Mathers is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of International Politics at Aberystwyth University, where she researches and teaches on Russian politics and security, and gender and conflict. Allyson and Jennifer enjoyed working with Ukrainian political cartoonist Oleh Smal to create this image and hope that it will help to raise the profile of this important issue and its implications for the future of war and peace in Europe and in the wider world.