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"Significant increase in anxiety and depressed moods": Russians’ preferred future is a return to the prewar past, surveys reveal (russiapost.info)

submitted 4 months ago by 0x815 to c/europe

28 comments fedilink hide all child comments

The persistent negative outlook among the Russian populace is most evident in their perception of the future. Even in the relatively prosperous year of 2019, 62% of Russians, according to the Public Opinion Foundation (FOM), felt that the country's situation was not conducive to life planning. But In the atmosphere of uncertainty and stress that has developed in Russia in the third year of the war, Russians avoid making plans for several years ahead or thinking about the future.

"This behaviour deepens the state of anxiety, especially if there are expectations of a negative outcome," writes Elena Koneva, sociologist and founder of ExtremeScan, a research organization.

According to ExtremeScan survey data from the autumn of 2023, the so-called "special military operation" came in third place among significant factors affecting respondents' personal lives, after health (their own and that of loved ones) and family income.

"Available research in Russia shows a significant increase in anxiety and depressed moods," Koneva says.

No future without an end to the war

Russian people want to believe in the future but they cannot, with respondents 35 years old or younger the most pessimistic, her research reveals. Those in the older age group tend to demonstrate optimism, though they admit that it is not based on facts but an unfounded belief in Russia's strength and luck.

"The experience of recent years shows that even if the bullet has been dodged for now, people should nonetheless prepare for a worsening of the situation in every sense," says Koneva.

"There are no factors militating for an improvement."

all 29 comments

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[–] DmMacniel 30 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Would be cool when the Russian People would fricking do something about it then?

[–] DarkThoughts@fedia.io 23 points 4 months ago

"I'm not political."

[–] CaptObvious@literature.cafe 12 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Would be cool if they had the power to do something about it then.

[–] gajustempus 7 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Well, if they all banded together, went to the streets and protested together - what bad could happen?

Arresting everyone? Hundreds, even thousands of people? How big should that prison be?

[–] CaptObvious@literature.cafe 3 points 4 months ago

The old Soviet prison cities still exist. So yeah, that’s a possibility

[–] rottingleaf@lemmy.world 0 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

They kinda did it a few times, I dunno if you remember, but it was Obama with his rebooting relationships with Russia and madam Merkel with her firm belief in peace through fossil fuels trade and such. So both USA and EU countries and many others were recognizing Putin's elections as very good, very democratic and about protesters would kinda ask to be softer with them, while TV talking heads and morons in the web would explain everyone how it's better that Putin remains in power, after all, what if communists or neo-nazis come to power and, for example, invade a neighboring country?..

Arresting everyone? Hundreds, even thousands of people? How big should that prison be?

Hundreds and thousands - perfectly realistic and has happened. Were let go after some time because it was a different time and they needed sorta illusion of being softer.

[–] Quittenbrot 0 points 4 months ago

If they didn't have the power then there wouldn't be so much oppression going on in Russia.

They just have to exercise said power.

[–] 0x815 15 points 4 months ago

>‘Victory’ is for ‘them,’ the state – not the people

[–] daddy32@lemmy.world 13 points 4 months ago (2 children)

It wasn't third year of the war. It started about 10 years ago. This was just the recent escalation. Apart from that, Russia has been in war with its neighbors (Georgia, Chechnya...) almost since it came to the existence in its current form. 30 years now?

[–] Quittenbrot 5 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Still the current scale of war is something recent Russia hasn't experienced since ages.

[–] awwwyissss@lemm.ee 2 points 4 months ago

Easily their worst war since WWII. Afghanistan had a small fraction of the casualties they've seen in two years Ukraine, and it lasted a decade.

[–] niktemadur@lemmy.world 4 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Also worth mentioning that the russian military has a stubborn drunken "culture" of brutalizing its' soldiers, either in a direct sadistic manner or through neglecting their dignity and basic needs. Cannon fodder, regarded and treated as such.

[–] daddy32@lemmy.world 2 points 4 months ago

Also on strategic/tactical level, as I've heard. That was probably one of the things that led to Wagner's uprising.

[–] rottingleaf@lemmy.world 0 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Eh, not having that culture is a relatively recent thing even for Western militaries. Or I think I've read so about Commonwealth and US navies ~100 years ago. Their ground forces by then already got rid of it. I think so, it's all vague memories of reading something.

EDIT: And consider the fact that even in 1905 Russian army ranks would be formed of recruits, not conscripts. People would get randomly (kinda) chosen for long military service. Still in that army Dragomirov was quite popular, with his "a man taught to fear the superior's stick will by habit fear enemy bayonets" and such things about treating soldiers with respect. The specific disregard for people, I think, came to Soviet army around 60's and 70's, when soldiers were casually used on various civilian jobs as part of first restoration of the country after the war, and then simply to fix planning errors and just as part of corruption, slave labor, one can say.

[–] Dasus@lemmy.world 4 points 4 months ago

"Prewar-past"

Oh so to a non-warring state?

Huh. So surprising.

Warring is some boomer shit.

[–] electric_nan@lemmy.ml 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

So just like us, then?

[–] match@pawb.social 4 points 4 months ago

I'm feeling kinda hopeful now, kamala came out swinging and gen z is riled up for her, and meanwhile the rnc gave us the surprise vp pick of "just some guy"

[–] lemmy_99c4zb3e3@reddthat.com -3 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Poor orcs are depressed because they are afraid that they will be sent for a 3-day special operation. But they continue to support their tsar and military. I don't feel sorry for them.

[+] CaptainKickass@lemmy.world -8 points 4 months ago (2 children)

They're sad?!?

[–] kwomp2@sh.itjust.works 5 points 4 months ago (1 children)

So you identify yourself with your government as you identify them with theirs?

Would you get organized and face the government publicly if you were in russia rn?

Do you take responsibility for your society, trying your best to keep it from descending into authoritarianism?

Because if not, it's kinda weird to dehumanize everyday normal russian people like with that meme in the face of their sitchu

[–] CaptainKickass@lemmy.world -4 points 4 months ago (1 children)

The Russian people are responsible for their own misery

Rise up

[–] Quittenbrot 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

"But they are so powerless."

Powerless is the one who chooses to be powerless.

[–] kwomp2@sh.itjust.works 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Well both of your are just repeating the same thing again. The concept of the autonomous subject, that has been put in our minds (among others by the standard modern film, in which a manly superhero uses his limitless commitment to overcome everything impossible) is a lie.

What we can decide and do is heavily conditioned by the social world (shouldn't come as a surpise for a social species).

I just gave you a bunch of ways you can use to question that ideal of "if you just want it enough, you can do anything".

Yet all you come up with is plein repetition of a contrafactual concept

[–] Quittenbrot 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I take responsibility in what my country, my society, my ancestors did in the past. I wouldn't know if I had the courage to rise up against the system in a dictatorship, but this does not free me from my responsibility for my society. Nor does this contradict the fact that this system would collapse without the support of a large enough part of its population.

There have been numerous incidents in history of people rising up against their authoritarian state and succeeding. What happened in the European states of the Warsaw Pact in the late 80s?

Why would it be possible for e.g. Poles to enforce political changes in the 80s but not for Russians in the 2020s?

[–] kwomp2@sh.itjust.works 0 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Everybody carries responsibility. Possibillity is a complex issue that depends on collective action.

If you go about "enforcing political change" in russia right now, you get jailed or "windowed", as many recent examples showed.

This does not make responsibility disappear, but it immensly changes the gauge for judging individual fault.

Also I see a massive double standard here. Because almost no matter where you live (I guess it's somewhere in the "global north", one of the centers of economic-political power), if you are not actively organizing resistance against the neoliberal program that is hegemonial and widely enforced, you are responsible for the massive poverty in and outside of your country and the geopolitical intability that is closely and causaly connected to said program.

The dehuminization of "let those fuckers be depressed because their lives are destroyed by oppressive politics" shoul consequently also be aplied to all the anxious, stressed and depressed people in the "first world countries".

Or, how about we don't dehumanize anyone...

[–] Quittenbrot 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

If you go about “enforcing political change” in russia right now, you get jailed or “windowed”, as many recent examples showed.

As was the case in 80s Poland, for example. Or any other authoritarian, undemocratic country. The only countries where opposition is largely without these dangers are those you name later ("neoliberal economic north").

if you are not actively organizing resistance against the neoliberal program that is hegemonial and widely enforced, you are responsible for the massive poverty in and outside of your country

Feel free to compare the deliberate, incredible and brutal slaughter and destruction of country and people by Russia in Ukraine with a system you oppose politically. Just don't expect me to do the same. We've experienced other systems globally and strangely enough, although our current is far from perfect, most don't want these systems back. Go figure.

The dehuminization of “let those fuckers be depressed because their lives are destroyed by oppressive politics”

These are entirely your words, not mine. I think it is more dehumanising to argumentatively rid the people of Russia from their fundamental human core such as a free will. They aren't brain-dead people who are forever determined to be controlled by evil power-hungry leaders ending in "-in".

They have to decide what their future will be. Russia being a nuclear power and no-one sane in the "west" considering a military invasion of it as was done with Nazi Germany, all the change in Putin's Russia inevitably has to come from within.

In my eyes, this is far less dehumanising than treating them as helpless victims without power or the ability to speak for themselves.

[–] kwomp2@sh.itjust.works 1 points 4 months ago

Okay I see we have radically different understandings of how political power dynamics work and what "free will" and "democratic societies" are. This difference is probably most condensed in the concept of subjectivity, which I tried to open up for investigation with the bunch of questions in my earlier comment.

I think we can't solve this here and now, so I'm gonna leave it at what I think is central.

Individual political agency is always conditioned by ideological and praxeologically powerful structures.

In russia they are easy to see (you get killed). In "the west" they are more more subtle (people contrafactually imagine beeing independent subjects whereas they grow into disciplined subjectivity).

In both, the vast majority does not have the needed understanding of their political environment and themselfes in it, or the power to substabtially change it. The latter depend on the former and is out of reach, as long as subjectivity is imagined as individual, as they did in those ugly comments above.

I wanna emphasize I respect this conversation, you and our difference but its just too much conceptual material to handle here. I hope it doesnt appear arrogant to name the authors that seem to me the most cebtral to these concepts: they would be Foucault and Gramsci, in case you are motivated to get into it, wich I would freakin double tip my fedora for

[–] ssm@lemmy.sdf.org 2 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Least apathetic and corpomedia-brained .world user