Dear Discover Ukraine visitors,
This Saturday we will invite a few young Ukrainians - representatives of the younger generation to be our guest speakers in the chatroom. The topic of the discussion will be-
Stylish and Prestigious; Youth In Different Countries
You are very welcome to take part in the discussion and to bring your young friends or family members to participate in the discussion. Please, let them know that we are a very friendly community of international users, who always welcome new people in our discussion chats.
Here are some topics which will be put to discussion:
- Nationalism and nationalistic sentiments among young generation
- attitude to education and career among young people today
- attitude to family life and roles in family
- young people and their vision of healthy lifestyle
We are looking forward to seeing you in the chatroom on Saturday.
The chatroom guests of April 12, discussion were graduate students of Kharkiv National university (left to right: Dina, Anna, Olga, Yana, Zhenya, and Irina Timchenko, the DU team member)
We are looking forward to meeting this group again in our future chats.
As a discussion starter, we would like to suggest you to read the following article, and let us discuss it during the chatroom together with our invited guests:
Kremlin Sponsored "Youth Groups" Turn Russian Nationalism Into Religion: The Nashi Generation
The Kremlin (Vladimir V. Putin) has created national youth groups to indoctrinate Russian nationalism into teenagers. The organization is called Nashi. We are talking about thousands of teens and young adults from all over Russia. Some of the Nashi summer camp photos looks like it could easily be a Young Life summer camp or something.
The youth groups are anti-American, pro-Lenin, etc.., and seems to have picked up some techniques from evangelical youth camps and conferences. You can read about the "Nashi Manifesto" in the New York Times archive:
To Nashi, young people are neither the lost generation of the turbulent 1990s nor the soulless consumerists of Generation P (for Pepsi) imagined by the writer Viktor Pelevin in 2000. They are, as Nashi’s own glossy literature says, “Putin’s Generation.” “Why Putin’s generation?” Nashi’s national spokeswoman, Anastasia Suslova, asked at the group’s headquarters. “It is because Putin has qualitatively changed Russia. He brought stability and the opportunity for modernization and development of the country. Thus we, the young people — myself, for instance, I am 22, and these eight years were the longest part of my conscious life when we were growing up, and the country was changing with us.”
Nashi emerged in the wake of youth-led protests that toppled sclerotic governments in other post-Soviet republics, especially in Ukraine in 2004. It was joined by similar groups, like the Youth Guard, which belongs to the pro-Putin party United Russia; Locals, a group created by the Moscow region government that recently launched an anti-immigrant campaign; and the Grigorevtsy, affiliated with the Russian Orthodox Church.
Wow. Thoughts? Why is this happening?
