With war raging in Ukraine, a strange and pernicious kind of love is being foisted on today’s Russian youth. In a country where nearly 20 percent of the population is under the age of 14, Russia has been promoting membership in its Youth Army as a way of “liberating children from the burdensome search for the self.” It’s working, too, with hundreds of thousands of young Russians, aged between 7 and 18, rushing to sign up since the Youth Army was first established, in 2016.
According to Ian Garner’s chilling exposé, Z Generation: Into the Heart of Russia’s Fascist Youth, many of these youngsters hail from the poorer southern and western regions of Russia that border Ukraine and Belarus. “Worse,” Garner writes, “the Youth Army has sought out recruits in orphanages. It claims that joining up is a solution to the alcoholism and criminality that sucks orphans in.”
