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.
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?
Still the current scale of war is something recent Russia hasn’t experienced since ages.
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.
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.
Also on strategic/tactical level, as I’ve heard. That was probably one of the things that led to Wagner’s uprising.
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.