The Russia Conundrum

There is undoubtedly a section of the Russian population that is inclined to support his hardline values. This was strikingly evident in the large number of people who gave their unconditional backing to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Older people, in particular, can fear societal change and wish to cling to a regime that claims it is protecting them from hostile outside forces. But I think things are very different where young people are concerned. Young people have more hope for the future and are less scared of demanding individual rights and liberties – all the things that a backward-looking autocracy cannot offer. Youngsters have dreams and ambitions; they want to make the world a better place. It’s the same in the East and in the West. If a society doesn’t offer its younger generation a positive dream of hope for the future – something other than just ‘work hard, do what you’re told and save up for your old age’ – then they are going to find that dream somewhere else: in superstition, fanaticism or even religious extremism. The aim of Open Russia was to offer young Russians a real way forward. We wanted to give people the choice of how they would like to think and how they would like to live their lives.

To make informed choices, people need information and they weren’t getting it from the Kremlin. So Open Russia tried another initiative, called ‘Help and Advise’. It was a volunteer service run by youngsters that resembled a sort of do-it-yourself network of Citizens Advice Bureaus. Anyone with a practical problem involving access to public services, difficulties obtaining medical help or complaints about the performance of local authorities could ring a telephone number and speak to a volunteer. The volunteer would then find out the right person for the client to contact and put the two of them in touch. Our ‘People’s Verdict’ programme offered a basic level of assistance for people unable to afford legal representation or – more likely – unable to afford the bribes needed to get justice from the courts. It offered victims help in finding lawyers and advice on how to insist on their legal rights and a fair hearing.

Open Russia funded an orphanage, Korallovo, outside Moscow for the sons and daughters of parents who had died in the service of Russia. It was run by my father, Boris, and my mother, Marina. It, too, was used to teach social values to the younger generation. Conditions were not luxurious, but there was a sports hall, a swimming pool and reliable medical care. When the Beslan school massacre happened in September 2004, a number of injured children who had lost their parents were taken to hospital in Moscow. I was already in jail at the time, but when I heard what was happening, I took an active role in trying to help. It seemed to me that some of the orphaned children were in danger of being abandoned, so we offered them places in our boarding school. While the massacre was in the headlines, the state made a show of caring for the children; but a month later, when they were released from hospital, they were forgotten. That taught me a lesson.

All the orphans and children from broken families who came to us at Korallovo were given a proper education that prepared many of them to go on to university. Every child was given access to the internet, encouraged to explore a diverse range of opinions and to look critically at official propaganda. We wanted to roll out the internet programme to schools across the country to help children think for themselves, instead of just accepting what they were told by state television and newspapers. I gave many public lectures about the work of Open Russia, and reading them now makes me realise how optimistic we were at that time about the impact education could have on the generation that would decide Russia’s future.

We consider that our own mentality, the mentality of the older generation is very difficult to alter. But if our work with the youth of Russia is successful, then in 15 or 20 years they will start to determine the politics of our country. They will have been born in the new Russia and they will turn Russia into a normal country. The size of our big companies will no longer be dwarfed by those in the West; our pensions will no longer be smaller; things here will become normal.

By ‘normal’, I meant a turn away from the distorted model of social values that Putin had imposed on Russia and a move towards Western standards of openness, pluralism and enterprise.