The Generational Problem in Russia: Historical-Symbolic and Political Attitudes

The definition of the term “generation” continues to be among the most lacking in conceptual clarity, and researchers and scholars tend to avoid it. Yet generations are just as important as social classes and genders in explaining individual and group differences in culture, interests, and behavior. The sociological approach to analyzing the phenomenon of generations is represented by K. Mannheim, who proposed the idea of “social location” as the most important characteristic of a generation, based on which “a group of individuals share a common location in the social and historical process, and thereby they are limited to a specific range of potential experience, predisposing them for a certain characteristic mode of thought (our emphasis— Author) and experience.” Four basic approaches have been defined for the periodization and study of generations. They are: (a) genealogical kinship (generations of children and parents); (b) age cohorts (young and older generations); (c) periods of life and socialization; (d) historical periods (the 1968 generation, the postwar generation). Often these principles for categorizing generations are combined. Under the approach of the Russian sociologist Yu. Levada, the twentieth-century generational sequence in Russia numbered six generations. This approach was based on combining the concept of the significance of historical events (and their related processes) with age. Considering the sample design in Russia-wide mass surveys and natural population decline, it should be noted that the first three generations, born before 1929, are for practical purposes unrepresented at present. The analysis is therefore limited to the generations of the Thaw, Stagnation, and Perestroika out of the six types originally proposed by Levada (Table 1).