I am a historian of the Soviet Union, a country that does not exist any more. I study the history of Soviet hippies, a phenomenon that also belongs in the past. During the Perestroika period in the 1980s, political and economic reforms led to greater freedoms of the press, speech and assembly. Irredentist national feeling swelled in the Soviet republics, including Ukraine, leading ultimately to the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Putin’s war in Ukraine is also a war on this history: he is determined to reverse the entire Perestroika project, reestablishing the primacy and ideology of the Russian state.
At the heart of the crisis in Russia, both then and now, is a profound generational conflict. An older elite, with values rooted in the past, has been pitched against a younger demographic keen to advance a different national identity. Putin’s regime will not be toppled by the young, just as the Soviet Union did not collapse because of Beatlemania. But young Russians are already hollowing out the very ground on which he stands.
