TVP WEEKLY: It seems that your book will be very badly received by the Russians. Do you expect the name of Ian Garner to be blacklisted in Moscow?

IAN GARNER: Actually, I'm already blacklisted! I know I can't travel to Russia, and that's sad for me, of course, because I spent part of my youth in Russia, there are many great Russians, and the country isn't 100% bad. But the reality is that right now I just don't want to travel to Russia. Aside from the fact that I can't travel, there is a risk that I'll travel. We saw what happened to Evan Gershkovich (an American reporter arrested by the FSB on charges of espionage). But I don't want to be confronted with Russians either. I lost friends because of the war, people I've known for a very long time. I've lost people I respect, with whom I cannot even talk morally, except for research purposes, when they confess to the war.

You have called the state-sponsored neo-pioneer movement fascist. Is that an overused word? You know that in Europe we call anyone "fascist" who doesn't conform to the liberal way of thinking. So is the title "Generation Z: Into the Heart of Russia's Fascist Youth" also justified?

The main tenet of fascism, as I understand it, and I took this from Umberto Eco, the Italian philosopher, is the idea that peace can only be achieved through conflict. And that's particularly dangerous when it comes to Russia because of the country’s victim myth in which Russia sees itself as constantly under attack and constantly having to fight to make peace. So there is a fascist idea. The second point is a mixing of times and traditions. It's very easy to look at today's Russia and think: Well, many people are trying to restore the Soviet Union.

SIGN UP TO OUR PAGE Does Putin give this hope?

He has talked about the end of the Soviet Union as a great geopolitical catastrophe. But he's not trying to recreate the Soviet Union. He's trying to create something that combines elements of an idealized past, a past that isn't real. And that's past that contains parts of the Soviet Union, parts of the Tsarist Empire, and parts of a kind of medieval fantasy and folklore, folk tales about bogatyrs, right? All of that is supposed to be brought together, and that's the third point, you're struggling to create this utopian world where all the best of the past, of a past that of course isn't real, can be combined and somehow come true.

So the regime is built on the Soviet or Tsarist heritage?

As I said, there are elements of both, but mutated by the presence of social media into something entirely new. And if you think of Russian identity as a box, the Putin regime has narrowed that box more and more by saying, to be a good Russian, you have to be Orthodox, you have to be a man, right? A macho type. You have to be belligerent and aggressive. And if you are a woman, you have to play some kind of traditional gender role and stay at home and have children for the motherland. But within that framework, you find elements of Bolshevik ideology, elements of Tsarist ideology and symbolism. And social media makes it possible to live in a world where I can join a dozen groups that are more on the tsarist side, and essentially live out most of my tsarist fantasies with a little pinch of Bolshevik stuff. But maybe when I am 50 or 60 years old and remember or am nostalgic for the Soviet Union. I can do most of that and still stay inside the box.

There is no space for thinking outside the box?

As soon as you think outside the box, that is, as soon as you reject these norms and say, well, “I do not like war, I reject the very distorted form of orthodox Christianity that the state produces today. I am not a straight white male.” Then you have a problem. And the biggest prohibition of all, of course, is being a Democrat and a liberal. Anyone who is a democrat or a liberal is not a Russian in that sense.

From a political point of view, do we have an imperialistic or nationalistic system? What about the Muslim minority and the fact that the Russian Federation is only about 70 percent ethnic Russians?

Well, first of all, I think Putin's project is a white nationalist project. It's an ethnic project. And you're right that it's a very difficult balancing act to include the ethnic minorities in Russia in this project. As with many totalitarian projects in the 20th century, the Putin project is about allowing people to recreate themselves, and it encourages people to recreate themselves by participating in rallies, whether in person or by participating in some kind of rally on social media. And sharing, commenting, and liking posts is one form of that participation. It's digital, but it's still the same thing. There's a really fascinating report that was published ten years ago by the Valdai Club. The Valdai Club is a kind of Kremlin policy factory, a kind of think tank. It's not a real think tank, but like everything in Russia, it's controlled and produced by the Kremlin. The report came out ten years ago, and it looked at the future of young Russians, the challenges of digitalization, and the challenges of living in a multinational nation. And the authors essentially said that we're a multinational nation.

That's a language that comes from Putin, and Russians are number one in the nation. Russian culture is the leading spirit of the nation. And they listed all the heroes that people could emulate. And almost everyone was a white Russian. Almost all of them were men, and most of them were military heroes, along with a handful of authors, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and a handful of scientists. And what they said, go ahead. In the report, the authors said that we need to educate people to emulate these heroes. And ethnic minorities, if Russians are the main dish on the table, are like the garnishes, the condiments that you add to the main dish, which they saw as a way to include ethnic minorities. But there is a suggestion that ethnic minorities are always defined only by how close they can get to Russianness. And the closest they come to Russianness is by imitating Russians, not by actually contributing anything to what makes Russia Russian.

What about religion? Has the Kremlin found a way to revive a religion? But what about the values of Christianity when the Orthodox priest blesses rapists and murderers?

Well, of course, the relationship between church and state in Russia today is such that... there is no relationship between church and state. The church and the state are one and the same organization in Russia, and we know that there is a high level of corruption involved in this relationship. Money plays a big role. But the church, of course, also makes propaganda for the state. We have seen celebrities who have spoken out against the war attacked--verbally, not physically--by priests. We have seen churches fly Z flags, Tsarist flags, and Soviet World War victory flags outside their churches on Sundays, as worshippers came in. And this brings us back to the concept of sacrifice: who are the most revered and important heroes in Russian history? Well, the holy warriors of the past who became saints by fighting in wars, by dying to save Russia, to save the Orthodox faith, and thus to ward off the threat of Catholicism, the threat of and after World War II, one can say that the cult and sacrifice of the World War II became something like a religion. And today the religion of World War II and thus the religion of Orthodoxy have become one and the same. And so we find priests blessing the heroes of the past as they bless the heroes of the present, killing themselves and doing everything to kill the enemies of Russia because the interests of Russia are the interests of Orthodox Christianity (the Russian Orthodox Christian Church).

But take a look at the history of Russia. Every single generation born from the 19th century had its own imperialist war. Even before 1920, in the Russo-Japanese War, in the Crimea, in the war with Turkey, and in the Polish uprisings. Perhaps they cannot live without conflict. It has begun to become part of the DNA...

I would not go so far as to say that they can not live without conflict because the nation is something that is socially constructed. Yes, that's true. There is nothing genetic about Russians that makes them more inclined to violence or hatred or peace or love or anything else than any other people in the world. Right? What we have is a culture of war, and culture is created by people. And in Russia, culture is created primarily by governments and regimes. And the dominant myth of Russia, which I think runs throughout Russian history, is the myth of sacrifice and martyrdom, the idea that Russia and Russians must sacrifice and fight to save themselves and the world. And if you look at the earliest medieval myths, the stories of the early Russian medieval poems, you see over and over again the people who are heroized and not the people who survive, but the people who die in the name of conflict. And you see it in this 15th century myth of Moscow as the third Rome: Russia is the last bastion. Russia is at war.

If Russia doesn't fight, not only Russia will perish, but civilization will perish. This is reflected most clearly in World War II, in which, of course, many people on the Soviet side performed tremendous heroic deeds. That's the reality, which of course was accompanied by a whole load of awfulness, where there were criminal elements like rape and violence. And what happened to Poland is, of course, deeply regrettable, to say the least. But the Russian memory of World War II is that 27 million people died and that this wasn't something we wish we could have avoided, but something that had to happen. The sacrifices had to be made to save the world. If you look at the stories of Stalingrad, the Battle of Moscow, and Kursk, the message over and over again is that they had to die. Ordinary people have to die to save the world. And this is problematic because when we think of World War II outside of Russia, the phrase "never again" comes to mind. When we think of the Holocaust and the war, we'd do anything to avoid the genocides and the deaths.

We're very grateful for the death, for the sacrifices of the troops that were brought. But we wish that it hadn't come to this. In Russia, the myth is turned upside down. The great victory was achieved only through conflict. And that's why under Putin, since 1999, you see the use of this myth again and again. The first thing Putin did when he was prime minister, then as acting president, and then quickly as president, was he waged a war against Chechnya and promised the Russians that this is a war that will save Russia. This is a war that will make Russia whole again in Georgia. Why did he wage war? We're saving the Russians, we're saving Russia, we're saving civilization. Why is he fighting against Ukraine? Supposedly to save Russia. Right? And that is built up, as we know, through these huge festivals, movies, books, and educational programs. So people are pushed in that direction, but they also embrace that myth because it gives them validation. It's a myth that tells ordinary Russians that they matter, that their suffering matters. And so people believe it, and they go along with it.

As for symbolism. Does the letter "Z" mean more than just the name of the tanks?

Before February 24, 2022, the sign had no meaning. It was meaningless, it was just a letter, right? But now, 14 or 15 months later, everyone who sees the "Z," even outside Russia, who sees a big letter, a "Z" smeared on a wall, immediately make sa connection with the war. So it's amazing that you can go from nothing to this kind of fullness of meaning so quickly. And of course, the letter "Z" basically means nothing. It seems to have been chosen almost arbitrarily by the Russian propagandists and it has to do with this Z and V, the Vostok and Zapad military units coming into Ukraine. Why did they choose that? Well, they were in a hurry because they assumed that the war would be over very quickly and easily, and then they realized that wasn't going to be the case. So they needed something to connect memories and meanings, to understand the war, something concrete. And the Z reminds me in a way of all fascist symbolism, because fascism is an ideology that tends to take symbols from all sorts of areas and throw them together in a rather illogical way.

Many think first of the swastika, an ancient Hindu symbol of peace, love and happiness. And I apologize to Hindus, because that's probably not a good explanation, but it's sufficient for our purposes. And yet now, just like "Z," the swastika is always associated with one thing. And what is useful for the government is this plasticity of meaning. We talk about plasticity. Meaning can be changed, bent, reshaped, and melted down like plastic because it reflects the nature of the so-called military special operation, which has no clear goals, no clear end point, and no logic. The justification for it is absurd and contradicts reality. And so the symbol as the goal and reality of the war, let's call it a war, because that's what it's, right? Just as the realities of war and the realities of defeat and attack and advance and retreat change.

Can the meaning of the symbol change as well? And that's incredibly useful for a regime that doesn't want to be bound to a particular truth, because truth and reality are the opposite of what the Putin regime stands for.

And you try to explain that the regime channels the anger of the youth.

The Putin regime is always looking to the future. And that's why young people are so important to fascism, because young people are supposedly the people who will create and inhabit this world of the future, this impossible world where Russia is strong. Russia lives in this utopian fantasy. The problem is that it cannot come true. All theorists, all fascism experts point out that this is illogical, impossible and irrational. So what happens in fascism? Perpetual war. War again: we have to choose someone else to be responsible for the failure of the country, for the failure of the last war to fulfill the promise to create a utopia. And that's how it was in Chechnya. We blamed the Chechens. Russia killed thousands of Chechens. Today Ukraine, we blame Ukrainians. The campaigns at home against homosexuals, against LGBTQ people: they are supposedly the disease that is bringing Russia down (and if you look at Putin's speeches, he often talks about diseases). When Russia is done with Ukraine, children will be taught in Russian schools and through youth programs that if nothing changes in this culture, you have to blame someone else. And this is almost a philosophy. It does not matter who you blame, does it? Because it's not rational. And it could be Poles, it could be Balts, it could be ethnic minorities inside Russia, traitors. But they will be the sick ones, the sick ones who will keep Russia from realising this utopia.

How did the "brotherhood nation" become an inhuman race?

Well, if you look at the history of Ukrainian-Russian relations in the last three to 400 years, it is mainly the relations between an empire and its colony. If you look at the language laws, the anti-Ukrainian laws that were passed in the 18th and 19th centuries. And Ukrainians were vilified as traitors for a long time. They are like brothers, but they are like stupid younger brothers who need Moscow's hand, who need Moscow to guide them, to lead them, to show them how not to be basically ignorant and stupid. And in the last ten years, the regime in Moscow has deliberately introduced language that is very disturbingly similar to the language of Nazi Germany to describe Ukrainians, namely to call Ukrainians sick vermin. There is a word "nelyudi." These are people who are literally animals and inhuman. And if you dive into the Russian Internet, a lot of people have adopted this language and share images of Ukrainians as pigs, as swine, as monsters, and create their own memes. This is a kind of strange language of fascism that is put on top of something that is very much the social media of the 21st century. But people use this language, and the state has chosen its language very carefully and spread it through media networks and social media. Of course, not everyone in Russia believes this, but this is a widespread phenomenon. This is a racist society where it is okay to describe Ukrainians with all these implications, to call them pigs, animals, beasts, murderers, Nazis, and so on.

Where is the flywheel of the neo-Goebbels narratives?

Well, in part it comes from the Kremlin. Partly it comes from a relatively large group of far-right Russians who were marginalized in the early 2000s. But the regime brought them into the country and often used them. The classic example is football hooligan groups, which the Kremlin never admitted were part of the Kremlin's informal operations but paid these people to beat up gays and Chechens on football days. And on social media, they are basically doing the same thing, right? They bring in these true believers, encourage them, energize them, and give them ideas, topics, and materials. And occasionally someone very famous like Solovyov, who has a million followers on Telegram, pulls out a post from a relatively unimportant person or group, shares it, and then suddenly that person is showered with attention. This constantly creates the impression that there is a kind of participatory discourse in Russian society, a discussion about what is happening because anyone can join in. You, too, can become famous on social media if Solovyov shares your post. But at the same time, only the posts that are directed against Ukraine are shared. The post of liberals disappear. At the same time, the state is attacking democratic and opposition groups, using trolls, hackers, and bot networks to drown out the opposition's messages with even more hate and to create the impression that the only opinion that exists, or the only valid opinion that most Russians hold, is that of hate. So there is a sense that there is a real involvement of ordinary Russians, that messages are coming from the top, and that the state is able to distort what you see on social media by pulling out messages and drowning out messages that it does not like.

You stated that the Russian Youth Army is like the Hitlerjugend.

It is the most important and worrisome organization and has already existed for seven years. Its membership is growing by leaps and bounds; last year it had 300,000 members. It now has 1.3 million members. So the war has not stopped children from becoming members, nor has it stopped parents from allowing their children to become members. And I would say that the neo-pioneers are even more troubling because what they are learning is not just something for the Scouting movement. It's explicit preparation for a kind of identity that connects young people to this history of sacrifice and martyrdom with notions of orthodox morality and spirituality. And it's explicitly designed as a pathway to the military for young Russians. And so they learn tactical exercises. They do physical exercises. They learn to fire rifles and use grenades, prepare for chemical weapons attacks, and the like. So if you look at the Millennial generation or the older generation Z that came of age before this organization existed, they are not interested in war, they are not ready for war, and they are not really interested in war, right? They do not want to go to the front because they do not want to die themselves, even if they are not against the war in Ukraine or against the idea of war in principle.

However, the government's plan is to have students who are better prepared for war by training this young army generation. In parallel, there are dozens of other organizations that are more similar to the pioneers. One of the larger ones is a volunteer organization called "Volontery pobedy," the Victory Volunteers. And that has, I think, 300 or so thousand members. These students go out and work in the community. They take care of the World War memorials II and the World War veterans II, are the people who participate in parades. They are the ones designing online campaigns. A lot of it is meant to be playful, fun. But they are learning this kind of nationalist ideology. And what the Putin regime has done in the last year is create a new "The Movement of the First". This is explicitly supposed to be a new pioneering organization. So if cosmopolitan, more liberal parents in Moscow or St. Petersburg find the idea of the young army a little scary, a little too much, then "The Movement of the First" is more likely to attract their children because it's more pleasant. There was an opinion poll a few years ago, maybe early last year, maybe two years ago, that said 90% of Russian parents miss the pioneers. That's a huge number. So if the Youth Army is too much, you can always indoctrinate the kids with other groups because there are so many groups. If you are a young person in Russia who wants to be involved in society, you have to participate in society through these groups, and therefore you have to embrace the ideology.

So, being a pioneer is a kind of hype, a privilege?

I'll give you an example. I talked to the father of a 14-year-old girl from southwestern Russia who joined the Youth Army. And he's just a normal older man who's not against Putin, who doesn't love Putin, a classic, so-called apathetic Russian, right? He just doesn't want to think about anything. He wants to live his life. And his daughter has asked to join the Young Army. And why? Because she saw that it was fun and her friends were doing the same. And so she went off. She does all the things you can do, all digitally. And she has a TikTok account where, like most 14-year-old girls, she posts videos about herself and her life on TikTok, right? It's like an online diary, amazingly candid. And in between all the normal stuff about friends and food and music that she listens to, often Western music, she posts these little videos of herself in uniform, talking about the youth army, talking about the things that she does as part of the organization, and talking about it as a kind of process of self-realization. That helps me become the person I want to be.

It makes me feel like I belong somewhere, that I'm more popular, that I'm accomplishing something. So normal group dreams, but connected to the state indoctrination project and the state militarization project, and that's where these groups will be effective if the state can keep that going. And that is a bigoted right because we know that the state is often incompetent, that projects fail, and that there is so much infighting. But if the state can keep this going, it'll have its successes, just like the Soviet state did, in convincing ordinary kids that being part of these kinds of groups and projects is part of life. And putting on the Youth Army shirt or the Victory Volunteers shirt or the baseball cap, whatever it's, is just as normal as putting on any other piece of clothing. And that's how you spread the message, and that's how you can slowly, step by step, spread these rather insidious and dangerous messages about violence and war.

So Tik Tok does the same harm to youth as in our world, just in a different way? Another argument that it should be banned?

I mean, that's the million-dollar question we're wrestling with for free speech in the age of social media. I think TikTok is so big that it's impossible for a Western state to ban it completely. Because if we try to ban TikTok in Canada or America or the UK or any other Western country, the teenagers will just find a way to get around the blockade. Just like Russian teens will find a way to get around the blocks on Instagram, which is still very widely used. We need to find a way to engage with China, keep China on our side, and encourage the Chinese state to understand what's really happening in Ukraine, to recognize that what's really happening in Ukraine is damaging to their interests, and therefore to put pressure on TikTok because they can do that in a way that we can't. To restrict violent content, to restrict the ability of Russian children to see authoritarian violent content, and to see if that will help. But a complete ban, I mean, first of all, China isn't going to allow that, TikTok isn't going to allow that, and I don't think we can do it physically.

We're just talking about the idea of the new Homo Sovieticus. Do you agree with that?

I'd say that we're witnessing the emergence of a Homo Putinus who resembles Homo Sovieticus in that he absorbs the teachings of the state, lives the life that the state demands of him, and thus absorbs the lesson that reality is violence and that war means peace. And the Putin regime has been successful in changing people's behaviors in the past. The Putin regime is the regime that has created this so-called apathetic 40 to 50% of Russians. So can they recreate a generation? Not overnight, but they have been working on it for ten years. They're working faster than ever before. If we look ten years into the future - and I could be wrong, and I'd be happy if I'm wrong - will we have a generation of Homo Putinus or whatever you want to call them? I think that's a distinct possibility. And I think we dismiss that at our peril.

You know the Russians, you have talked to them. Do you feel that lying is part of their social culture?

I think the most frustrating thing I found in writing the book is that - I mentioned it a couple of times in the book, but it happened so many times - there were whole conversations that didn't make it into the book because they were just going around in circles, where someone said that we're going to kill Ukrainians to save Ukraine. We're going to save them from themselves by killing them. And I said, well, that doesn't make sense. You could save them with money, with political support. Russia has managed to interfere in Ukrainian politics for so long and essentially control Ukraine. Today, you could do the same thing, right? You could use energy resources and basically show them how they could take control of Ukraine without killing Ukrainians. And even then, they still said, no, we have to do it, we have to kill them. I said, well, you say you're a Christian, you say you're Orthodox, you say you're a good person. Doesn't killing people make you a bad person? They said, no, we're the good people. You're the people who are committing genocide. And so it goes on and on and on, and it's like talking to people who are in a cult.

And I'm sure the way I explain it to people is that everybody in the last three or four years has talked to somebody who's been sucked into weird Internet conspiracy theories about vaccines or COVID--these hidden truths. It's just crazy stuff that doesn't make sense. And if something like this can happen to people who live in the West, who have access to good education, who have access to good and free news media. Then think about how hard it is in Russia, where you're constantly surrounded by propaganda, lies, and distorted realities, first of all, to accept that there is another truth and that you have been wrong all your life if you see it at all. And b. And that's what worries me so much about what the state is doing with the power of social media and the reach of its social media. You may just never realize that these alternative truths exist. Because when you're inside the cult, our truths, our reality that is real and that is true, look like a crazy conspiracy theory to you. And so a lot of my conversations with people were along the lines of, hello, I'm writing this book. - OK, You look interesting. - I want to write about the things you said. And they immediately said, No, you're a Western propagandist, you're going to lie. And that was the end.

What will be the future of the so poisoned society?

I mentioned that there is no such thing as cultural determinism. We can reconstruct cultures, and cultures are constructed. There is no reason why Russians must have these values. There are quite a number of Russians who do not hold these values, and they are the starting point for us. These are the people we need to reach, to whom we need to give money and support. We need to build alternative forms of Russianness in the social networks. We can do it, but we have to take it seriously. Of course, the top priority right now is to win the war in Ukraine and stop Russia's physical violence. But the problem is not going to go away tomorrow with the end of the Putin regime, because this is a culture where people either accept violence or perpetrate violence themselves. And the large number of apathetic Russians is a problem because those who turn a blind eye and pretend nothing is happening are allowing the violence to happen. Or? They are not resisting the violence.

Do you feel that we are beginning to live on a different planet? In Poland or in Canada the desired values are non-violence, tolerance and peace. And here we have a country with a completely different bloodstream.

So, these are the people we have to reach out to, and we have to start doing that. You mentioned Canada, and Canada is a good example of why we should take this issue more seriously. Because Canada is a country that values peace, that values its role in creating norms for peacekeeping, particularly in the context of the United Nations. Let us remember, for example, Rwanda, where Canada played a leading role in supporting peacekeeping. And today, Canada is spending some money to defend Ukraine. We are taking in some refugees, but what are we doing to stop the problems in Russia before they get worse? Almost nothing. We do not spend money on that. I have never heard this discussed in parliament. The politicians are not interested in it, and I would say the public is not interested in it, because they think the problem is Ukraine. And, of course, the problem today is Ukraine. But as I explained, there will be more violence when the war in Ukraine is over. It could be internal violence in Russia, or it could be violence from outside. It could be directed against Moldova, it could be directed against the Baltic countries, it could be directed against Poland, it could be directed against northern Kazakhstan, recently referred to as traditionally Russian territory. There is no logic to it. We do not know where it will happen. But if Russia does not change direction, it must inevitably happen. And we have to face that. We can not just bury our heads in the sand and pretend that the problem will solve itself. And I am a humanist, I care about people. And despite everything, I also care about Russia and the Russians. And I also do not want to see a Russia that collapses in a violent civil war where ethnic minorities and homosexuals are killed, because that's the next internal war, right? We should be out there saving lives and helping people as best we can, and we can.
– interviewed by Cezary Korycki

TVP WEEKLY. Editorial team and jornalists

Ian Garner is a historian focusing on Soviet and Russian war propaganda. The author of “Stalingrad Lives: Stories of Combat and Survival” and "Z Generation: Into the Heart of Russia's Fascist Youth" he studied at the Universities of Bristol and Toronto, and at the St. Petersburg State Conservatory.