Youth Shepherds: From the Union State to the Ideal

The younger generation is a highly energetic, labile, and easily adaptable mass that can be structured, say, into a working equivalent of Plato’s ideal state, provided the right system of incentives, restrictions, and special mythology is created. The gerontocracy of the “union state” believes in such a possibility, disregarding the fact that a similar experiment by the CPSU spectacularly failed. Or do they think they have learned from their predecessors’ mistakes?

“Nasha Niva” published fragments of a document obtained with the help of ByPol. These are recommendations from the Ministry of Education, addressed to the Administration of the President of Belarus at the end of 2023. According to claims, 180 people participated in the drafting of this dispatch, including university thinkers, representatives of youth affairs bodies, children’s and youth associations, etc.

A preliminary analysis of the brief shows: it was not the oldest people who took part in its compilation, but in their eagerness to indulge the senility of the clients, they exceeded the boldest expectations. The document reeks of senile dementia and paranoia from a mile away, and the prevailing general phrases and bureaucratism are simply horrific:

• Activities in the field of youth policy must respond to the contemporary challenges and threats faced by the “union state” and be based on the value and ideological unity of the peoples of Russia and Belarus.
• Priority areas of policy include spiritual-moral, patriotic, labor, and professional directions.
• The “union state” is the basic platform for implementing youth policy.
• A significant number of events are required – youth festivals, student gatherings, research expeditions, initiatives to preserve historical memory and counter the falsification of history, sports interactions, etc.

Some of the recommendations have already been implemented or are in the process of being executed. In particular: in the context of the World Youth Forum, the BRSM and the Youth Chamber of the Union State signed an agreement on creating a union construction brigade, whose participants will engage in the construction of socially unnecessary objects (though consuming a large amount of electricity and water). For example, the construction of the Republican Center for Patriotic Education in the Brest region.

The essence of the policy for educating the younger generation of the “union state” is its preparation for a “crusade” against the West. The new bible for the youth is the recently published “textbook of the union state”. This, of course, is not a very engaging book, comparable in boredom and idiocy to the history of the CPSU once studied in universities, but it has one virtue: it is quite short.