this post was submitted on 15 Sep 2024

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"We need warriors, gunmen, stormtroopers:" Russia revives Soviet-style youth indoctrination as it eyes ‘forever war’ with Ukraine and the West (www.themoscowtimes.com)

submitted 1 month ago by tardigrada@beehaw.org to c/news@beehaw.org

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Archived version

The Kremlin is working to systematically instill “patriotic” values in children and teenagers through a Soviet-style propaganda campaign as it looks toward preparing the next generation for a life shaped by conflict with Ukraine and the West.

“We need warriors, gunmen, stormtroopers — those who, at the president’s first call, will rush to the military enlistment offices , not Verkhny Lars,” a Russian government official said, referring to the Russian-Georgian border crossing where tens of thousands of Russians fled the country during the fall 2022 “partial” mobilization for the war.

“And there's nothing to be embarrassed about,” he said.

[...]

"Our Fatherland is in danger, threatened by the West and the United States. We no longer need hipsters, rappers, or lovers of Western culture — only Navalny supporters come from them,” he said.

Winning the hearts and minds of young people has been one of the Kremlin’s main domestic policy priorities since 2000, when Putin first became president. Putin’s early presidency saw the creation of state-funded youth movements championed by Kremlin ideologists such as admitted Western culture lover Vladislav Surkov and Vyacheslav Volodin.

[...]

The Kremlin is now transforming Rosmolodyozh, the Federal Agency for Youth Affairs, into a vast new ideological body tasked with systematizing and unifying all youth ideological education initiatives, from kindergarten to higher education.

According to Russian media reports, the agency will receive a significant funding boost in the coming year, along with new leadership.

[...]

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[–] DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social 7 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Yeah, I'm going to need a translation check on them dropping "stormtroopers" specifically.

[–] teawrecks@sopuli.xyz 10 points 1 month ago (1 children)

The term predates star wars, if that's what you're thinking. Star wars got the term from actual fascist regimes. According to Google translate, they probably used the term штурмовой отдел.

[–] DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I'm aware, and I'm also aware that Russian media almost certainly isn't going to use the same term they would apply to Nazi troops when calling Ukraine Nazis is their entire casus belli and the Soviet contributions to WW2 are so important to Russian national identity.

"They probably used" means you don't know what they used.

What term did they actually use?

[–] teawrecks@sopuli.xyz 2 points 1 month ago

Ah, gotcha. Yeah, it's always hard to know what really happened when dealing with this kinda stuff in the media. In this English version they say,

a Russian government official said...The official, like others, spoke on condition of anonymity due to concerns for personal safety.

Here's the Russian version of the article (which uses штурмовики) where they instead say,

a Russian government official explained to The Moscow Times.

So it sounds like they're not quoting a public statement from the Kremlin, but someone on the inside feeding information to this outlet. Allegedly. Could be that person's wording, or could be the outlet's "interpretation".

[–] InvertedParallax@lemm.ee 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Sturmtruppen was the German word for 'assault troops', much like sturmgewehr is their word for 'assault rifle' which was adopted by everyone else.

It means troops to storm a position, the heaviest troops for assaults.

We'd call them assault forces, or honestly, just marines (amphibious assault corps).

Hitler had a bunch of paramilitary followers (think Trump and his Jan 6 crowd) called the sturmabteilingen (sp?), which translated to storm troopers, because he thought it sounded impressive.

He later betrayed and murdered them, to curry favor with the army, which is so Hitler.

[–] DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social 1 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Yes, and as such, it's rather unlikely for Russian propaganda to drop a translation of that term for their own troops, but hey, everyone makes mistakes.

[–] Umbrias@beehaw.org 3 points 1 month ago

Just going to point out: russian culture doesnt use nazi in the same way we do; largely they dont view nazis as ontologically bad because of the bigotry or the antisemitism or the genocide of many peoples, but because they were an existential threat to russia or russian ethnicities. a lot of the associations westerners have about nazis are just not widespread in russia. this is why there are a lot of seemingly idiosyncratic phrasings in this kind of stuff.

[–] InvertedParallax@lemm.ee 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

It's a commonly used term now, just like Assault Rifle from Sturmgewehr.

It's become verbed, like googling.

[–] DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

No, it is not, except for fascists.

[–] InvertedParallax@lemm.ee 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

A storm trooper is a member of storm troops, also called shock troops, which are trained for sudden assaults. They carried out attacks in World War I and in World War II, and they were a politica militia of the Nazi party (see Sturmabteilung or Brownshirts). The English storm troops is a direct translation of the German Sturmtruppen.

https://www.dictionary.com/browse/storm-trooper

They were called storm troopers because they were the ones who stormed trenches during an assault.

It wasn't considered a bad thing then, they were considered the elite.

[–] DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I don't know what to tell you if you haven't picked up that storm and lightning imagery is important in its own right to Nazi propaganda.

[–] InvertedParallax@lemm.ee 1 points 1 month ago

Yeah, it is.

But I don't know what to tell you, the term predates the nazis by quote a bit.

They adopted it, but it was known from the age of dragoons: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shock_troops

The sacred band of thebes were considered shock troops, and I'd suggest that's closer to what the Russian idiots meant.

But I also wouldn't be surprised if they were just copying the nazis without knowing.