Deputies and experts assessed the draft Youth Policy Strategy until 2030

On Thursday, Student’s Day, a public discussion of the draft Youth Policy Strategy until 2030 was held in the State Duma. The deputies appreciated the importance of the document, thanked those responsible for its development, proposed their own improvements and even could not resist constructive criticism. As a result, by the end of the event, taking into account the votes of parliamentarians and invited experts, the list of desired additions exceeded one hundred.

President Vladimir Putin instructed the government to develop a Youth Policy Strategy until 2030 a little over a year ago (see Kommersant, December 23, 2022). Since then, the contents of the document have been discussed more than once on various specialized platforms, and yesterday it finally reached the State Duma.

“The sphere is multifaceted, and this is the challenge: for the strategy to reflect the interests of each social group and be relevant even after six years,” Artem Metelev, Chairman of the Duma Committee on Youth Policy (United Russia, United Russia), opened the discussion. And he added that one of the key tasks is to change the paternalistic paradigm of the relationship between youth and the state: “So that young people are convinced that we ourselves are building the country.” State Duma Vice Speaker Boris Chernyshov (LDPR), who oversees youth issues, also emphasized the role of the youth themselves in shaping policies aimed at them, while the older generation rather “prompts, gives advice” and “does not allow them to swim behind the buoys.”

The head of Rosmolodezh, Ksenia Razuvaeva, who spoke next, reported that her department was “working on the project with a very large team”: the working group included representatives of 25 federal departments, as well as four universities – MSTU. Bauman, Tomsk and Pskov State Universities and RANEPA. Based on the results of the discussions, Rosmolodezh has already received over 2 thousand proposals for the strategy, including from key institutions, public organizations and regions, Ms. Razuvaeva said: “The discussion here, at the site in the State Duma, will be of decisive importance, we are ready for constructive criticism and suggestions ” The document, the official added, was formed on an intersectoral principle and seeks to comply with existing strategies in other areas, “primarily the national security strategy.”

“The text of the strategy puts at the forefront the issues of patriotic and spiritual-moral education of young people,” Natalia Mandrova, the first deputy chairman of the board of the First Movement, confirmed the ideologically correct orientation of the document. Although the goals of the strategy, according to her, are more comprehensive. Among the priority areas, in addition to the formation of spiritual and moral guidelines and countering the destructive behavior of young people, Ms. Mandrova named supporting the economic activity of young people, creating favorable conditions for young families, improving the infrastructure and industry management system, etc.

The deputies who familiarized themselves with the document did not leave the project without additions. Thus, the head of the Duma committee on the financial market, Anatoly Aksakov (“A Just Russia – For the Truth”, SRZP) proposed to include in the strategy the need for financial education of young people, “so that our citizens, not only future financiers, have the financial knowledge necessary to lead normally family budget and be protected from attempts to steal their money.” Chairman of the Committee on Nationalities Affairs Gennady Semigin (SRZP), among other things, pointed out the need for in-depth study of the topic of harmonious interethnic relations. The head of the Education Committee Olga Kazakova (ER) advised to consolidate the law on education as one of the legal foundations in the implementation of the document, to include college and technical school graduates in support programs along with university students, and also to address the problem of “humiliation of human dignity” (bullying).

Conceptual criticism of the project was made by the first deputy chairman of the science committee, Ksenia Goryacheva (“New People”). According to her, the project “does not formulate a coherent image of the desired future”, the responsible authorities, their powers and the “aspect of resource distribution” are not specified, and the strategy itself emphasizes “the process” rather than the result. In the ideological part, the deputy advised to move away from “the individual-collectivist dichotomy,” since young people “are able to see the value of “we” and at the same time be realized.” “Another question: why is only one strategy implementation scenario taken into account? How will we live if the situation, including the geopolitical one, changes?” – asked Mrs. Goryacheva.

However, the initiatives of the deputies, as it turned out, were just a warm-up. The invited experts only “vocally” proposed, according to Kommersant’s estimates, approximately fifty diverse improvements to the project. And the list passed on behind the scenes probably exceeded several hundred (120 comments were made by the Higher School of Economics alone). Among other things, specialists raised questions about the age correlation proposed by the developers, the data in the analytical section, the lack of references to regulatory documents, the balance of the text, the consistency of the strategy with the scenarios of socio-economic development of the Russian Federation, the authors’ methodology, etc.

“I wrote out a bunch of sheets, and my colleagues will take away the transcript of statements,” Ksenia Razuvaeva promised the speakers and asked them to be sure to hand over all the theses so that the developers “didn’t miss anything.” True, neither the organizers nor the officials outlined the deadline for completing work on the draft strategy.

Grigory Leiba