audiobook Cold War Games: Propaganda; the Olympics; and U.S. Foreign Policy (Sport and Society) by Toby C Rider in History

Description

Julie Hemment provides a fresh perspective on the controversial nationalist youth projects that have proliferated in Russia in the Putin era; examining them from the point of view of their participants and offering provocative insights into their origins and significance. The pro-Kremlin organization Nashi ("Ours") and other state-run initiatives to mobilize Russian youth have been widely reviled in the West; seen as Soviet throwbacks and evidence of Russia’s authoritarian turn. By contrast; Hemment’s detailed ethnographic analysis finds an astute global awareness and a paradoxical kinship with the international democracy-promoting interventions of the 1990s. Drawing on Soviet political forms but responding to 21st-century disenchantments with the neoliberal state; these projects seek to produce not only patriots; but also volunteers; entrepreneurs; and activists.