"Gilded Youth" of the Stagnation Era. "The Stagnation Era". Someone will say: "When was it? Why should we care about it now, when the current problems are through the roof?". Well, it may be interesting for us because that that time and the people grown up at that time and in those conditions influence our present-day realities.

What a phenomenon was it — the "gilded youth" of the late stagnation era, before the collapse of the Soviet system? The "gilded youth" in the "classical" bourgeois society are children of the upper class, who are distinguished for demonstrative consumer behaviour, possessing (thanks to their parents) the money for this. Since mass culture (primarily cinema) has always paid much attention to this group, the idea of ​​its lifestyle and values ​​spread beyond its borders — both in the societies to which they belonged and beyond, including the countries of the “socialist camp”

The USSR was no exception, and the desire to copy the lifestyle of the “gilded youth” grew, as the official communist ideology was losing its influence. The sociocentrism based on this ideology was gradually replaced by egocentric consumer values. The famous Soviet philosopher Evald Ilyenkov, who was called “the last romantic of Marxism in the USSR”, wrote with pain about those times: “The new person does not come. Alienation and objectification go up, not down. Values ​​​​do not abolish prices, but, on the contrary, are subordinated to them”. Moreover, the Soviet propaganda, which for decades spoke about the “growth of well-being” of the Soviet people, actually turned well-being into the highest value.

While in the capitalist society the property status is the main factor of social stratification, in the socialist society, it is determined by the social status and the prestige associated with it. So, while in the West the “gilded youth” used the wealth of their parents, under socialism it first of all made use of their status and high position. But the status and prestige are rather relative concepts, compared to money. The problem was also that even the high status and prestige of parents could not give their children the main thing — the opportunity to stand out of the “gray mass” by certain features, obvious for everyone, also because demonstrative consumption was strongly condemned in the USSR. For example, as a functionary of the Kyiv City Communist Party Committee told me in the mid-1980s, his employees were strongly forbidden by the leadership to come to work by own cars, for personal cars of party officials parked near the local CPSU headquarters not to cause unnecessary thoughts and conversations among ordinary workers.

Similarly, those who in the USSR could claim the status (often imaginary) of the “gilded youth” actually felt an inferiority complex, being unable to achieve and demonstrate the standards of the lifestyle seen by them in American or French movies.

The signs of “superiority” affordable for the then “gilded youth” may seem laughable by today’s standards: it was almost exclusively manifested in the clothes of Western brands (or their imitations), in all ways “secured” (a euphemism used for such goods, instead of “bought”) by them, often semi-legally.

At the same time, representatives of the “gilded youth” were perceived by the broad public extremely negatively — for many, even such imitation of superiority was unaffordable. At that time, society was very sensitive to the problem of “unjustified privileges”. And later, in the period of so-called “Perestroika”, the “fight against privileges” that was one of its main slogans.

Unlike the rebel generation of the 1960s, which gave birth to the youth counterculture, the young generation of the 1970s and 1980s preferred to stay “in the shadow” of the older generation. This older generation and the social relations formed by it were seen by the younger generation as an unshakable social reality, which could hardly be changed.

But in the 1990s, this social reality unexpectedly collapsed, and many (but clearly not all) representatives of the “gilded youth” of the stagnation era saw an opportunity to fulfil their dreams of achieving the standard of consumer well-being, unaffordable in the Soviet times — again, largely, thanks to the status of their parents. For example, the establishment of so-called “subsidiaries” at former Soviet state-owned enterprises, which were often managed by sons and daughters of the directors of their literally “parent’ companies, was a common phenomenon at that time.

However, in recent years, the habit of relying on the parent status has played a low-down trick with the generation of the "gilded youth" of the stagnation era. Now, most of its representatives are in their sixties or even older, and the generation of their parents has actually passed away, leaving their "children" tête-à-tête with themselves and the younger generations.

Here, the “non-subjectivity” of the elite representing this generation was manifested. It turned out that it simply had nothing to offer society (after all, it got used to adapt to circumstances rather than to create them) and was quickly replaced by a more aggressive elite, better adapted to the new conditions, which comes from younger generations.

As for the political elite, this is even confirmed by statistics. Say, the average age of the current members of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, elected in 2019, at the time of election made only 41 years (7.4 years lower than the average age of the members of the previous parliament). Just 14% of the elected MPs in Ukraine were aged from 46 to 60, and only 0.7% were older than 60 years. For comparison, the majority (55%) of the current members of the French National Assembly were 50 or older at the time of their election.

That is, in Ukraine, the dominance of the oldest generation of the political elite, largely formed in the Soviet era, was replaced not by the generation of fifty-sixty-year-olds, but by the generation of forty-year-olds. And the problems and failures of the generation of the elite, which belonged to the “gilded youth” of the late stagnation period, were to a large extent caused by the peculiarities of their consciousness, which was shaped by said “stagnation”.

https://razumkov.org.ua/statti/zolota-molod-epokhy-zastoiu-dolia-odnogo-pokolinnia