William and Neil, it was great to have this oppurtunity to chat with you all! You provided much insight and shed light on issues we've been debating on these forums for years. I just hope we can repeat this occasion sometime in the near future. In the meantime, enjoy the 4th!

Originally Posted by Millennial_90'

William and Neil, it was great to have this oppurtunity to chat with you all! You provided much insight and shed light on issues we've been debating on these forums for years. I just hope we can repeat this occasion sometime in the near future. In the meantime, enjoy the 4th!

(Worries) You DO mean the Fourth of July, don't you?

Gentlemen,

Thank you.




Pink Splice,

I nominate you to fill in the command structure for the "Kifflie Brigades," putting the right people in the right places. I guess we were all conscripted without our knowledge, but it is now un-American to question authority. So no belly-aching, let's get on with it and do the job we are called to do (whatever the heck that is).

Thank you, authors!

Your input has aided us in understanding better how to apply your theories to history, a subject that I long thought as a collectin of facts disjointed except for sequence.

Thank you, above all, for answering questions from us even if the questions were loaded.

Originally Posted by Neil Howe

On Russia, we'll defend our position. The falling apart of the USSR in 1991 was not a 4T--a crisis followed by a civic regeneracy. Rather, it was a severe 3T disintegration... with nothing really to replace it right away.

Except that it has been replaced by the most consistent of all 1T elements - stability in a framework of generally-rising prosperity. Of course, the fall of the USSR was not replaced immediately -- there's that whole 20-year Crisis period that the theory calls for. But some twenty-odd years after the cracks in the system became too large to ignore, the battles to direct the course in Russia had come to a clear end; with a clear direction set. I'm a little baffled that you would think otherwise...
One may not agree with Edinaya Rossiya's programs (though the vast majority do in large part), but you could hardly say that they haven't shown a consistency of aim and tactic.

Putin, though perhaps more opportunistic than many of his peers, has plenty of ideologues as peer: including Vladimir Zhirinovsky and (the late) Alexander Lebed.

Zhirinovsky (1946) is hardly an ideologue -- more of a trash-talking Nomad. His musings are a lot more shock than principle (in fact, the sole principle of which one could find evidence to accuse him -- patriotism [his own, special distillation] -- is hardly unique to any generation. But he does sound a lot like a Joneser when he says things like

• "Condoleezza Rice needs a company of soldiers. She needs to be taken to barracks where she would be satisfied. On the other hand, she can hardly be satisfied because of her age."
• "You are standing in our way to the sea ports" (to an Estonian interviewer

Plus all the fistfights he keeps getting into.
Plus, Putin (1952) falls almost a decade away from him, on the other side of a major Turning event...

And Lebed (1950)? An ideologue? The guy was a career military man who aimed primarily to keep Russia militarily strong. He had no ideology whatsoever. This guy was a classic do-what-it-takes-to-get-results Nomad.

Originally Posted by Neil Howe

When the new children born after World War II arrived at school dressed in “Young Pioneer” uniforms, they embodied every Russian’s high hopes for the future. They grew up during an era of social unity, of strong patriotism, and, by the late 50s and early 60s, of cultural relaxation and greater openness to the West.

Funny, this is almost exactly the opposite of what people actually born during that time have to say about it. It matches the propaganda that made its way across the Iron Curtain, though -- which may go a ways to explaining the misconception. The 50s/60s boundary in Russia was a time of strong upheavals against the status quo; a time when public pressure was applied to aim to correct the excesses of the early Communist years.
Now, perhaps in the Soviet Republics -- whose annexation by the USSR was a very clear 4T element -- there was the kind of phenomenon you describe, but inside Russia that time had already long passed.

This relatively sunny childhood suddenly ended around the time of Brezhnev’s violent suppression of Czechoslovakia’s Prague Spring.

Now you're talking about the Republics. And I'll grant that the saecular timing in those is probably a lot closer to what you're saying. But it's worth realizing that Russia shows a distinctly different constellation than the Republics (many of whom also passed through the break-up of the USSR in a much more 3T style).

Subsequently, say many Pioneer, their life story was marked by disillusionment, growing pessimism, and an inward withdrawal of trust in the system.

Just like you would expect from a Nomad gen. Except that the 'subsequently' was more of a 'once they got old enough to start seeing the system'. The life story of many a 50's-60's cusp Russian sounds a whole lot like the stereotypical life stories of my peers (given that I hung out with an older crowd).

The alienation was especially intense for late-wave Pioneer, who came of age with the disastrous Afghanistan war and the Chernobyl catastrophe.

Again, not 'alienation' so much as 'suck'. That is, if you were to ask the ones who were there. Those two were the capping points of the 'suck' that characterized the 70s and early 80s for them. During that time, the suck metastasized into something much more clearly systematic and fundamental, right when the rulership was going to a generation that was more than prepared to make fundamental revolutionary changes.

From first to last cohort, at every age, this generation has experienced rising rates of crime and accident death, rapidly rising rates of drug use and alcoholism, and (partly as a consequence) an unprecedented rise in mortality.

With the exception of the Default period at the depths of the Crisis, your demographic analysis is completely backward. The pre-Pioneer gen was the peak of social pathology, and the vast majority of the ones who brought the life expectancy down. Again, reliance on the propaganda of the Soviet system for an understanding of what things were like during those years appears to be a wrongheaded tactic.

Today’s midlife Russian males are not, on average, living as long as their war-veteran fathers in the 1950s.

Again, Soviet-era statistics are generally speaking not something to trust over primary sources.

As young parents, late-wave Pioneer triggered the growing epidemic of child abandonment in the late 1980s—along with the sudden decline in childbearing after 1990.

Which has picked up again significantly since the 1T began. A sort of "baby boom" -- if you will.

If the Tayat were a cautious generation of sporadic dissent, the Pioneer are a damaged generation of widespread fatalism. Of all generations, the Pioneer are least likely to agree that they are happier than their parents at the same age.

Which is a classic Nomad characteristic. One other thing you'll see about the Pioneers is their conviction that their children will never have the kind of hard times that they had -- and their dogged determination to make that their legacy. Having younger siblings who are Civic-gen and parents who are Prophet-gen, I have a hard time seeing any sort of parallels between Pioneer- and Boomer-gen parenting,

The most capable and best connected Pioneers were catapulted into influential political positions at a surprisingly early age.

Actaully, this was mainly in the sphere of business. Just like in the US, the most enterprising 13ers advanced at sometimes startling speed -- many to crash and burn quickly afterwards in a similarly spectacular fashion.

After waiting so long to take the reins of leadership from the Voina, the pivotal figures of the Tayat (Gorbachev and Yeltsin) did not hesitate to pass those reins on to the young Pioneer.

What?!? Yeltsin hung on to the very last -- Impeachment proceedings were being undergone against him by the time he moved on. In fact, the only 'passing of the reins' that occurred was Yeltsin's cynical ploy to hand over power a couple months early to his hand-picked successor to help him have the incumbent edge in the upcoming elections. This was done as a clear exchange for the pardon/immunity from prosecution that Putin granted Yeltsin immediately upon assuming power. The Tayat gen was forced off the stage.

From the “Shock Therapy” cadre who “privatized” the economy in the early 1990s to Lebed, Zhirinovsky, and Putin, Pioner leaders tend to be decisive, even ruthless, and often eager to make a total break with Soviet past.

Except for the inclusion of Zhirinovsky and that last point -- to refute, one need only look to the 'rehabilitation' of Stalin and the return of the old Soviet anthem (two symbolic gestures that would be impossible under some Prophet gen opposed to a Soviet past).

Unlike the Tayat, they often don’t look hard for compromises and harbor few nostalgic yearnings to reconstruct the Communist system.

When, exactly, was Yeltsin's generation 'compromising'? Was that when he stood on the tank? When he (illegally) signed the end of the USSR? When he shelled the Duma?

This generation has produced many of the first successful “Biznismeni” (businessmen), and later, the billionaire oligarchs of Yeltin’s robber-baron politics. They were new Russia’s first successful entrepreneurs in Gorbachev’s transitional “Komsomol economy” (average birthyear, 1951)—and, along with the generation following them, the earners of illegal or “hidden” income who today rank among the wealthiest members of Russian society.

Again, classic Nomad. The ones willing to risk all; some of them won big beyond all reason, and others lost just as big. Still not seeing a parallel with Prophets...

For most Pioner, however, the reforms ushered in a long decade of economic decline, market crashes, workforce obsolescence, official corruption, and deteriorating public health that has hit their own ranks especially hard.

Again, it hit the ranks of the preceding gen hard. The vast majority of the Pioneer found ways to navigate the crash and in doing so built the micro-economic foundations on which the Russian economy now stands.

Although wealthier than their elders, most of today’s midlife wage earners are not leading the careers for which they were trained, nor have they attained the financial security they expected.

The second part is a laugh. Most middle-aged Russians expected State-run 'security' about as much as Xers in the US expect to be taken care of by Social Security when they get older. The promises were to them clearly empty even back when they were kids.

Again I would ask, what is it specifically that Putin (or his generation) has done -- or what qualities does it demonstrably have -- that makes you, a pair of Prophets, think, "those guys are a lot like us"?
I can point (have pointed) to a whole slew of things that makes me say that. But I'm not a Prophet-gen...

Originally Posted by William Strauss

There's a new modesty arising among Millennials, as a reaction against the sex-laced society they see their elders as having built. Many older people can't or won't see it, but go to a health club, and see who is more modest than whom--50somethings or teenagers.

The kids, by far. And apparently kids aren't required to shower after gym class anymore, as we were.

I was sorry to miss the live session, but I too want to thank the authors for their insights, particularly on the '61's.

The Coulter observation was spot-on.

Originally Posted by Child of Socrates

The kids, by far. And apparently kids aren't required to shower after gym class anymore, as we were.

This 1972 cohort was never required to either.

Originally Posted by Justin '77

Funny, this is almost exactly the opposite of what people actually born during that time have to say about it. It matches the propaganda that made its way across the Iron Curtain, though -- which may go a ways to explaining the misconception. The 50s/60s boundary in Russia was a time of strong upheavals against the status quo; a time when public pressure was applied to aim to correct the excesses of the early Communist years.
Now, perhaps in the Soviet Republics -- whose annexation by the USSR was a very clear 4T element -- there was the kind of phenomenon you describe, but inside Russia that time had already long passed.
Now you're talking about the Republics. And I'll grant that the saecular timing in those is probably a lot closer to what you're saying. But it's worth realizing that Russia shows a distinctly different constellation than the Republics (many of whom also passed through the break-up of the USSR in a much more 3T style).
Just like you would expect from a Nomad gen. Except that the 'subsequently' was more of a 'once they got old enough to start seeing the system'. The life story of many a 50's-60's cusp Russian sounds a whole lot like the stereotypical life stories of my peers (given that I hung out with an older crowd).Again, not 'alienation' so much as 'suck'. That is, if you were to ask the ones who were there. Those two were the capping points of the 'suck' that characterized the 70s and early 80s for them. During that time, the suck metastasized into something much more clearly systematic and fundamental, right when the rulership was going to a generation that was more than prepared to make fundamental revolutionary changes.
With the exception of the Default period at the depths of the Crisis, your demographic analysis is completely backward. The pre-Pioneer gen was the peak of social pathology, and the vast majority of the ones who brought the life expectancy down. Again, reliance on the propaganda of the Soviet system for an understanding of what things were like during those years appears to be a wrongheaded tactic.
Again, Soviet-era statistics are generally speaking not something to trust over primary sources.
Which has picked up again significantly since the 1T began. A sort of "baby boom" -- if you will.
Which is a classic Nomad characteristic. One other thing you'll see about the Pioneers is their conviction that their children will never have the kind of hard times that they had -- and their dogged determination to make that their legacy. Having younger siblings who are Civic-gen and parents who are Prophet-gen, I have a hard time seeing any sort of parallels between Pioneer- and Boomer-gen parenting,
Actaully, this was mainly in the sphere of business. Just like in the US, the most enterprising 13ers advanced at sometimes startling speed -- many to crash and burn quickly afterwards in a similarly spectacular fashion.

What?!? Yeltsin hung on to the very last -- Impeachment proceedings were being undergone against him by the time he moved on. In fact, the only 'passing of the reins' that occurred was Yeltsin's cynical ploy to hand over power a couple months early to his hand-picked successor to help him have the incumbent edge in the upcoming elections. This was done as a clear exchange for the pardon/immunity from prosecution that Putin granted Yeltsin immediately upon assuming power. The Tayat gen was forced off the stage.
Except for the inclusion of Zhirinovsky and that last point -- to refute, one need only look to the 'rehabilitation' of Stalin and the return of the old Soviet anthem (two symbolic gestures that would be impossible under some Prophet gen opposed to a Soviet past).
When, exactly, was Yeltsin's generation 'compromising'? Was that when he stood on the tank? When he (illegally) signed the end of the USSR? When he shelled the Duma?
Again, classic Nomad. The ones willing to risk all; some of them won big beyond all reason, and others lost just as big. Still not seeing a parallel with Prophets...
Again, it hit the ranks of the preceding gen hard. The vast majority of the Pioneer found ways to navigate the crash and in doing so built the micro-economic foundations on which the Russian economy now stands.
The second part is a laugh. Most middle-aged Russians expected State-run 'security' about as much as Xers in the US expect to be taken care of by Social Security when they get older. The promises were to them clearly empty even back when they were kids.

Again I would ask, what is it specifically that Putin (or his generation) has done -- or what qualities does it demonstrably have -- that makes you, a pair of Prophets, think, "those guys are a lot like us"?
I can point (have pointed) to a whole slew of things that makes me say that. But I'm not a Prophet-gen...

Fascinating analysis. I only wish they would come back to discuss it further.

Originally Posted by Earl and Mooch

This 1972 cohort was never required to either.

This '66er generally was not either. Although, of the many schools I attended, it seems like there may have been an exception or two. But any exceptions were pre-high school. It looks like mandatory showers may have gone out in the '70s.

Gentlemen,

Let me add my thanks for the discussion and especially for the theory. I do believe that it is one of the "royal roads" to history. There are so many otherwise baffiling changes, not only in American history but also elsewhere, that make perfect sense when one look again at things with a saecular perspective. Thanks again for joining us and please consder returning to this forium when you can.

Rick

Originally Posted by Justin '77

Funny, this is almost exactly the opposite of what people actually born during that time have to say about it. It matches the propaganda that made its way across the Iron Curtain, though -- which may go a ways to explaining the misconception. The 50s/60s boundary in Russia was a time of strong upheavals against the status quo; a time when public pressure was applied to aim to correct the excesses of the early Communist years.
Now, perhaps in the Soviet Republics -- whose annexation by the USSR was a very clear 4T element -- there was the kind of phenomenon you describe, but inside Russia that time had already long passed.
Now you're talking about the Republics. And I'll grant that the saecular timing in those is probably a lot closer to what you're saying. But it's worth realizing that Russia shows a distinctly different constellation than the Republics (many of whom also passed through the break-up of the USSR in a much more 3T style).
Just like you would expect from a Nomad gen. Except that the 'subsequently' was more of a 'once they got old enough to start seeing the system'. The life story of many a 50's-60's cusp Russian sounds a whole lot like the stereotypical life stories of my peers (given that I hung out with an older crowd).Again, not 'alienation' so much as 'suck'. That is, if you were to ask the ones who were there. Those two were the capping points of the 'suck' that characterized the 70s and early 80s for them. During that time, the suck metastasized into something much more clearly systematic and fundamental, right when the rulership was going to a generation that was more than prepared to make fundamental revolutionary changes.
With the exception of the Default period at the depths of the Crisis, your demographic analysis is completely backward. The pre-Pioneer gen was the peak of social pathology, and the vast majority of the ones who brought the life expectancy down. Again, reliance on the propaganda of the Soviet system for an understanding of what things were like during those years appears to be a wrongheaded tactic.
Again, Soviet-era statistics are generally speaking not something to trust over primary sources.
Which has picked up again significantly since the 1T began. A sort of "baby boom" -- if you will.
Which is a classic Nomad characteristic. One other thing you'll see about the Pioneers is their conviction that their children will never have the kind of hard times that they had -- and their dogged determination to make that their legacy. Having younger siblings who are Civic-gen and parents who are Prophet-gen, I have a hard time seeing any sort of parallels between Pioneer- and Boomer-gen parenting,
Actaully, this was mainly in the sphere of business. Just like in the US, the most enterprising 13ers advanced at sometimes startling speed -- many to crash and burn quickly afterwards in a similarly spectacular fashion.

What?!? Yeltsin hung on to the very last -- Impeachment proceedings were being undergone against him by the time he moved on. In fact, the only 'passing of the reins' that occurred was Yeltsin's cynical ploy to hand over power a couple months early to his hand-picked successor to help him have the incumbent edge in the upcoming elections. This was done as a clear exchange for the pardon/immunity from prosecution that Putin granted Yeltsin immediately upon assuming power. The Tayat gen was forced off the stage.
Except for the inclusion of Zhirinovsky and that last point -- to refute, one need only look to the 'rehabilitation' of Stalin and the return of the old Soviet anthem (two symbolic gestures that would be impossible under some Prophet gen opposed to a Soviet past).
When, exactly, was Yeltsin's generation 'compromising'? Was that when he stood on the tank? When he (illegally) signed the end of the USSR? When he shelled the Duma?
Again, classic Nomad. The ones willing to risk all; some of them won big beyond all reason, and others lost just as big. Still not seeing a parallel with Prophets...
Again, it hit the ranks of the preceding gen hard. The vast majority of the Pioneer found ways to navigate the crash and in doing so built the micro-economic foundations on which the Russian economy now stands.
The second part is a laugh. Most middle-aged Russians expected State-run 'security' about as much as Xers in the US expect to be taken care of by Social Security when they get older. The promises were to them clearly empty even back when they were kids.

Again I would ask, what is it specifically that Putin (or his generation) has done -- or what qualities does it demonstrably have -- that makes you, a pair of Prophets, think, "those guys are a lot like us"?
I can point (have pointed) to a whole slew of things that makes me say that. But I'm not a Prophet-gen...

You make it sound as if the usual response to the end of a Crisis in child-raising -- that after things begin to settle, a Civic/Hero style of indulgent child-raising that creates Prophet/Idealists -- didn't happen in Russia as it happened in the United States, western Europe, Japan, India, and even the former Soviet puppet states to some extent. Russia, like China, had an extended Crisis that utterly ravaged the country, leaving so much human and material wreckage that the indulgence of children became impossible. You may have something there.

The depiction of Russian (and Chinese) contemporaries of American Boomers as having lives better described as fitting the Nomad/Reactive pattern suggests that if the Crisis Era is excessively protracted and harsh, the children of the post-Crisis era become Nomad/Reactives.

Russia had no meaningful Awakening Era at the same time as did most of the West. China had a sham -- the Cultural Revolution -- exploited by the political leadership to expose potential dissidents for destruction.

One would have expected the "Pioneer" and "Red Guard" youth to have become generations of religious and political reformers, evangelists, and philosophers. China and Russia are huge, so one would expect some prominent figures to have emerged, even if in exile. Have they? We have instead seen kleptocrats and robber barons -- more like the American Gilded than like the American Boom.

It's hard to pin down any ideology in Vladimir Putin except for Russian nationalism. That's a default ideology suitable for someone who believes in nothing.

So if the generational pattern for most of the world from 1860 to 1960 is

Idealist-Reactive-Civic-Adaptive-Idealist

it is

Idealist-Reactive-Civic-Adaptive-Reactive

in Russia and China from 1860 to 1960.

Both Russia and China had very long, and unusually severe Crisis Eras from the 1910's to the 1940's with unusual levels of political violence and mass death. I can think of only the Thirty Years' War as a parallel in European history.

A complete wreck of a society that becomes (or remains) brutally repressive of any independent thought or cultural expression does not create Idealist children in its aftermath; it creates Reactive children. Even the countries of central and southeastern Europe had to pretend to be normal in some respects. East Germany tolerated religious and ecological 'peace' movements. Poland had a simmering Church-State conflict. Czechoslovakia had its short-lived Prague Spring. Hungary and Yugoslavia tolerated Western pop culture so long as it wasn't overtly anti-communist.

... It's easy to see Reactive/Nomad generations as 'primitive' on the whole in contrast to those older or younger. People who don't believe in anything either because they have nothing worthy of belief or because they react to excessive displays of ideology, religiosity, or cultural ferment tend toward the more primitive drives -- appetite, sex, material gain, and political or bureaucratic power. I look at the Dark Ages as an era so destitute and unimaginative that none other than Nomad/Reactive types could arise. I look at the scenario in Golding's Lord of the Flies... a universe in which no adult presence exists. Or the violent Gold Rush "communities" in which violations of personal 'honor' were settled with duels or lynchings.

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

(snip)
A complete wreck of a society that becomes (or remains) brutally repressive of any independent thought or cultural expression does not create Idealist children in its aftermath; it creates Reactive children. ..... I look at the Dark Ages as an era so destitute and unimaginative that none other than Nomad/Reactive types could arise. I look at the scenario in Golding's Lord of the Flies... a universe in which no adult presence exists. Or the violent Gold Rush "communities" in which violations of personal 'honor' were settled with duels or lynchings.

This reminds me of "1984" - in which Julia was pure Reactive.

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

You make it sound as if the usual response to the end of a Crisis in child-raising -- that after things begin to settle, a Civic/Hero style of indulgent child-raising that creates Prophet/Idealists -- didn't happen in Russia as it happened in the United States, western Europe, Japan, India, and even the former Soviet puppet states to some extent.

Huh?
That's exactly what happened at the end of the Russian 4T. That is, starting in the 1930s.

Russia, like China, had an extended Crisis that utterly ravaged the country, leaving so much human and material wreckage that the indulgence of children became impossible.

The whole 'extended Crisis' meme is based, so far as I can tell, on a woeful batch of historical misinformedness. While the Revolution/Civil War and the policies of the early Communists most definitely ravaged Russia, the effect of WWII was more a stimulus than anything else. Keep in mind, the German lines only advanced a very small distance into Russia before they were stopped and turned back. Look at a map; realize that, having been stopped before they even made it to Moscow (something that even Napoleon was able to do, for goodness' sake...) puts them a good thousand miles away from even the first major range of large hills. Russian leadership, in what should be considered their classic form, traded space for time, tooling up with a stunning (except for a 1T society) efficiency along and on the other side of the Urals. Quite a respectable number of Russian cities were rather dramatically leveled; a big number of Russians died; but one can hardly call the society ravaged as an effect.

Russia had no meaningful Awakening Era at the same time as did most of the West.

[aside: the Xer in me wants to ask, "meaningful? what was so meaningful about the 60s in the US?"]
But really, if you take even a cursory look at the immediately post-Stalin years of Malenkov and Khrushchev, you see that even at the high levels of a still-totalitarian system, fairly major reforms were being made. As it is told, the reforms were made in large part because the leadership recognized that the people had reached their limit of the stifling monolithism of Stalin's 1T; that, to stem off the rise of wider unrest, the people's needs for change were going to need to be at least somewhat accommodated. It hints, in fact, at an Awakening much more effectively handled by Powers-That-Be that was the turbulent US one that followed. Of course, the resurgence of support that the limited moves generated made the suppression of any significant opposition that much more palatable.
You really shouldn't judge history without reliable sources.

It's hard to pin down any ideology in Vladimir Putin except for Russian nationalism. That's a default ideology suitable for someone who believes in nothing.

Actually, it's a very Nomad thing to be openly without ideology. For a Prophet, it's all he has; for a Civic, it's what they publicly cling to; for an Artist, it's what they live their life to perfect. Who needs to believe in anything to be able to focus on the day-to-day of improving your part of the world (however you define that)?

I wonder how it is that you are able to take the [I like to think] fairly clear points I am making about Russian history and the apparent generational makeup and squash and mash them into something that bears no relation to any type of coherent theory of generations at all...

We compiled our Russian generations memo on the basis of what we know about Russian history, and after we interviewed a number of experts on Russia and integrated all that with our own model.

We started with turnings. We began with the premise that 1917-1945 (or at least the 1925-45 part of it; where to put WWI and the Russian revolution is a problem for another post) comprises the epicenter of a Russian 4T. We're talking about 10 million deaths during the '30s purges and engineered famines + another 25 or so million during WWII; no country other than Poland (not even Germany) lost so large a share of its population in WWII. This was, moreover, a period in which Russia was force-marched into a whole new imperial civic ideology along with a reconstructed public infrastructure and military to match. Not just a 4T, but the mother of all 4Ts.

The later turnings followed in the usual order. We fully acknowledge that the 2T, and the matching (Prophet) coming-of-age archetype, is not always easy to discern due to the totalitarian environment. Youth at the time could wear jeans and smoke dope and even smuggle in a Jane Fonda poster, but they couldn't march in the streets or shake their fists at the Kommisar. As a result, the Russian awakening (as a social and cultural phenomenon) manifested itself mostly in inward (rather than outward) rebellion. We have noticed this difference in Prophet behavior historically in other dictatorships/autocracies (e.g., though to a lesser extent, in China).

One striking manifestations of this self-destructive behavior has been the steep negative health indicators for this cohort. We stand by these data. One of the leading demographers of Russia is in fact a close acquaintance of mine (Nick Eberstadt); see any one of his recent descriptions (e.g., google, "Russia, sick man of europe"). Virtually all experts, Russian and non-Russian, concur that there has been a sharp decline in life expectancy (esp male) and most other indicators (infant mortality) over the last 20-25 years. This was the generation that hugely ramped up alcohol consumption, introduced drugs, accounted for the beginning of the (now serious) HIV epidemic, and registered big gains in suicides, self-inflicted accidents, depression, and cardiovascular disease. The women of this generation relied mostly entirely on abortion as a method of contraception, which also triggered later health problems and rendered a large share of them infertile.

Is this a description of a Nomad archetype? Sort of. But I would depict them as Prophets in a Russian environment. In true Prophet fashion, they were the first to discover, en masse, that the emperor had no clothes and to withdraw their trust and loyalty from the Establishment. In remained for the next generation (born, we think, 1968-1994, to complete the job in true Nomad fashion. This next group has been called, in the Moscow Press, the “Cross-Over Generation,” “Generation Nyet,” or simply Russia’s “Generation X.” They exceed all other generations in their cynicism, their market savvy, their survivalism, and their disinterest in ideology and politics. So long as basic public things work in their immediate lives, they're OK. Like Xers in China (unlike Xers in the West), they are on average doing better economically than Boomers. We call them Russia's "Generation Edge." They're easier to describe than the previous "Pioner" Generation, and we may later post that description.

btw, there's a very perceptive essay focusing mostly on this "Xer" group, written by Michael McFaul and published in Demokratizatsiya (Winter 2003)called "Generational change in Russia." It's worth looking at.

Let me quote this part from McFaul: "In fact, Russia's youth appear to be even less engaged in the political process than any other age cohort in Russia. They vote with less frequency. They join groups less often. They are extremely inactive in social and political organizations, with less than 8 percent reporting a membership in a civic group. They have weak partisan affiliations. Even university students do not identify firmly with Russia's ideological parties. Russia's young elite seem as uninterested in politics as Russia's young generation as a whole." etc.

Let me leave it there for now. I gotta run.

Originally Posted by Justin '77

Huh?
That's exactly what happened at the end of the Russian 4T. That is, starting in the 1930s.

The whole 'extended Crisis' meme is based, so far as I can tell, on a woeful batch of historical misinformedness. While the Revolution/Civil War and the policies of the early Communists most definitely ravaged Russia, the effect of WWII was more a stimulus than anything else. Keep in mind, the German lines only advanced a very small distance into Russia before they were stopped and turned back. Look at a map; realize that, having been stopped before they even made it to Moscow (something that even Napoleon was able to do, for goodness' sake...) puts them a good thousand miles away from even the first major range of large hills. Russian leadership, in what should be considered their classic form, traded space for time, tooling up with a stunning (except for a 1T society) efficiency along and on the other side of the Urals. Quite a respectable number of Russian cities were rather dramatically leveled; a big number of Russians died; but one can hardly call the society ravaged as an effect.
[aside: the Xer in me wants to ask, "meaningful? what was so meaningful about the 60s in the US?"]
But really, if you take even a cursory look at the immediately post-Stalin years of Malenkov and Khrushchev, you see that even at the high levels of a still-totalitarian system, fairly major reforms were being made. As it is told, the reforms were made in large part because the leadership recognized that the people had reached their limit of the stifling monolithism of Stalin's 1T; that, to stem off the rise of wider unrest, the people's needs for change were going to need to be at least somewhat accommodated. It hints, in fact, at an Awakening much more effectively handled by Powers-That-Be that was the turbulent US one that followed. Of course, the resurgence of support that the limited moves generated made the suppression of any significant opposition that much more palatable.
You really shouldn't judge history without reliable sources.
Actually, it's a very Nomad thing to be openly without ideology. For a Prophet, it's all he has; for a Civic, it's what they publicly cling to; for an Artist, it's what they live their life to perfect. Who needs to believe in anything to be able to focus on the day-to-day of improving your part of the world (however you define that)?

I wonder how it is that you are able to take the [I like to think] fairly clear points I am making about Russian history and the apparent generational makeup and squash and mash them into something that bears no relation to any type of coherent theory of generations at all...

I recognize the repudiation of Stalin as a major change in Soviet politics. But it did not transform the Soviet Union into something less totalitarian -- just less murderous. The downfall and execution of Lavrenti Beria is slight in contrast to the killings that I associate with Beria on Stalin's behest.

That said, I need remind you of the huge demographic changes within the Soviet Union. Need I remind you of the mass deportations of 'unreliable' ethnic groups like Crimean Tatars and Volga Germans? That was under Stalin. Need I remind you that nearly half the Nazi slaughtering of Jews occurred in territory part of the Soviet Union as of May 1941? Sure, that was Hilter's choice, and not Stalin's.

The Soviet Union effectively solved what had been its greatest pre-World War II menace: fascist powers on its western flank or weak neighbors that could easily be manipulated contrary to the interest of Russia/the USSR. The solution may not have been the optimum for people in the Baltic countries, Poland, Hungary, East Germany, Romania, Bulgaria, or Czechoslovakia. Finland? Sort of. I can't imagine any possible leadership of Russia -- whether Stalin, Bukharin, Trotsky, Lenin, Kerensky, or a Romanov -- tolerating any survival of Nazism or its possible revival.

Let's remember that Stalin destroyed his last rival for ideological loyalty -- Leon Trotsky -- in 1940. That was a Crisis-like act.

Whether one likes the results or not, Josef Stalin resolved the greatest external danger to the Soviet Union once and for all with the postwar settlement by expanding the Soviet zone of political influence into central Europe and the Balkans. To be sure, "Finlandized" democracies from Estonia to Bulgaria would have been a better solution for all concerned except for Stalin's luckier puppets. Stalin "fixed" the outer world threat to the Soviet Union... and that well fits one definition of a Crisis Era. It might not be the "fix" that most of us liked for some parts of the world... but it remained intact for forty-some years.

A thirty-year Crisis Era is an uncomfortable idea. I despise no country, let alone its people, so much that I would wish so protracted a time upon it. It is not without precedent (the Thirty Years' War). I see World War I, the Bolshevik Revolution, Stalin's forced collectivization and Great Purge, and the Second World War as an analogous time for Russia. I see an era that includes warlord chaos, Mao's Long March, the horrific and brutal Sino-Japanese War, and the Communist takeover of China as an analogous time for China.

All theories must adjust themselves to the facts. Crisis Eras need not be times of monumental violence -- but once a New Order is established, the Crisis is over. Certainly not before. Russian history between 1914 and 1945 is exceedingly violent and destructive.

You're getting your demographic information from Eberstadt?

That is

• 
  The Health Crisis in the USSR
  
  Rising Infant Mortality in the USSR in the 1970s(which was fairly well demolished in its premise in subsequent writings)
• Russia's Demographic Straightjacket(which treats the years of 1992-2002 as if they were a linear trend, rather than recognizing the massive turnaround that 2000-2001 saw in terms of birth and premature death rates)

I could point to the comment that he himself made in the Sick Man of Europe article you referenced:
"Since 2001, there have been some indications of a resurgence of fertility in the Russian Federation. For the year 2002, according to Goskomstat, the country's total fertility rate has risen to 1.32. And for the year 2003, according to Russian Federation President Vladimir V. Putin in his 2004 New Year's Day address, an "especially joyous" auspice was the absolute increase in births over the previous year. According to Goskomstat, Russia's total births rose in 2003 to 1.48 million--by that report, a 6 percent increase over the previous year. Birth figures for the first half of 2004, for their part, are 2 percent higher than for the first half of 2003." And this, even though rates of infertility in Russian women are astoundingly high (reputable sources put the figure as high as 13%!!). So for birth rates to rise at all -- and particularly in any kind of dramatic fashion when viewed against the rise of infertility -- strongly supports the contention of a post-4T "Baby Boom". There's also the point he makes about:
"Russia had about three million fewer abortions in 2002 than in 1987"

Anecdotally, I can also point out that while schools aren't closing (far from it, new ones are opening every year around here) and teachers aren't in any kind of particularly short supply, class size is going up in the early school ages (7-9 years old). Again, it hints at a recovery from the demographic wreckage of a bad 4T...
The negative demographic trend for adult mortality, though, dates not to the "last 20-25 years" as you claim, but to the 60's-70's (that is, into the beginning of the Russian 3T). I would direct you to J. Vallin and J. C. Chesnais, "Recent Developments of Mortality in Europe, English-Speaking Countries and the Soviet Union, 1960-1970," or Alain Blum and Roland Pressat. 1987. "Une nouvelle table de mortalité pour l'URSS (1984-1985)." There are also primary-source documents, such as those published by Baranov, Komarov, and Albitskiy.

I would also point out that, while the drastic rise in early deaths over the course of the 4T decades rapidly dropped the male life expectancy in Russia over the course of two years from 65 to 57, it has since seen a relatively steady rebound back up to 61, and still climbing. One need only check the CIA factbook for a fairly reputable source for that datapoint.

Of course it makes sense that, having -- as you put it -- "egan with the premise that 1917-1945 (or at least the 1925-45 part of it; where to put WWI and the Russian revolution is a problem for another post) comprises the epicenter of a Russian 4T.", the demographic data you find can be somehow analyzed-into the model that must necessarily flow from that premise.

Again, what has helped push me into the perspective I hold is the actual narratives about Russian society moving through these various time periods. After all, at its base, the Turnings Theory is a social one. So it would seem to me that the social narrative would be the one to resolve any apparent statistical discrepancies.

If you'd like, I can do some informal information-gathering for you. Granted, my day-to-day sample size is necessarily limited (plus, as I pointed out to John X a bit back, my ability to talk to the really old is also pretty limited). But if there are any sort of questions you could think of whose answers might help resolve the apparent discrepancy, I'd be happy to try to get the answers for you.

For now, I gotta go to sleep.

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

A thirty-year Crisis Era is an uncomfortable idea. I despise no country, let alone its people, so much that I would wish so protracted a time upon it. It is not without precedent (the Thirty Years' War). I see World War I, the Bolshevik Revolution, Stalin's forced collectivization and Great Purge, and the Second World War as an analogous time for Russia. I see an era that includes warlord chaos, Mao's Long March, the horrific and brutal Sino-Japanese War, and the Communist takeover of China as an analogous time for China.

The 30 Years War was a 2T conflict, the continental equivalent of the English Civil War, and was caused by similar religious enthusiasm as the ECW. Also, that was back when turnings were around 27 years long. since I think Russia has been on 20-years turnings for the last century and a half at least I don't see how a Crisis mood would of sustained itself that long because of the Nomad generation taking the reigns of power from the fading Prophets.

Originally Posted by Justin '77

If you'd like, I can do some informal information-gathering for you.

Well, when you wake up, please make clear your point in all this. Sure, Neil Howe made the post-WWII Soviet Union "pioner" generation look much like the American Boom (a lack of hotrods, Levitowns and Playboy girly pics notwithstanding), BUT surely you can understand that the Russians assigning Boris Leonidovich Pasternak to the Gulag for daring to pen Doctor Zhivago is right up there with the American fascist treatment of the North American Man/Boy Love Association Founding Father Allen Ginsberg.

I mean, Neil Howe does have a most interesting and salient point, Justin.

Originally Posted by Odin

The 30 Years War was a 2T conflict, the continental equivalent of the English Civil War, and was caused by similar religious enthusiasm as the ECW. Also, that was back when turnings were around 27 years long. since I think Russia has been on 20-years turnings for the last century and a half at least I don't see how a Crisis mood would of sustained itself that long because of the Nomad generation taking the reigns of power from the fading Prophets.

I agree, however certain posters seem to think the growth of secular ideology is a 2T event and religious ideology a 4T. This is nonsensical given the secular nature of hero generations and the religious nature of awakenings.

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

A thirty-year Crisis Era is an uncomfortable idea. I despise no country, let alone its people, so much that I would wish so protracted a time upon it. It is not without precedent (the Thirty Years' War). I see World War I, the Bolshevik Revolution, Stalin's forced collectivization and Great Purge, and the Second World War as an analogous time for Russia. I see an era that includes warlord chaos, Mao's Long March, the horrific and brutal Sino-Japanese War, and the Communist takeover of China as an analogous time for China.

All theories must adjust themselves to the facts. Crisis Eras need not be times of monumental violence -- but once a New Order is established, the Crisis is over. Certainly not before. Russian history between 1914 and 1945 is exceedingly violent and destructive.

America has been relatively secure from external influence. Changing technology and blatant flaws in the royal society inherited from Britain generated social pressures for change. We have been able to set our own pace, and as a result our cycles are as regular as one will find anywhere. Even in America, we have our Civil War anomaly.

Russia and China are not so isolated. They have faced invasion, and have had to assimilate technology much quicker than the West. The external disruptions come as a major blow to society. The timing has nothing to do with the natural internal rhythms.

Thus, I look at Russia and China's history in the 19th and early 20th Century, see perpetual upheaval, and do not expect to necessarily find a classic four turning pattern. Crisis can be forced from the outside. When the external forcing stops, one might see S&W patterns reset with a 1T, 2T, 3T progression.

But I for one have given up force fitting a rhythm that naturally exists given a lack of major external stimuli onto a population swamped with major external stimuli. I believe S&H have found some real patterns, but do not believe said patterns are necessarily so robust that they can overwhelm all else that might be happening.

Originally Posted by Child of Socrates

The kids, by far. And apparently kids aren't required to shower after gym class anymore, as we were.

Except for all the college kids posting naked pictures of themselves on the internet, and starring in "Girls Gone Wild".

No one showered after sports when I was coming up. No one. Kids - maybe boys in particular - were very body shy. I always found that kind of endearing.

You'll note that pants and clothes more generally got a lot baggier when Xers became adolescents. Soccer and basketball shorts got longer. Hell: shorts in general got mercifully longer. This was in part a reaction to the tight and revealing Boomer fashions of the 1970s. How can you say on the one hand that Xers are more conservative and gender conscious (my recollection is that boys started to look like boys again in the 1980s, and girls like girls) and at the same time these pornographic, gender non specific creatures?

I guess it depends on which trend you pick to highlight. It seems to me there are often simultaneous, contervailing trends.There are actually studies about sexually explicit content in American movies; it rose in the 1960s and declined starting near the end of the 1970s. Kids are having sex for the first time younger and more often than any generation recorded. And it isn't simply that we didn't have the internet: you just didn't gossip about the party at such-and-such person's house where certain people got laid. It was considered unclassy. Some college kids are broadcasting their sexual exploits to the entire world.

As a kid who grew up playing a lot of sports, shyness about being naked in front of other guys was not possible. I don't know if any of the guys that were my teammates were gay or not, but I never noticed any other guys staring at me in the shower. A harsh "what you lookin' at?" no doubt would have been sufficent had that ever occured.

My guess is that my experence is common amongst those, male and female, who were active athletically at an early age regardless of generation.

Originally Posted by herbal tee

As a kid who grew up playing a lot of sports, shyness about being naked in front of other guys was not possible.

Curiously enough, it was perfectly possible in my world. I kid you not: no one was gratuitously taking his pants off, and showering with others. In fact no one was taking their pants off as far as I could tell unless it was completely necessary, and no one was showering with others because you could do that at home. Did people not have showers at home prior to the Reagan era? I'm beginning to wonder.