Olga Alexeeva
Civil society as ideology: lessons from Russia
1 June 2009
Alliance magazine
When I was 15 in the sleepy city of Krasnodar in southern Russia, I led a double life. By day, I was a ‘model’ teenager with good grades and a member of the school Komsomol (Youth Communist League) committee. At night, I listened to forbidden hard rock and worshipped Black Sabbath, not Lenin. Why mention this: surely, 20 years on from the fall of the Berlin Wall, that ritual of official ideology and concealed real interests is long gone?
