Prefiguration, Resilience and Transitions to Adulthood: Russian Youth in Times of Uncertainty

The article discusses how Russian youth search for resilience strategies, opportunities for decision-making and meaningful participation in times of uncertainty. Being in a high-risk political climate, young Russians turn to prefiguration: they embody the alternatives to the existing regime of neoliberal governmentality via organizing or engaging in grassroots activist initiatives. Based on the analysis of in-depth interviews with young St. Petersburg residents in 2022 and 2023, we show how they define their civil positions in the presence and how they mark their (non)adulthood. We demonstrate that involvement in prefiguration via informal grassroots youth organizations is an important condition for the formation of the youth’s civic consciousness.