![Sample our Area Studies journals, sign in here to start your access, latest two full volumes FREE to you for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5922/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Area-Studies.jpg"})
Abstract
The mid-Volga city of Saratov, Russia, has been the location of an effective grassroots anti-drug volunteer youth movement in recent years, with similar developments in other Russian cities. This has taken place, with some support from foreign agencies, in the context of a particular official post-Soviet youth and drug policy that has been less than wholly successful in regulating drug use among young people. Establishing close working relations with local government structures was of key importance for realization of the project, rather than links to international agencies. The significance of youth and health in political discourse on both the local and national scale was also important, although it is not clear whether this helps or hinders project development and innovation in this field.
Notes
1. John M. Kramer, ‘Drug Abuse in the USSR’, in David E. Powell, Anthony Jones and Walter D. Connor (eds.), Soviet Social Problems (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1991), pp.94–118 (p.94).
2. Jussi Simpura and Boris M. Levin (eds.), Demystifying Russian Drinking: Comparative Studies from the 1990s (Helsinki: Stakes, 1997), p.14.
3. Mary Buckley, Redefining Russian Society and Polity (Boulder, CO and Oxford: Westview, 1993).
4. David E. Powell, ‘Drug Abuse in Communist Europe’, Problems of Communism, Vol.22, No.4 (1973), pp.31–40 (p.32).
5. A.F. Amend, M.V. Zhukova and Ye.V. Frolova, ‘Problema profilaktiki narkomanii v molodezhnoi srede’, Pedagogika, 2004, No.4; pp.21–9.
6. L.S. Shilova, ‘Podrostki i molodezh’ v Rossii – perspektivnye gruppy resprostraneniya sotsial'nykh zabolevanii', in L.S. Shilova and L.V. Yasnaya (eds.), Zdorov'e i zdravookhranenie v usloviyakh rynochnoi ekonomiki (Moscow: (no publisher identified), 2000), quoted in Amend et al., ‘Problema profilaktiki narkomanii', p.22.
7. For a detailed exploration of the vulnerability of Soviet youth to Western influences see Hilary Pilkington, Russia's Youth and its Culture: A Nation's Constructors and Constructed (London and New York: Routledge, 1994), pp.64–71.
8. Natal'ya Smirnova, ‘Panika ili znanie? Konstruktirovanie problemy rosta potrebleniya narkotikov sredi podrostkov i molodezhi v mestnoi presse’, in Elena Omel'chenko (ed.), Geroinashegovremeni: sotsiologicheskie ocherki (Ul'yanovsk: Ul'yanovsk State University Press, 2000), pp.205–22.
9. John M. Kramer, ‘Drug Abuse in Eastern Europe: An Emerging Issue of Public Policy’, Slavic Review, Vol.49, No.1 (1989), pp.19–31 (p.27).
10. Erica C. Richardson, Health Promotion in the Field of Substance Misuse in Post-Soviet Russia, PhD thesis, CREES, University of Birmingham, 2002, pp.54–61, 72–6.
11. Article 46, Federal Law ‘O narkoticheskikh sredstvakh i psikhotropnykh veshchestvakh’ No.3-F3, 8 Jan. 1998, as amended by Federal Law No.15-F3, 10 Jan. 2003, and by Federal Law 86-F3, 30 June 2003.
12. William Elliott Butler, HIV/AIDS and Drug Misuse in Russia: Harm Reduction Programmes and the Russian Legal System (London: International Family Health, 2003), pp.162–3.
13. Ol'ga Gorshkova, ‘Za knizhku o marikhuane oshtrafovali’, Izvestiya, 3 June 2004, p.7.
14. Aleksandr Shapovalov, ‘Eskimo priravnyali k duri. V Rostove-na-Dony zapreshena prodazha morozhenogo, nazvanie kotorogo sud rastsenil kak propagandu narkotikov’, Nezavisimaya gazeta, 18 Oct. 2004, p.10.
15. Ibid. For the impact legislative reform has had on harm-reduction activities more broadly, see Joanne Csete, ‘Lessons Not Learned: Human Rights Abuses and HIV/AIDS in the Russian Federation’, Human Rights Watch, Vol.16, No.5 (April 2004).
16. Hilary A. Pilkington, ‘“The Future Is Ours”: Youth Culture in Russia 1953 to the Present’, in Catriona Kelly and David Shepherd (eds.), Russian Cultural Studies: An Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), p.384.
17. Denis J.B. Shaw, ‘Achievements and Problems in Soviet Recreational Planning’, in Jenny Brine, Maureen Perrie and Andrew Sutton (eds.), Home, School and Leisure in the Soviet Union (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1980), pp.195–214.
18. This construction of casual youth leisure as dangerous goes back to the very beginning of the Soviet era: see Anne E. Gorsuch, Youth in Revolutionary Russia: Enthusiasts, Bohemians, Delinquents (Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press, 2000).
19. Pilkington, Russia's Youth and its Culture; also Nigel Grant, Soviet Education, 4th edn (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1979), pp.78–82.
20. Pilkington, Russia's Youth and its Culture, p.163.
21. Pilkington ‘The Future Is Ours’, p.380.
22. See Elena Omel'chenko, ‘Sotsiokul'turnyi kontekst molodezhnoi narkotizatsii’, in Omel'chenko (ed.), Geroinashegovremeni, pp.21–35.
23. Natal'ya Kremneva, ‘Molodezhnaya narkotizatsiya: asotsial'naya privychka ili sotsial'naya bolezn'?’, in Omel'chenko (ed.), Geroinashegovremeni, pp.169–81.
24. Michael Shiner, ‘Defining Peer Education’, Journal of Adolescence, Vol.22 (1999), pp.555–66.
25. G. Turner and J. Shepherd, ‘A Method in Search of a Theory: Peer Education and Health Promotion’, Health Education Research, Vol.14, No.2 (1999), pp.235–47.
26. Shiner, ‘Defining Peer Education’, p.558.
27. Ibid., p.564.
28. For more information on the work of the organization see the website <http://www.healthfuture.net.ru>.
29. Richardson, Health Promotion in the Field of Substance Misuse.
30. Economic and Social Research Council (UK) award number R000239439 ‘“Everyday” but not “normal”: Drug Use and Youth Cultural Practice in Russia’, led by Professor Hilary Pilkington, Centre for Russian and East European Studies, University of Birmingham, UK. The articles by Hilary Pilkington and Elena Omel'chenko in the present collection also draw on data gathered during that project.
31. For a full account of the findings from these two pieces of research, see Erica C. Richardson, Health Promotion in the Field of Substance Misuse, and Erica Richardson, Investigating Drugs Education Interventions in Vorkuta, Togliatti and Sochi, Project Report for ‘“Everyday” but not “normal”’ (2003), at <http://www.crees.bham.ac.uk/research/everyday/ERreport.pdf>.
32. Steinar Kvale, ‘The Social Construction of Validity’, Qualitative Inquiry, Vol.1, No.1 (1995), pp.19–40.
33. See Martyn Hammersley and Paul Atkinson, Ethnography: Principles in Practice, 2nd edn (London and New York: Routledge, 1995).
34. See, for example, Janine R. Wedel, Collusion and Collision: The Strange Case of Western Aid to Eastern Europe 1989–1998 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1998); Rebecca Kay, Russian Women and Their Organizations: Gender, Discrimination and Grassroots Women's Organizations, 1991–96 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000); Julie Hemment, ‘The Riddle of the Third Sector’, Anthropological Quarterly, Vol.77, No.2 (2004), pp.215–43.
35. See David Burrows, Starting and Managing Needle and Syringe Programmes: A Guide for Central and Eastern Europe and the Newly Independent States of the Former Soviet Union (New York: Open Society Institute, International Harm Reduction Development Union, 2000).
36. This aspect of developing a harm-reduction strategy is well described in Dave Burrows, Franz Trautmann, Murdo Bijl and Yuri Sarankov, ‘Training in the Russian Federation on Rapid Assessment and Response to HIV/AIDS Among Injecting Drug Users’, Journal of Drug Issues, Vol.29, No.4 (1999), pp.811–42.
37. Shiner, ‘Defining Peer Education’, p.555; Turner and Shepherd, ‘A Method in Search of a Theory’, p.235.
38. See David R. Black, Nancy S. Tobler and John P. Sciacca, ‘Peer Helping/Involvement: An Efficacious Way to Meet the Challenge of Reducing Alcohol, Tobacco, and Other Drug Use Among Youth?’, Journal of School Health, Vol.68, No.3 (1998), pp.87–93.
39. Shiner, ‘Defining Peer Education’, p.558. For a detailed exploration of the evidence base for ‘normative’ versus ‘radical’ interventions, see Nyanda McBride, ‘A Systematic Review of School Drug Education’, Health Education Research, Vol.18, No.6 (2003), pp.729–42.
40. See A.R. Mellanby, J.B. Rees and J.H. Tripp, ‘Peer-led and Adult-led School Health Education: A Critical Review of Available Comparative Research’, Health Education Research, Vol.15, No.5 (2000), pp.533–45 (p.534). Similar issues around power and student–teacher roles in Russian schools are discussed in Gyuzel' Sabirova, ‘Shkola – zona bez narkotikov: problemy profilaktiki narkomanii v sovremennoi shkole’, in Omel'chenko (ed.), Geroinashegovremeni, pp.185–201 (pp.196–7).
41. See Kathryn Backett-Milburn and Sheila Wilson, ‘Understanding Peer Education: Insights From a Process Evaluation’, Health Education Research, Vol.15, No.1 (2000), pp.85–96.
42. See Turner and Shepherd, ‘A Method in Search of a Theory’, pp. 238, 240–41; Backett-Milburn and Wilson, ‘Understanding Peer Education’, pp.92–5.
43. Sue Ann Walker and Melanie Avis, ‘Common Reasons Why Peer Education Fails’, Journal of Adolescence, Vol.22 (1999), pp.573–7 (p.574).
44. Sociological research critical of the use of ‘scare tactics’ and questioning their efficacy was published as early as 1989 in the Soviet Union: see V.V. Gul'dan, O.L. Romanova, O.K. Sidenko, A.M. Korsun and M.V. Shvedova, ‘Predstavleniya shkol'nikov o narkomanii i toksikomanii’, Sotsiologicheskie issledovaniya, 1989, No. 3, pp.66–71.