site.bta Surveys Show Bulgarian Youth Do Not Always Stand out with Significantly More Democratic, Pro-Western Views, Despite Expectations

An international round table on the attitudes of young people in Central and Eastern Europe towards Russia's war against Ukraine, traditional values and democracy was held in Sofia on Monday. It was organised by Institute for Global Analytics, together with its partners Free Press for Eastern Europe and the Science+ network.

The roundtable was titled The Youth Factor Rises in Central Europe. Researchers from these four former communist countries in the region discussed the trends and benchmarked the situation in each country, analyzing the ways millennials and Gen Z view the most important political issues in their respective countries.

The discussion was motivated by the alarming results of recent surveys, according to which Bulgarian youth do not always stand out with significantly more democratic and pro-Western views, despite expectations. Research by the Institute for Global Analytics on the attitudes of Bulgarian youth shows unexpected but worrying results that are likely to have profound implications for Bulgaria's democratic development and pro-Western orientation. Despite expectations to the contrary, young people in Bulgaria are not significantly more progressive and democratic in their political positions than older generations, expressing Russia-friendly and traditional societal views.

The roundtable discussed the root causes of these Bulgarian-specific trends, reviewed the similarities and differences between Bulgarian youth and their Balkan, Central European and Baltic peers, and proposed possible measures.

Participants in the roundtable agreed that disinformation is very successful and spreads easily, including on social networks such as TikTok or Telegram, which are more preferred means of communication and awareness-raising by young people than traditional media. They stressed the need for state institutions and pro-Western actors in Eastern Europe in general to react and adapt more quickly, as the Russian propaganda machine is extremely effective, especially in a region that has been in Moscow's orbit and where it has levers of influence.

In some respects, millennials and Generation Z in Bulgaria are no different from their peers in Central and Eastern Europe: the withdrawal of young people from politics and their low voter turnout is a pattern consistently observed not only in the region but beyond. For example, around 70% of young people in the EU did not vote in the last European Parliament elections in 2019.

There is no difference between young people from Bulgaria and the other countries when it comes to individualism mixed with concern for the community, pragmatism, creativity and good knowledge of new technologies.

At the same time, an opinion poll in Central and Eastern Europe, conducted last year by the Bratislava-based NGO GLOBSEC, found that young Bulgarians are no more progressive and democratic than the country's older generations. For example, 71% of Bulgarians aged between 18 and 34 believe that the European Union dictates to their country. More than half of those between 18 and 24 want a strong leader and believe LGBT to be an immoral and decadent ideology, and 39.4% blame Ukraine for the war.

Moreover, according to the GLOBSEC survey, there is almost no difference in the way the youngest and the oldest Bulgarians perceive Russia, considered a threat by 34%of those between 18 and 24 and 27% of those over 65.

One of the main reasons for this, according to the Institute for Global Analytics, is the Bulgarian education system, which reinforces pro-Russian views in society. 

Other key factors are the widespread dissemination of pro-Russian and nationalist disinformation in the media, the lack of reassessment of the past, including a more critical portrayal of the communist period, and the fading memory of the transition to democracy (here there is some difference between millennials and Generation Z, whose representatives were not born in the 1990s).