Over the weekend, The Washington Post website presented a story and charts that looked at the Russian invasion of Ukraine through different age groups.
As you will see, Americans 30 and younger have a much more tolerant opinion of Russia’s evil actions than older ones. The different opinions, according to several polling questions, are simply staggering:
• Asked in a poll by The Economist and YouGov, “With which do you sympathize more?,” 80% of respondents age 45-64 said Ukraine, as did 90% of those 65 and older. But support for Ukraine was only in the 50% range for the under-30 and 30-to-44 age groups. Those two groups also reported more sympathy for Russia than the two older ones.
• Asked if they care who wins the war between Russia and Ukraine, only 51% of both younger age groups said they did. It was 76% for ages 45-64 and 90% for 65 and up.
• Another poll, by the Pew Research Center, asked people if Russia was America’s competitor or enemy. While majorities of all four age groups view Russia is our enemy, once again more younger people only see Russia as a competitor.
What explains this generation gap? Russia is clearly the neighborhood bully in this war as it tries to recapture one of its former Soviet republics. In the process it’s destroying cities and its soldiers are indiscriminately executing innocent civilians. Who’s going to have any sympathy at all for that?
Philip Bump, the author of the story, has a good explanation for the differences of opinion: Younger people, who are more tolerant of Russia, didn’t live with the former Soviet Union as a nuclear-armed threat to the United States.
Bump believes the poll responses are “a graph of familiarity with the Cold War.” It’s a good point. As he notes, the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, breaking up into 13 separate countries. Poll respondents 29 and younger were born after that, so they have no memories of the Soviet Union — when it really was America’s competitor in many ways.
Similarly, only the oldest members of the 30 to 44 age group would remember the USSR, but only from the 1980s, when serious detente and disarmament talks were under way.
People in these two age groups surely see terrorists as a greater threat to America. But many members of the older groups, age 45 and above, have vivid memories of the Cuban Missile Crisis and other events in which it took cool heads on both sides to prevent nuclear weapons from being unleashed.
There’s one other possible factor here: The different ways in which older people and younger people get information. Younger people tend to get most of their news and opinion online, while older people tend to use more traditional sources like newspapers and television.
The Post story did not address that topic, but it’s something to think about. In any case it’s shocking that so many more younger people don’t see the harm in what Russia has done.
Jack Ryan, Enterprise-Journal
