"No politics thanks, we're Russian"

MOSCOW, June 10 (Reuters) What's more attractive, a new government or a new car? Russia's youth has made its choice, opting for possessions rather than politics, according to academics and pollsters.

With a booming economy filling the pockets of the young urban middle class and President Vladimir Putin enjoying record popularity ratings in his eighth year in power, few see any point in bothering with politics.

Prominent Kremlin critics like former chess champion Garry Kasparov may grab headlines in the West but in his homeland he has failed to stir young voters who are more interested in iPods and mobile phones.

''Hardly any of my friends know about our opposition leaders and if they do, it's from jokes,'' said Moscow architecture student Tatiana Kopteva. ''It just doesn't look cool.'' Such attitudes are typical of a post-Soviet generation which a recent study has dubbed more materialistic and less political than any other.

Almost half of young Russians polled by the Sociology Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences said they had no interest whatsoever in politics, up from a third when a similar study was done 10 years ago.

Asked whom they would vote for in next year's presidential election, the biggest group, 35 percent, named Putin -- who has already said he will not stand. This result coincided with other recent independent polls showing Putin's strongest support is among voters under 30.

Opposition protests in Moscow, a city of over 10 million, rarely draw more than a few thousand participants. In provincial cities, demonstrators are more often counted in the hundreds.

DULL POLITICS But apathy and rampant consumerism are not the only explanations.

Kremlin strategists maintain a tight grip on the programming of state-controlled television channels and rarely give opposition figures any airtime. If they do, it is almost always in a negative context, coupled with copious mentions of lawbreaking, riots or extremism.

''Putin's stability is based on a silent pact between the government and the population: well-being in exchange for no political activity,'' said Yuri Saprykin, editor of the Moscow style and entertainment magazine Afisha.

Many young Russians escape to the Internet to debate over politics and drum up support for opposition. Russians are the second largest group of bloggers on the popular blog-hosting site www.livejournal.com. Many of their blogs are distinctly politicised but this has failed to translate into notable election results.

The monochrome nature of Russian politics, featuring a supine parliament rubber-stamping laws sent from the Kremlin, a dominant pro-Kremlin party which wins most elections and a cast of characters largely taken from Soviet times, does not help.

Boris Gryzlov, the veteran leader of the main pro-Kremlin party United Russia, even said on Russian television in April: ''Parliament is not a place for debates.'' ''Russian politics are sad and boring,'' said Gleb Tarabutin, editor of the Russian version of the Rolling Stone magazine.

''In the United States, politics is bright, it's a type of show business but here everything is dirty, gloomy and just not clean at all.'' BRAINWASHING Television newscasts, still the main source of news for Russians, don't do much to help.

Most evenings a stony-faced Putin is a main item, generally shown sitting at a desk questioning ministers about progress on key projects.

The two men widely assumed to be leading candidates to succeed him, First Deputy Prime Ministers Dmitry Medvedev and Sergei Ivanov, are shown earnestly visiting factories, pig farms and research projects in the provinces.

''Television is a brainwashing machine. It stimulates political indifference and washes out of people's heads any thoughts of political action,'' said Afisha's Saprykin.

Critical voices or independent reporting on the country's numerous social problems, such as rural poverty and depopulation, are absent from the airwaves.

''Youth is apolitical because it wants tangible results,'' said Ilya Ponomarev, leader of opposition movement Left Front.

''When a country has no functioning legal political mechanism, youth has absolutely no interest in getting involved because there are a lot of other things to do which give guaranteed results and help grow your career.'' Vladimir Dukelsky, an expert on Russian culture at Moscow's Cultural Institute, blamed the low turnout at opposition marches on fear spread by state-controlled media, the self-centred individualism of Russian youth and a lack of attractive opposition leaders.

Or, as radio commentator Sergei Dorenko put it succinctly: ''A great part of the country sold its freedom for a second-hand Opel Vectra''.

Reuters SG RN1424