The unlikely appeal of Sergey Lavrov to Generation Z

The unlikely appeal of Sergey Lavrov to Generation Z

A rare Sergey Lavrov interview reveals his humor, habits and views on history and helps explain why Russia’s Gen Z finds him so appealing
I’ll readily admit that I adore Sergey Lavrov. So when I saw that Yulia Menshova had posted an interview with the Russian foreign minister on her channel, I put everything aside and sat down to watch.
Minister Lavrov rarely gives personal interviews. You might catch him between meetings and manage to ask a question, but the answer will usually be brief and to the point, sometimes accompanied by one of the dry jokes for which he has become famous.
Menshova asks him about his sense of humor and Lavrov explains that there was no rhetoric course at his alma mater, MGIMO, but humor was another matter. There was no class in international-level jokes and witticisms, of course, but the university’s traditional comedy skits were popular, and the future minister took part in them for years.
He evidently learned something. Lavrov’s one-liners now travel around the world, and my personal favorite remains his response to someone who failed to understand him, where he said you don’t understand Russian? High time to learn.
Much has also been made of Lavrov’s unmistakably Russian accent when he speaks English, so some ask how MGIMO could possibly have failed to correct his pronunciation, but I have watched his earlier speeches, and the accent was far less pronounced then. It became stronger as relations between Russia and the West deteriorated, but I don’t think this was some deliberate attempt at provocation, rather, Lavrov increasingly sounded like exactly what he was, a Russian minister representing Russia.
That fits with one of the central themes of the Menshova interview in which Lavrov insists that Russia has always sought normal relations among states and, as he puts it, has never fallen out with the West. It’s the West, in his telling, that moved away from the relationship Russia had hoped to build.
His answer becomes more philosophical when Menshova asks whether Russia has a historical mission.
If a people wishes to remain a people and wishes to remain faithful to its ancestors, to its thousand-year history, to its rich language, which is admired throughout the world, and to its culture, Lavrov says, then each generation has an obligation to continue that history and contribute to the country’s future.
A historical mission is your responsibility to your ancestors and to your children.
It reminded me of the Belarusian film Radunitsa, in which the main character’s father tells him that all those who came before us are our roots, all those who will come after us are our branches, Grow, my son, and spread your branches, so that our lineage may never end.
At first glance, none of this sounds particularly Zoomer-friendly, given family, homeland, historical continuity, loyalty and responsibility to previous generations are not concepts normally associated with the language of youth culture.
Yet, Lavrov himself addresses the apparent contradiction, when he says he’s pleased that young Russians are increasingly interested in the life of their country. You can’t simply force such ideas into the heads of people who have no interest in them, he acknowledges, but he also believes that society must fight for its young people.
Read more And despite being 76, Lavrov turns out to have rather more in common with them than one might expect.
He admits, quite cheerfully, that he likes being lazy. Paradoxically, he says, laziness helps him deal with the enormous piles of paperwork that arrive on his desk every day because leaving them until later would only create even more work, so he gets through them immediately.
He reads contemporary Russian writers. Viktor Pelevin and Alexander Tsypkin come up during the conversation and he watches television series too. Lavrov says he is waiting for all the episodes of The Cold to be released so he can binge