The military-patriotic mobilization and its concretization in the creation of youth organizations also reveals the logic of densification of the ground action at work in the armed forces of these countries. Responding to both conjunctural and structural needs, the organisations are both responsible for creating mass and improving moral strength.

III/ THE STAKES OF MILITARY- TARO-PATRIOTIC MOBILIZATION

The densification of the earth's action between fantasy and reality

The military-patriotic mobilization and its concretization in the creation of youth organizations also reveals the logic of densification of the ground action at work in the armed forces of these countries. Responding to both conjunctural and structural needs, the organisations are both responsible for creating mass and improving moral strength.

The mass is intended to create the advantage of numbers and to reverse or mitigate a balance of power. The Baltic cases are a telling example of a structural mass defect. With populations estimated at less than 1.5 million for Estonia, 2 million for Latvia and around 3 million for Lithuania, the three Baltic countries face a major demographic obstacle, hampering the formulation of a response to the priority challenges identified in their respective strategic doctrines. Unsurprisingly, Russia is perceived as a serious threat, the Ukrainian crisis having played a decisive role in aggravating the already existing tensions with the Baltic republics. These tensions, which are regularly expressed through the recurrent theme of Russian-speaking minorities and its corollaries - the "rehabilitation of Nazism" and "Russophobia" - have given rise to the spectre of "Russianophobia".a so-called "hybrid" threat, likely to circumvent the activation mechanisms of Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, providing for mutual assistance between the parties in the event of "an armed attack against one or more of them".⁴⁴. Thus, in addition to the fines and suspensions of information channels accused of disseminating biased facts⁴⁵as well as attempts to finance alternative channels aimed at Russian speakers⁴⁶The Baltic States activate in parallel a variety of levers influencing the level of "mass" available for mobilisation.

Increasing the available mass, in particular by setting up a conscription system (in force in Estonia, Poland, Russia and since 2015 in Lithuania), appears to be an effective and relatively inexpensive means of conventional invasion. The training of the population and the creation of a reserve that could be mobilised in the event of a crisis could thus relieve the active forces of a burden that they would probably not be able to bear alone.

In this logic, the integration of youth organisations within defence systems appears to be a relevant solution to reinforce an already existing system. Nevertheless, given the power relations that are largely unfavourable to the Baltic countries and Poland in the event of a conflict involving Russia, this type of measure seems to have less of a military than a geopolitical rationale, in this case sending a strong signal to Russia. For although the proportion of defence budgets in each of the Baltic states has risen relatively steadily since the Ukrainian crisis, their armed forces continue to suffer from a chronic lack of resources.⁴⁸This, coupled with extremely limited numbers that reservists from the conscription system or youth cannot really fill.

Continually touted and systematically celebrated, the values of the combatant occupy a central place in military-patriotic discourse. Often presented by the popular historiography of these countries as the determining factor in victory over the enemies of the nation, the values inherent in the soldier-hero continue to fuel the fantasies and representations of past, present and future conflicts. Whether it is the soldier of the Red Army in Stalingrad, the fighter of the Krajowa Armia in Warsaw or the Latvian Legion in the Curonian Spit, all of them are doing the same.All of them are admired, which is also reflected in the teachings given to the members and in the activities offered to them. Moreover, it is in the field of values that most of the training of young members of the organizations is oriented. This teaching, which covers both the development of physical capacities and the strengthening of intellectual dispositions, is above all intended to strengthen their 'moral strength'. Moral strength is an essential factor of operational superiority and "rests on the resilience and strength of both the mental and psychological dispositions (both leader and subordinate) or of a group of individuals" (ibid., para. 2).⁴⁹. It is fuelled by a number of factors, including "the development of the meaning and legitimacy of the commitment".⁵⁰and "individual training, especially in ethics and deontology".⁵¹.

The fruits of this preparation, which in many ways could be described as ideological, are particularly tangible in Russia and Poland, as evidenced by the nature of the activities, but above all by the discourse disseminated by these organisations to the outside world. These images, whether for the attention of society or abroad, present a youth mobilized around political power and ready to fight or even die for its ideas. The aim is to produce a deterrent effect against any adversary or opponent who may become a potential enemy.

As such, it is worthwhile to dwell on the images conveyed by these organizations. For they are indeed images, relaying by definition a subjective vision of reality. However, because they are carefully manipulated by communications and recruitment services, they do not necessarily reflect a tangible reality. It is therefore by going beyond the effects of publicity and attraction that this type of phenomenon tends to arouse in observers that it is possible to estimate the extent of the influence of these movements within their respective societies.

First of all, if we look at the share of these organizations in the population, we see that the number of people claimed systematically represents less than 1% of the total population (see Figure 2). By way of comparison, the Komsomol, a state organization, had about 40 million members in the 1980s. ⁵²or nearly 15% of the then Soviet population. ⁵³. Even if these organizations are not quite comparable to the one mentioned above, this parallel highlights their still relatively low popularity. It would also be interesting to look at how these organizations are perceived and understood within their own societies, although such an approach is not yet fully developed.It would also be interesting to look at how these organisations are perceived and understood within their own societies, although this is a very delicate matter, due to national particularities, the complexity of obtaining a comprehensive overview of opinions across a society, and the lack of precise sources on the subject. To cite only the Russian and Polish examples, it would seem that, far from being the subject of unconditional consensus, these organisations encounter several forms of opposition.

In Russia, the phenomenon is intimately linked to the problem of military service, itself being inseparable from the rather negative image of the Russian army in relation to the Chechen crises and issues of internal violence.

Thus, in 'Surveys carried out on the relationship between Russian citizens and the Army make it possible to establish a fairly great constancy in the paradox : Abstract adherence to military values or the prestige of the army, which is often confused with the feeling of regained national dignity, coexists with negative opinions on the conditions in which military service is performed and with generalised practices of circumvention".⁵⁴.

By contrast, military service and the army enjoy a remarkably constant popularity in Poland. Criticism seems to focus instead on the government's decision to create a new branch of the armed forces, the FDT. The FDT is often denounced as an attempt by the Ministry of Defence to set up a 'private army' for electoral purposes.⁵⁵.

Nevertheless, in view of the mass they represent in relation to the number of active armies and their level of ideological preparation, these youth organisations seem to make a significant contribution to the defence of the country. But this contribution is only theoretical. Moreover, it is greatly exaggerated by the myths and narratives employed within some organizations in particular. Moreover, the image of a militarized and militarized youth determined to fight has a particular connotation in this region and tends to feed fantasies that are often far removed from historical realities. Indeed, the intrinsic value of these substitute "troops" needs to be qualified: despite military-style physical training, accompanied by theoretical lessons ranging from tactics to history lessons and cultural visits, the level of preparation is obviously far from approaching that of regular armies.

These "weekend soldiers"⁵⁶ are actually poorly and inadequately trained, and their ability to perform in a conflict against a professional army is questionable. Their level of resilience, motivation and patriotic self-sacrifice cannot make up for a flagrant lack of military skills, despite the myths and heroic images they seem to feed on. In short, it is a substantial contribution on paper, but one that needs to be put into perspective.

A mobilization in the service of domestic policy

Military-patriotic mobilization processes clearly have an important symbolic dimension with military applications. However, they mainly follow very pragmatic objectives, echoing domestic issues. Acting on the political sphere, these forms of mobilization are valuable tools for political power.

The post-Soviet space was deeply marked by the decade following the fall of the Soviet Union. The political, economic, social, societal and even psycho-logical upheavals brought about by the reforms carried out from the beginning of the nineties onwards have conditioned a progressive withdrawal of the individual into the private sphere, to the detriment of the "citizen".⁵⁷. Although these liberalization reforms have been implemented to varying degrees in different countries, they are nevertheless based on the same very liberal philosophy.⁵⁸ aimed at erasing any reference to a shameful "socialist" past which could be characterised in the economic field by the sudden massive privatisation of the economy, price deregulation and the full liberalisation of the currency.

Because of their scale and violence, but above all because of the extent of their consequences on societies, the reforms carried out in Russia and Poland are convincing examples where the military-patriotic mobilization intervenes as a state lever aimed at reversing the process of dissolution of the social body. Indeed, whether it be the "Balcerowicz Plan" or the "Balcerowicz Plan⁵⁹in Poland or the "shock therapy" carried out by Egor Gaïdar ⁶⁰ in Russia, both developed on the advice of US economist Jeffrey Sachs, these reforms have helped to shift the centre of gravity from the collective to the individual, valuing individual rights on the one hand and encouraging private initiative on the other. However, while a minority manages to benefit from liberalization and become considerably richer, a large part of the population falls into extreme precariousness. According to a report by UNICEF and IRC ⁶¹According to a recent study, these economic reforms are estimated to have caused the deaths of 3.2 million people in Russia between 1990 and 1999. Similarly, a study conducted by The Lancet (independent medical journal)⁶² Stresses the link between privatisation policies and the deterioration of living conditions, as evidenced by the 13% increase in the mortality rate in Russia between 1991 and 1998 and the five-year decline in life expectancy between 1991 and 1994. Indeed, growing socio-economic inequalities, increasing poverty and deteriorating living conditions, and their corollaries, namely rising crime and corruption, have contributed to the dissolution of the social body in the post-Soviet countries, which the political powers are now trying to remobilise.

In this logic, patriotism and its discourses appear as a potential force for the re-politicization of these societies. Indeed, "only the recourse to the notion of patriotism can allow its [the individual] return to the collective. Patriotism presupposes the self-denial of individuals towards the national community as a whole. Valuing the "duties", it forgets the "rights" of the citizen equation. The valorization of patriotism partially replaces the communist ideology. It is served by the same actors". ⁶³. However, the forced repositioning of the individual at the centre of the state matrix serves a very specific purpose: "to compensate for the incompetence, or even the virtual non-existence, of the state in [the] social domains" (ibid.). ⁶⁴. If patriotic discourse tends to value a superior common cause, that of the nation or homeland, which would transcend all divisions, it also tends to place the individual in a supposedly collective approach. The use of the concept of individual responsibility is here a cardinal point of the strategy implemented by the political power. The fruit of neo-liberal thinking, individual responsibility makes it possible to transfer to the individual the weight of the disengagement of the State and the consequences of the deregulation policies undertaken in the 1990s. By becoming solely responsible for his or her situation and the sole culprit for his or her failures, the individual is encouraged (and forced) to give himself or herself body and soul to consider improving his or her condition. In this sense, neo-liberal rhetoric, which is particularly aggressive in Poland, conveys a coercive force, a symbolic violence that incites individuals to make sacrifices and to invest personally in sectors abandoned by the public authorities (typically the fields of public health and social security).

Thus, "Patriotism is supposed to inspire citizens to "stand up" for themselves, for example, by agreeing not to flee military service on a massive scale, by having children, by showing solidarity with the elderly, by stopping drinking, by participating in charitable works, [...]".⁶⁵.

As a true transfer of competences from the State to the individual, the latter is invited to accept the disengagement of the former. This use of patriotism for political purposes could thus become a fundamental common characteristic. But military-patriotic mobilization also serves well-identified objectives, depending on the country. Drawing up a typology of these makes it possible to identify what is at stake.

Conclusion

In order to prepare their societies for a future conflict, Russia, Poland and the Baltic countries have chosen to turn to their youth. In spite of some peculiarities, the mechanisms for mobilisation remain more or less the same. Patriotism and its militaristic declination are the cogs of the wheel, both as a legacy of a latent process of militarisation that began at the beginning of the Soviet period and as a consequence of the policies of nationalist refocusing of the last few decades. This militaro-patriotic mobilisation, conveyed by a set of discourses and symbols, has a dual use that could be classified according to the target aimed at and the desired effect:an internal use, with a view to federating the social body around an idea that is intended to be consensual, but also with a view to marginalizing undesirable elements; and an external use, with a mobilization against a foreign body identified as harmful and from which it is necessary to protect oneself.

In this way, mobilizing youth through military-patriotic mechanisms becomes a tool that allows the power to co-opt and channel the passions running through a society, whether positive or negative, and redirect them towards themes that serve its own interests. It is interesting to note that the representations conveyed by the organizations tend to espouse those forming the backbone of the national idea.

This is evidenced by the recurrence of the myth of lost power and references to paramilitary groups at the beginning of the last century.

These elements clearly contribute to the militarization of society, or at least of part of the youth. One of the most notable manifestations of this militarisation is undoubtedly the integration of organisations into defence systems and the extreme proximity they maintain with the armies. Creating an efficient mass, improving the quality of recruitment and strengthening the resilience of future soldiers by concentrating efforts on physical and above all ideological preparation from a very young age are all means of ensuring the durability of a military institution that is sometimes in search of legitimacy. Aware of the interest that this kind of practice can generate, organizations seem to play on the image of youth ready to sacrifice themselves for a higher cause. But the mere fact that children have a role to play in the event of conflict raises questions about the validity and relevance of this type of reasoning. Beyond ethical questioning, the very usefulness of these measures should be questioned: far from being equal to the quality of professional soldiers or even reservists, these units made up of young paramilitaries cannot have any decisive effect on the course of the conflict. However, if it were to be given a semblance of "effectiveness", the "merit" of this phenomenon of enlisting young people is that it fits perfectly into the process of disengagement of the state from certain sectors. Through a strategy of individual responsibility and a call for sacrifice, under the pretext of patriotic abnegation, the State is getting rid of the problems caused by this abandonment and its incompetence. All the more so as the popularisation of paramilitary groups close to the State could serve to legitimise the rise in power of the structures of force.

While we have been able to put the real importance of these organizations into perspective, it would be desirable to look at the long-term impact of these youth recruitment policies. Given the recency of the phenomenon and the difficulty of "measuring" its effects on society, it seems risky to speculate about their achievements in terms of audience and popularity. Without, however, attempting a comprehensive evaluation of these projects, as in the case of the system of abstract indicators that Russia had tried to put in place for its patriotic education programmes, it would be difficult to make a complete assessment of these projects. ⁶⁶It would seem advisable to survey their popularity among certain socio-professional categories, and even among certain associations traditionally receptive to this type of initiative. One could, for example, cite the Union of Committees of Mothers of Soldiers of Russia, which played a leading role in the debates on the dedovshchina in particular, and which was more geographically active in the field of the fight against terrorism.The Union of Soldiers' Mothers' Committees of Russia, which had played a leading role in the debates on dedovshchina in particular, and more generally on the place of the soldier in the army, in the delicate contexts of the war in Afghanistan and the two Chechen wars.

44 NATO, "The North Atlantic Treaty", Digitheque, Official Documents, 4 April 1949, online at: https://www.nato.int/cps/fr/natohq/official_texts_17120.htm, accessed 17 December 2018 .

45 Such as the PBK channel, fined four times by Latvia between 2014 and 2015 and the RTR Planeta channel suspended several times by Latvia and Lithuania between 2016 and 2017.

• Wire Report and TBT Staff, "Russian-language First Baltic Channel most fined TV station in Latvia last year", The Baltic Times, 27 April 2015.

• European Commission, "The decision to suspend broadcast of the Russian language channel 'RTR Planeta' in Lithuania complies with EU rules", Strategy, Digital Single Market, News, 17 February 2017, online athttps://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/news/decision-suspend-broad-cast-russian-language-channel-rtr-planeta-lithuania-complies-eu-rules, accessed 17 December 2018.

46 In 2015, Estonia had launched a Russian-language news channel, ET V+, which was supposed to compete with the media described as "pro-Russian", but without succeeding in attracting the Russian-speaking audience initially targeted. Index on Censorship, "Estonia's third channel struggles to connect with Russian speakers", News, 4 January 2016, online at https://www.indexoncensorship.org/2016/01/estonias-third-channel-struggles-to-connect-with-russian-speakers/, accessed 17 December 2018.

47 Table based on World Bank data. The World Bank, "Military Expenditures", Data, 2018, online at: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/MS.MIL.XPND.GD.ZS?end=2017&start=1999, accessed 17 December 2018.

48 Rod Thornton & Manos Karagiannis, "The Russian Threat to the Baltic States: The Problems of Shaping Local Defense Mechanisms", The Journal of Slavic Military Studies, 29:3, 2016, pp. 331-351.

49 Army Staff, Future Land Action, op. cit. p. 47.

50 Ibid. p. 49.

51 Ibid. p. 49

52 The Editors of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, "Komsomol - Soviet Youth Organization", Encyclopaedia Britannica, online athttps://www.britannica.com/topic/Komsomol, accessed 17 December 2018.

53 Based on data available on the United Nations Census website. United Nations, "2017 Revision of World Population Prospect," 2018, online athttps://population.un.org/wpp/, accessed 17 December 2018.

54 Anne Le Huérou & Élisabeth Sieca-Kozlowski, Military Culture and Patriotism in Today's Russia, op. cit. p. 26.

55 Slawomir Sierakowski (political scientist), interviewed by Euronews in op. cit.

56 Term used by the former Polish Defence Minister, Tomasz Siemoniak (Civic Platform), interviewed by Euronews in op.cit.

57 Françoise Daucé, L'armée dans l'histoire de l'État russe contemporain, Paris, Hérodote, N° 104, 2002, pp. 119-143.

58 Emmanuel Mathias, Ten Years of Baltic Independence. D'une Union à l'autre ?, Paris, Les Études du CERI, May 2001, No. 71.

59 Named after the Polish Minister of the Economy, Leszek Balcerowicz, architect of the liberalisation of the Polish economy.

60 Egor Gaïdar, Prime Minister of the Russian Federation between June and December 1992, then Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of the Economy between September 1993 and January 1994.

61 UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre, "A decade of transition", Regional Monitoring Report 8, MONEE Project, CEE/CIS/Baltics, 2001, online athttps://www.unicef-irc.org/publications/313-a-decade-of-transition.html, accessed 17 December 2018.

62 David Stuckler, Lawrence King, Martin Mckee, Mass privatisation and the post-communist mortality crisis: a cross national analysis, The Lancet, Volume 373, Issue 9661, January 2009, pp. 399-407.

63 Françoise Daucé, L'État, l'armée et le citoyen en Russie post-soviétique, Paris, l'Harmattan, 2001, p. 255.

64 Marlène Laruelle, "Patriotisme, nationalisme, xénophobie," in La Russie contemporaine, op.cit. p. 350.

65 Ibid.

66 Ekaterina Khodzhaeva & Irina Meyer-Olimpieva, "Mobilizing Patriotism in Russia: Federal Programs of Patriotic Education", op. cit.

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