My PhD dissertation analyses the changes and continuities in the sphere of government-organised youth organisations in post-communist Russia and Belarus. I am interested in how and why centralised state-supported mass membership youth associations have developed in the last 25 years. In addition to exploring the dissimilar historical trajectories of Russia and Belarus, I am also interested in the individual experience of state-endorsed youth activism in contemporary societies. In this research project I employ a variety of methods and data ranging from archival data to ethnographic field work data collected on site in Belarus and Russia.