The Will to What?: Class, Time, and Re-Willing in Post-Soviet Russia

The return of the psychological in the post-Soviet period has not only rewired the will and its relationship to psychological models of the feeling subject but also helped affix subjectivity to expectations of successful or unsuccessful self-transformation in competitive conditions. For-profit therapies conjure a self-disciplining will as leverage on willfulness that is aimed at future market success. By contrast, public assistance deems the internally controlling will, as well as the future, absent. This article considers processes of “re-willing” that are mediated by mental health experts under changing political winds. Re-willing not only disciplines and subjectivates children, it also divides them along class lines, directing each toward different expectations about what a life could be.