The sculpture "Motherland is Calling" stands in the distance in Mamayev Kurgan memorial complex in Volgograd. (Vasiliy Kolotilov / For The Times)

Young men show off their strength at an outdoor gym on the promenade along the Volga River in central Volgograd. Vasiliy Kolotilov / For The Times Two skateboarders entertain themselves in Volgograd on Sept. 2, 2017. Vasiliy Kolotilov / For The Times Left, young men show off their strength at an outdoor gym on the promenade along the Volga River in central Volgograd. right, two skateboarders entertain themselves in Volgograd on Sept. 2, 2017. Vasiliy Kolotilov / For The Times

History runs deep in Volgograd and its long embankments along the mighty Volga River, an important strategic and commercial artery in Russia. During the Soviet era, the city was a large industrial center with weapons, aluminum and shipbuilding factories.

But with the collapse of the Soviet infrastructure, many of Volgograd’s industries closed. Thousands of people were left without jobs. The city is now one of the poorest of Russia’s 15 cities with populations over 1 million.

This year the city, formerly known as Stalingrad, celebrated the 75th anniversary of the pivotal World War II battle fought here between the Soviet Red Army and Hitler’s troops. The city is still pockmarked with the scars of that battle, widely considered the greatest of the war and one of the largest in history. It lasted 200 days, cost nearly 2 million lives and nearly destroyed the city’s landscape before it ended on Feb. 2, 1943.

You can’t turn your head in Volgograd without seeing a war memorial. The tallest one, the Motherland Calls, is 279 feet from the base of the female figure to the tip of her sword thrust into air. She overlooks the city’s new $278-million stadium built for the 2018 soccer World Cup.

The global event will bring some temporary work for Volgograd’s young, especially those who can speak foreign languages and can feed the short-term tourist economy. But long-term opportunities for young people like Avanesov remain centered in Moscow and St. Petersburg.

“When I’ve been to Moscow, I realize that Moscow and Volgograd are two absolutely different towns of absolutely different countries,” he said. “No one is paying attention to us. We just grow up and we don’t know what to do here.”

The economic future: Russia’s petroleum engineers

Katerina Borodina, Tyumen

To get a sense of how important the oil and gas industry is to the city of Tyumen, and indeed the whole of Russia, consider a November ceremony honoring 17 young petroleum industry professionals after the completion of a vigorous training course at a subsidiary of Rosneft, Russia’s largest oil company. After swearing allegiance to the profession and promising “to achieve high results,” the trainees stepped across a stage to where a company executive dipped his finger into a hard hat full of sweet crude oil and swiped the forehead of each graduate.

With that, a new cohort of oil and gas professionals was indoctrinated into Russia’s most important industry.

It is an industry in which Katerina Borodina, 27, sees opportunities for young people to help develop Russia’s new oil and gas frontiers.

Katerina Borodina, 27, stands in front of the Bridge of Lovers crossing the Tura River in central Tyumen, where Katerina works in the oil and gas industry. “The hardest part about being a Siberian woman is convincing people we don’t have bears running down the street!” she says. Vasiliy Kolotilov / For The Times

“What’s happening now on the offshore shelves can be compared with western Siberia 70 years ago, when we were starting to discover massive fields of oil and gas,” she said. “Now the shelf represents the same prospects.”

Borodina, raised in Tyumen by her mom after her dad died, surprised herself by becoming a geological engineer for Rosneft. She had good grades in school, loved to sing and wanted to become a doctor. But her chemistry scores earned her a full scholarship to the local university’s geological engineering department, and she fell in love with the subject within the first week of classes.

Tyumen is more than 1,000 miles east of Moscow in the heart of western Siberia. It was founded in the 16th century when the Russian Empire was pushing its expansion east of the Ural Mountains. Today, the city is developing rapidly around the oil and gas industry. Average salaries are higher here than in other parts of Russia. The city may lack the glamour of Moscow, but it has enough cafes, restaurants and shopping malls to cater to its newly prosperous population.

Raul Ranoa / Los Angeles Times

Borodina isn’t much on the bar and club scene. She works a lot, even on the weekends. She spends a lot of time with her mother, Tanya, whom she likes to take out for a night of karaoke.

She worries about her mother, who has struggled to raise her and her half brother, who’s 14. She especially worried about her grandmother, whose pension is about $200 a month. Borodina said her salary is slightly higher than the $700 average monthly salary for young professionals in Tyumen, so she can afford to help out her family.

“I think Russia offers a lot of opportunities for young people, but it’s completely forgotten about its older people, the people who worked all their lives for the state,” she said. “It’s not right how hard it is for them to get by now.”

Borodina says she hasn’t given much thought to voting this time around. She said she probably will vote, but she doesn’t know for whom. It doesn’t really make much difference whether she votes or not, she said.

“We know who’s going to win, don’t we?” she said.

Anastasia Reunova, Tyumen

Anastasia Reunova, 27, is one of the few women who works in the data analysis department of a major oil services company in western Siberia. When she was in college, professors would tell her to pick another profession because going into this business as a woman would be too hard.

She proved them wrong, was hired by Salym Petroleum Development, a joint venture between Royal Dutch Shell and Russia’s Gazprom Neft, and her career soared. She’s done stints in the company’s field offices in Salym, a remote oil field deep in the Siberian wilderness. It’s a 14-hour trip to get there from Tyumen. Once there, the workers stay in dorm-like accommodations with modern amenities such as gyms. Though the fieldwork could feel isolating after six weeks, the camaraderie made it worth it, she said.

Anastasia Reunova, 28, and her boyfriend, Andrei Boboshko, 31, enjoy a hot lunch with Reunova's son, Stepan, after visiting a petting zoo in Tyumen. Vasiliy Kolotilov / For The Times

So did the pay. Fieldworkers make 1½ times the monthly salary of a typical home office worker in Tyumen. After two years of working monthlong field shifts, Reunova was able to save enough money to buy a car and make a down payment on a one-bedroom apartment.

“It’s not bad, right?” she said as she walked around the unfinished, bare walls of the new apartment she will share with her 18-month-old son and her boyfriend.

Reunova’s life is something that her mother could have never imagined. Her generation didn’t grow up with the benefits of the Soviet system, in which apartments and jobs were assigned by the state.

“We’ve had to be more creative and figure things out on our own because the state doesn’t do that anymore,” she said. “I think our generation is more self-sufficient. We’re figuring things out on our own because we’ve had to.”

Anastasia Reunova and boyfriend Andrei Boboshko make a shopping list at their new apartment before heading to the construction store on Nov. 25, 2017. The couple are remodeling the apartment Reunova bought last year. Vasiliy Kolotilov / For The Times

A member of the Tyumen Walruses, a winter swimming club, does pull-ups during the club's annual competition day. Right: A club member swims in an opening of a frozen lake in Tyumen to get ready for the club’s annual competition. The local winter swimming club memver swimming in the open pool to get ready for the competitions. Left: A member of the Tyumen Walruses, a winter swimming club, does pull-ups during the club's annual competition day. Right: A club member swims in an opening of a frozen lake in Tyumen to get ready for the club’s annual competition. Right: A member swims to get ready for the competitions. (Vasiliy Kolotilov / For The Times)

The anti-corruption protests that rattled local authorities across the country this spring and summer didn’t get much traction here.

“Russia will always be Russia with or without corruption,” she said. “Everyone knows it exists.… But we can’t change things, so we just accept that it exists and work around it. Our generation has figured out how to do that.”

Reunova doesn’t know whether she will go to the polls on March 18, although she might be enticed by the promotional giveaways that authorities use to lure people to vote. “They give you all these incentives to go, you know, like cakes and prizes, so … maybe I will just go to see what is there,” she said.

The Navalny activist

Nikita Panfilov, Vladivostok

The volunteers in Navalny’s campaign office in Vladivostok tell stories of police harassment like soldiers rehashing battle scenes. Of the dozen young volunteers sitting around the conference table, at least half have been dragged into police vans and held for hours for participating in unsanctioned protests. One has served three stints of 20-day jail sentences. Another had police from the anti-extremist unit search his apartments without a warrant.

Nikita Panfilov, 20, eluded arrest for months as a volunteer, but the hours he has spent waiting outside police stations for his friends to be released have changed the way he views his country. He has become a devoted member of Navalny’s campaign, whose nationwide appeal to Russian youths has shaken the Kremlin.

Nikita Panfilov, 20, a volunteer at opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s regional headquarters, distributes campaign leaflets on a suburban train in Vladivostok. Vasiliy Kolotilov / For The Times

Then on Jan. 23, 10 months after Panfilov started volunteering for the Navalny campaign, police came to the campaign office and escorted him to a police station for questioning. They threatened to charge him with trying to organize an unsanctioned rally but released him after several hours with no charges.

“Interesting part is that I don’t even feel nervous,” he wrote on Telegram, a messaging app, shortly after being released. “Just a bit disappointed. Horrible things are happening.”

The police are now harassing his parents and grandparents, and that has him worried, he said.

Navalny has little chance of becoming president; the Kremlin won’t even give him permission to register his campaign. But his anti-corruption campaign has gathered more than 100,000 volunteers across the country, most of them young, and is teaching members of an otherwise apolitical generation how to organize politically.

Nikita Panfilov chats with other volunteers in Alexei Navalny’s campaign headquarters in Vladivostok. (Video by Vasiliy Kolotilov / For The Times) The Kontrabanda underground bar in Vladivostok. Right: The Golden Horn Harbor of Vladivostok. Vasiliy Kolotilov / For The Times View over the Golden Horn harbour of Vladivostok from a hill over the city. Left: The Kontrabanda underground bar in Vladivostok. Right: The Golden Horn Harbor of Vladivostok. (Vasiliy Kolotilov / For The Times)

“For young people in Russia, Navalny’s campaign is first of all an opportunity and also something very new,” Panfilov said. “We hadn't seen anything like this before. All our childhood, all our youth, we had that strong understanding that nothing will change.”

Panfilov was born and raised in Vladivostok, Russia’s most important port in the Far East. People in Vladivostok frequently compare their city to San Francisco because it’s tucked into a scenic bay and spread out among rolling hills.

The city also has a bit of an iconoclastic spirit; it was one of the last cities in the Russian Empire to support the Bolsheviks.

Located about 4,000 miles east of Moscow, the region surrounding Vladivostok shares a border with China and North Korea. Ships come in from the Sea of Japan, also known as the East Sea, to transport goods west on Russia’s Trans-Siberian Railway.

Panfilov understands why his parents see Putin as their savior, having struggled through the crime, banditry and chaos of those turbulent, post-Soviet years. But the cost of Putin’s economic stability is now bumping up against young Russians’ desire for a different future.

When he looks around, Panfilov said he sees the scars of the breakup of the Soviet Union. Factories aren’t working, young people leave to work in China or Korea. Some make it to Europe. Russia’s best computer programmers work outside the country, he said.

Nikita Panfilov and his girlfriend in their apartment in Vladivostok on Dec. 2, 2017. Panfilov and his family have been harassed by the local police for his participation in demonstrations supporting opposition activist Alexei Navalny. Vasiliy Kolotilov / For The Times

The world sees Russia as one big gas station, he said.

Panfilov studies Korean at one of Vladivostok’s universities. When he’s not studying, he’s often hunched over a notebook, drawing detailed, pen-and-ink sketches in the one-room apartment he shares with his girlfriend.

Most of his free time is spent at the Navalny headquarters helping campaign for signatures to allow Navalny to register his candidacy. Many of his Saturday mornings are devoted to handing out leaflets on commuter trains.

What bothers him most is that many are willing to complain but not look for solutions.

“Either people will live worse and keep believing the propaganda ... or people’s anger will get so bad that any peaceful change of power will become impossible,” he said.

St. Isaac Cathedral’s golden dome shines in the distance across the Neva River from the Peter and Paul Fortress in St. Petersburg. Vasiliy Kolotilov / For The Times

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Ayres is a special correspondent.

This story was supported with a grant from the United Nations Foundation