Почему молодые становятся социалистами

What does “sam sebe tsar” mean in Russian?

Why do the young lean socialist? Political scientist Ekaterina Schulmann draws a sharp line. The grown adult, she says, quoting Brodsky, is «сам себе царь и верблюд» (“his own tsar and camel”), self-made and self-governing. The young are not yet: they live inside conditions built for them, by parents, by schools.

That’s her whole explanation: because the young depend on a system they didn’t create, fairness (справедливость) matters more to them than to the self-reliant adult. The idiom сам себе царь (“one’s own tsar”) means being fully your own master, beholden to no one, ruler and subject at once. Grow into being сам себе царь, she hints, and the politics tends to drift.