Patriotic Education
September 1 is a special day for millions of schoolchildren and students, parents and teachers throughout the post-Soviet space. Knowledge Day symbolizes the beginning of a new academic year, full of discoveries, opportunities and new encounters. During the first extracurricular lesson "Conversations about the Important" on September 2, schoolchildren will be shown a video message from Russian President Vladimir Putin congratulating them on the start of the new school year. During his trip to Kyzyl, the President visited the new secondary comprehensive school No. 20 named after Heroes of the Fatherland and held an open lesson, “Conversation about the Important.” Putin stated "Starting this year, our schools will have a subject called "Basics of Security and Defense of the Motherland," where many things will, I hope, be put on a systemic basis. Nevertheless, if you see that this is lacking, we have the Yunarmiya created, cadet schools are being created."
Russia’s militarization of children in the occupied territory is part of a wider Russification campaign, euromaidanpress reported. On 2 September, the head of the Luhansk Oblast Military Administration, Artem Lysohor, reported that Russian forces had transported school students from the temporarily occupied town of Bilovodsk in Luhansk Oblast to a tent camp near Novosibirsk, Russia. According to Lysohor, the students, who were there for over a month, underwent a “Serve Russia” training program at the Russian military range. They were given a “young fighter” course, where they learned combat skills, under the instruction of Russian special forces and tank unit personnel. Russian experts in “patriotic education” were also involved, with a particular focus on older students who are expected to join the Russian army within a year or two.
Cosmopolitanism and individualism among young people could become an obstacle to Russia’s development and economic growth, Russian authorities said. The warning was made in the Strategy for Russia’s youth policy until 2030, which was approved by the government in Moscow on 29 August 2024. The document was prepared at the behest of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
”There are almost 38 million people aged between 14 and 35 in Russia. Taking care of their future is... important for ensuring national security. This would require joint efforts from the government bodies and non-profit organizations and, most importantly, involve young men and women in the decision-making,” Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin said during a cabinet meeting. In the strategy document, it was pointed out that the functioning of Russia as a “powerful, economically developed state” necessitates a population that is “nationally oriented and supports traditional values.” This should be achieved through the “harmonious development of young people and their creative potential,” it read.
Cosmopolitanism is a philosophical and cultural concept that advocates for the idea that all human beings belong to a single global community, regardless of their national, ethnic, or cultural backgrounds. It emphasizes the importance of understanding and respecting diverse cultures, promoting global citizenship, and fostering a sense of moral responsibility toward people beyond one's immediate community or nation. Cosmopolitanism has been discussed by various thinkers throughout history, from the Stoics of ancient Greece and Rome to modern philosophers like Immanuel Kant.
The term "Rootless cosmopolitanism" originally emerged in the Soviet Union during the late 1940s as part of an anti-Semitic campaign under Stalin. The term was used to denounce intellectuals, particularly Jewish intellectuals, who were accused of lacking loyalty to the Soviet state and its national culture. In the Soviet Union, the term "rootless cosmopolitan" became a key accusation during a campaign against what was perceived as Western, bourgeois, or non-Russian influences in the arts, sciences, and academia. This campaign targeted intellectuals and artists, many of whom were Jewish, accusing them of lacking a genuine connection to the "people" and the socialist ideals of the Soviet Union.
Due to its key role in the society, the younger generation has been selected as “the main target of ideological intervention carried out from the outside in order to weaken the Russian state,” the paper stressed. One of the major threats to the country’s youths it named is “the imposition of the Western lifestyle and consumption habits,” which includes extraterritorial, apolitical views and sexual deviations. The moral system of the younger generation in Russia “reflects value shifts from collectivism to individualism and from statism to cosmopolitanism over the past 30 years,” it said.
The document noted that “individualistic values often lead to difficulties for young people in forming relationships in the family, with friends and at work.” It singled out the development of collectivist values within the age group as an important task for the government over the next six years. Some of the other dangers to young people mentioned in the strategy are a weakening connection between generations, the degradation of traditional spiritual and moral values, legal nihilism, insufficient involvement in socially useful activities, and an increasing number of crimes committed by younger people, including with the use of information and communications technologies.
According to the document, the key areas of Russia’s youth policy until 2030 would be supporting the volunteer movement and patriotic organizations, introducing additional opportunities for studying and advanced training, expanding access to quality online content as part of cultural and educational initiatives, promoting the Russian language as a basis for cooperation on international platforms, and creating additional infrastructure for recreation and sports.
Aggressive militaristic propaganda, including in schools, is designed to make war a norm in Russian society. The Kremlin wants Russians to get used to war. Daniil Ken, head of the independent trade union Alliance of Teachers, said this on the air of the FREEDOM TV channel 02 September 2023. “Through the forcible involvement of children in support of the war, direct actions, the collection of humanitarian aid, emotional involvement – when they teach you to march or throw a dummy grenade, assemble and disassemble a machine gun for ideological lessons that while you are throwing a grenade in the schoolyard, dads, elders brothers, comrades, graduates of past years are already throwing real grenades, defending their homeland – they are simply making war the norm of life in Russian society, ”said the guest on the air.
He also noted that in addition to the forms of propaganda approved by the Kremlin, there are also grassroots initiatives that school leaders are introducing in an attempt to curry favor. This is exactly what happened in Nizhny Novgorod, where first-graders – girls and boys – were given military uniforms on the eve of September 1, and after the indignation of their parents, they played back: they say, this is not for the ruler. “There is already the zeal of local performers who, often understanding the political order, do not feel the reality and people’s attitude to it. It is clear that these are not errors, but a system thing, ”added Ken.
The head of the independent trade union “Alliance of Teachers” also commented on “Conversations about the Important”, which is another element of propaganda in Russian schools, stressing that they are part of an extracurricular program, students have the right to attend them freely. “Very often people do not know about it, parents do not know. Principals and teachers are mistaken, thinking that this is part of the program … We recommend parents to write applications for refusing these lessons so that the school, in case of disagreement, resolves conflicts with parents, and does not put pressure on children, ”said Daniel Ken, adding, that in the past academic year, this practice justified itself.
As Moscow’s war against Ukraine raged on, children at schools across Russia saw significant changes to the academic curriculum starting in September 2023 -- alterations with a militaristic bent. At a discussion in the lower house of parliament in June 2023, State Duma Deputy Andrei Kartapolov lamented what he said was the unpreparedness of young volunteers and conscripts joining the Russian military. “They are infantile youths,” said Kartapolov, a member of the Kremlin-controlled United Russia party who chairs the Duma Defense Committee, “who in many respects are not prepared for real life.”
Over the next two years, Russian schools would address this purported issue by scrapping its long-standing program called Fundamentals Of Safe Living and replacing it with a block of lectures with the working title Fundamentals Of Safety And Defense Of The Homeland. It was the latest intensification of the thread of “patriotic education” that has run through Russia in Vladimir Putin’s more than two decades as president or prime minister -- and that many critics said prioritizes the goals of the government over the interests of children.
Beginning with the new school year in September 2023, students in 10th grade would be taught the “elements of basic military preparedness.” In addition to drills and instruction in basic military skills, it will also include lectures on the “career prospects” of military service, according to textbooks and teacher’s manuals that had been officially posted online. In 11th grade, such lessons would continue with “the formation of Russian civic identity, patriotism, and a sense of responsibility toward one’s homeland,” as well as the development of “conviction and readiness for service and defense of the Fatherland and a sense of responsibility about its fate.”
Other lecture topics to be covered include “the danger of being lured into illegal and antisocial activity” and “the use of young people as a tool for destabilization.” Students would also be warned about what the documents call the danger of “fakes as an element of information warfare.” Instructors will tell students that “it is illegal to violate norms about the distribution of information about the role of the U.S.S.R. during World War II or to commit public acts aimed at discrediting the armed forces of the Russian Federation.”
In the wake of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the government hastily adopted a series of laws criminalizing the knowing distribution of “false information” about Russian military operations and “discrediting” the Russian armed forces. In February, 18-year-old Maksim Lypkan was sentenced to two months in jail for repeated anti-war statements and actions, becoming the youngest Russian convicted under the new laws.
The new block of lectures replaced a Soviet-era innovation called Fundamentals Of Safe Living that was introduced in the 1980s following a spate of accidents, most notably the Chernobyl nuclear-plant disaster in 1986. Over the years, the course of weekly lectures -- 68 hours per academic year --- was modified to include sections on emerging threats such as terrorism and cybercrime. The legacy version included lectures on reducing the risk of terrorist attacks, ways of remaining safe in large crowds, and fundamentals of online safety. It also included a lecture on the “symbols and traditions” of the Russian military.
The new course also included basic first aid, but other topics were replaced by “basic military preparedness,” including the maintenance and operation of the Kalashnikov automatic rifle and two types of hand grenades. The program was similar to the basic military training taught in schools during the Soviet period that was canceled in 1993.
Education Minister Sergei Kravtsov said the changes will be introduced “gradually.” In January 2023, Kravtsov said the new courses could be taught by veterans of the “special military operation” in Ukraine, using the Kremlin’s mandatory euphemism for the war of aggression against Kyiv. Former soldiers would undergo three months of pedagogical training before being assigned to classrooms, he said.
The Fundamentals Of Safety And Defense Of The Homeland program is the latest in a series of similar developments in Russian schools under Putin. Since 2014, the Education Ministry recommended that schools organize five-day military camps for all 10th-grade boys -- and girls, on a voluntary basis -- to be held, if possible, at a nearby military base. The purpose of the camps is “to form the moral, psychological, and physical qualities necessary for service in the armed forces.” Students learn how to dig trenches, march in formation, shoot, throw grenades, move around a battlefield, and cope with battlefield injuries.
The idea for such camps was originally proposed jointly by the Defense and Education ministries in 2010. In February 2023, as the full-scale war against Ukraine entered its second year with no sign of a quick resolution on the horizon, parents of children in many schools were informed that participation in the camps was now mandatory. Beginning in September 2023, the Defense and Education ministries have proposed the camps be conducted by Avangard, a lavishly funded Defense Ministry “center for the military-patriotic education of young people” after many schools complained that no military bases were available.
Avangard runs a large, modern campus outside of Moscow, where military veterans, including many fresh from the war in Ukraine, serve as instructors. It conducts five-day camps similar to those mandated for schools, but on a commercial basis. The center had opened similar facilities in the Perm region, in Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu’s home region of Chuvashia, and outside St. Petersburg. The regional government of the Chelyabinsk region in the Ural Mountains, has allocated more than $7 million over two years to build an Avangard training center there.
For the 2022-23 academic year, Russian schools introduced weekly lectures for students of all levels called “Important Conversations.” The program, which was launched by Putin during a visit to a school in Kaliningrad, was designed to inculcate patriotism and to present to students the Kremlin’s version of events in Ukraine and other political matters. Children at the lower levels get lessons on Russia’s natural wonders, interspersed with patriotic messages such as, “Love your motherland” and, “It’s not scary to die for the motherland.”
In 2024, the Education Ministry would introduce a new social-studies textbook, Kravtsov said at a forum in May. “The current textbook was, to say the least, liberal or pseudo-liberal,” Kravtsov said. “Now we will stress the real and immutable values of society.” He added that mathematics, physics, and geography textbooks would also be reworked with the new ethos in mind. Earlier, he said that new history textbooks for the 11th grade would include a chapter on the war in Ukraine.
In April 2023, the Duma quietly and unanimously adopted in all three readings amendments to the law on military service that would allow people as young as 18 to sign contracts to serve in the military. Previously, volunteers had to complete a technical education or academic degree to sign up, meaning that contract soldiers younger than 20 were rare, even though Putin reduced the minimum age to 18 in May 2022.
When Duma Deputy Kartapolov, who described Russian school graduates as “infantile,” first proposed the amendments in 2022, Deputy Nina Ostanina, head of the Committee on Families, Women, and Children, expressed her opposition, saying the proposal left “schoolchildren who want to make money immediately simply defenseless.” According to Russian media reports, the government set the goal of signing up 400,000 new volunteer soldiers. “The goal has been set and now they are purging the law of all obstacles to concluding contracts on military service,” human rights activist Sergei Krivenko told the BBC’s Russian Service.
A brand-new history textbook for students in 11th grade -- the final year of high school -- were distributed in September 2023. "The section about the period from the 1970s until the 2000s has been completely reworked," Vladimir Medinsky, a nationalist aide to President Vladimir Putin who served as culture minister in 2012-20 and is one of the authors of the new textbook, said at a presentation on August 8. He said that "a section has been added that covers the period from 2014 to the present" -- the period, in other words, since Russia seized control of Crimea and fomented a war in Ukraine's eastern Donbas region that was supplanted, in February 2022, by the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
"There are many micro-histories and interesting facts. Many new illustrations.... And, of course, there is a separate chapter devoted to the 'special military operation,'" he added, using the Kremlin's euphemism -- enshrined in Russian law -- for the invasion and the war that persists 18 months later.
Critics say the new textbook has little to do with history but rather is a return to Soviet-style practices of ideological indoctrination aimed at youths who could soon find themselves drafted into the military. With some exceptions, boys become eligible for one year of mandatory service when they reach the age of 18.
The textbook repeats President Vladimir Putin's false claims that Ukraine is an "ultranationalist" and "neo-Nazi" state; that Kyiv is controlled by the West, which seeks to dismember Russia and steal its natural resources; that NATO advisers pushed Kyiv to "attack the Donbas" in 2020; that "strictly secret" U.S. "biolaboratories" were created in Ukraine; that Kyiv has been "aggressively" seeking to acquire nuclear weapons; and more.
"The new history textbook is a book addressed to pre-conscripts and their girlfriends," Aleksei Makarkin, deputy head of the Center for Political Technologies, wrote. "The government today actually has few effective ways of communicating with young people. Young people don't watch television and there is no way to make them do so."
Russia's national idea is patriotism, President Vladimir Putin said 10 May 2020. “Yes, in patriotism, I think there can be nothing else. But patriotism should not be leavened, stale and sour,” the head of state said in an interview with the program “Moscow. Kremlin. Putin." “This does not mean at all that we need to cling only to our heroic past all the time, we need to look to our no less heroic and successful future, and this is the key to success,” the Russian leader stressed. “Patriotism consists in devoting oneself to the development of the country, its movement forward,” Putin explained.
The vast majority of Russians (92%) now consider themselves patriots, according to a survey releasd 09 June 2018 by the All-Russian Public Opinion Research Center (VTsIOM). This is the maximum figure in the XXI century, sociologists said. "For the majority of respondents (59%), patriotism is still manifested in love for one's country," the authors of the survey stated. More than a third of Russians (39%) call it patriotism the desire to change the state of affairs in the state. Almost the same number of respondents (38%) consider work for the benefit of the country as an expression of patriotism.
Only a third of the respondents (32%) correctly named the date of the start of World War II - September 1, 1939, according to the results of a survey releaaed 29 August 2019 by the All-Russian Center for the Study of Public Opinion (VTsIOM). “More than half of the respondents (52%) believed that World War II began in 1941. Another 6% named another option,” the authors of the survey said. According to the results of the survey, citizens without higher education made mistakes more often. The correct date was mentioned mainly by people with higher or incomplete higher education (48%).
In Russian educational institutions it is necessary to strengthen patriotic education at all stages of the educational process. This was stated 12 December 2019 by Deputy Minister of Education of the Russian Federation Viktor Basyuk. “The patriotic component is, in general, one of the elements of personal learning outcomes. And it should be permeated through all subjects: through extracurricular activities, and through additional education, and in general through the entire educational environment that exists in an educational organization”.
Russia needed a law on the patriotic education of youth. This was stated 28 December 2019 by State Duma deputy Mikhail Sheremet. “This initiative is long overdue. Even I will say this - overripe. I hope that 2020 will be an important landmark year when we adopt this law,” Mikhail Sheremet said. According to the parliamentarian, at present the regions themselves determine the content and directions of work on patriotic education, reports gorod24.online. “I think that there should be a single pyramidal basis. Then we will all be in harmony. And so we lose time and opportunities,” the deputy noted.
The Civic Chamber of the Russian Federation on 06 January 2020 released a report "On the state of civil society in the Russian Federation for 2019". The document said that "patriotic education, along with the development of volunteer practices, remains one of the most important areas of state-public dialogue." According to the study, Russians consider “patriotism as love for the Motherland”, “sense of duty to oneself, family and Fatherland”, “philanthropy and justice” as key values. The authors of the report point out that these values are traditional for Russia.
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