As youth anti-war sentiment persists, Russia pushes patriotism at school

The letter Z, the symbol of Russia’s “special military operation” against Ukraine, has proliferated across the urban landscape: on billboards, windshields, public buildings, and T-shirts. Increasingly, it’s even being displayed by children at school – which the country’s conservative commentators see as key to filling what they view as troubling gaps in support for the conflict.

While polls continue to suggest that most Russians back their military, the greatest dearth of enthusiasm is among high school and university students, who “have the highest level of negativism, at 35%, toward the war and authorities among all groups of the population,” according to Lev Gudkov, head of the Levada Center, Russia’s only independent public opinion agency.

Editor’s note: This article was edited in order to conform with Russian legislation criminalizing references to Russia’s current action in Ukraine as anything other than a “special military operation.”

To address that, the Kremlin is rolling out new efforts to encourage patriotism among students, including American-style flag ceremonies and anthem singing, expanded cadet training, and greater efforts to combat news narratives that don’t comply with those from Russian sources.

Conservative voices have long argued that the negativism being seen among students begins in primary schools, which, following the collapse of the USSR three decades ago, abandoned patriotic, military education as a vestige of the failed Soviet experiment. Russia’s 1993 Constitution does not spell out any official ideology, much less describe a clear national identity. The resulting vacuum of patriotic schooling left subsequent generations confused, demoralized, and susceptible to Western narratives that diminished Russia’s place in the world and fueled doubts about the state’s legitimacy, they say.

Margarita Simonyan, head of the Rossiya Segodnya media conglomerate, which includes the English-language RT network, sits at the nexus of Russia’s information policy. According to news reports, she and others have held meetings with teachers about how to combat the flood of “fake news” about Russia’s military operation infiltrating the classroom. In one meeting, according to the news agency RBK, she recalled Russia’s volatile history, warning that disunity instigated from outside led to destabilization, and “differences among the people within the country led to catastrophe” and state collapse in 1917 and 1991.

Asked to flesh out her views by the Monitor, Ms. Simonyan, who spent a year living in the United States, would say only that Russia needed to follow the American example of instilling pride in one’s country from a very young age.

“I really envy American students who start their school day with a pledge of allegiance to the American flag,” she said in an emailed response. “This is a good tradition, and one that is a significant part of American patriotic education. Russia lacks this. Since the collapse of the USSR no one has seriously worked on this in the way that is customary in the U.S.”

Patriotic education

Under a law that has been in preparation for a couple of years, that is all set to change.

Starting in September, Russian pupils will begin their week with a flag-raising ceremony, singing the national anthem, and a fresh, Russia-oriented course on modern history. Among the new classroom techniques being promoted by the Education Ministry will be active discussion of current events, in which teachers will help to steer pupils through what is seen as an increasingly vicious information environment that features a proliferation of negative and “fake” claims about Russia.

A range of other extracurricular activities will be introduced, including a major expansion of the “Yunarmiya” system of universal cadet training, in which schoolchildren are taught military basics by real soldiers, increasing the direct relationship between young Russians and their army. Analysts say that another traditional institution, the Orthodox Church, will be expected to take on a more active role in bolstering the state’s case in general, and in Ukraine in particular.

Vladimir Putin did not use the May 9 anniversary of victory over Nazi Germany to expand the military operation against Ukraine, or even offer any new explanations for it. But he did lead a massive parade of the “immortal regiment” through central Moscow, in which average Russians carried portraits of ancestors who fought in the Red Army during World War II, in what many commentators saw as a strong signal of ongoing social support.

According to a recent account in the daily Moskovsky Komsomolets of an online meeting between Moscow history teachers and Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova, conversation centered around questions that might come up in the classroom, such as “Why did Russia attack Ukraine?” and “When will the military operation end?”

Ms. Zakharova stressed that students should be told that (in line with the official Kremlin position) the “war” has been going on for eight years, since the new Ukrainian Maidan government decided to attack separatist forces in the Donbas. She said that educators should say that after many attempts to find diplomatic solutions, Russia is now acting to bring that war to a conclusion in order to save the people of the two rebel republics. She also reportedly told teachers that the students should be told about what she called the Ukrainian government’s systematic efforts to repress the rights of Russian speakers in eastern Ukraine.

Reaching the younger generation

Some commentators see the early signs of what could become a permanent social mobilization for what Russian authorities increasingly view as a full-scale proxy war with the West in Ukraine.

“Patriotic education means the militarization of young people,” says Alexei Levinson, a professor at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow and senior researcher at the Levada Center. “Our youth is the group with the biggest share of people who demonstrate disloyalty, even if they are a minority in their own strata. If mobilized, these young people will go to fight not because of inner convictions, but because they are ordered to.”

Viktor Baranets, a former military spokesperson, argues that the changes are long overdue.

“The recent emphasis on improving patriotic education can be traced to the special operation that’s going on now,” he says. “The operation made patriotic education the No. 1 issue because of the numbers of people who stand against the policy of the state. It has become a litmus test of patriotism. When this operation is over, people coming back from the war will set things in order. They will not be ashamed of their patriotism.”

Several Moscow parents and former teachers consulted about the new emphasis on patriotic education said they see nothing wrong with flag-raising ceremonies and performing the national anthem, but at least one parent did object to military training in the schools.

Sergei Mitrokhin, a member of the Moscow Duma from the liberal Yabloko party, says the new programs violate Russia’s post-Soviet Constitution, which specifically rejects any form of state ideology.

“Our authorities know the younger generation doesn’t watch TV, so they are aiming to reach them through the schools,” he says. “This is all about the special operation in Ukraine, to spread aggressive propaganda into educational institutions. ... It won’t work. Young people don’t like having ideology forced upon them. They will reject it.”