Kremlin pushes patriotism in class. Teachers and parents push back.

Every Monday morning at 9 o’clock, Russian students of all grades have been required to attend a new course: Conversations About Important Things.

Announced over the summer, the course is intended to instill deeper patriotic feelings among students, and the Kremlin regards the task as so urgent that President Vladimir Putin himself offered an example of the opening lesson. Its supporters see it as a nondoctrinaire way to redress the lack of patriotic education in Russian schools since the Soviet collapse.

But its detractors view it as another giant step on the road back to totalitarianism. The announcement of the new classes led to considerable pushback from parents’ groups and human rights organizations which argued that propaganda has no place in the school and, at the very least, students should be permitted to opt out of the new course.

Some media reports suggest that the Ministry of Education has revised the course material to respond to parents’ objections, to remove explicit mentions of the military operation in Ukraine, NATO, and the honorable nature of dying for Russia. Indeed, the official list of topics for the lessons issued by the ministry consists of mainly saccharine talking points, such as “Russia and the world” and “the day of labor.”

But analysts who’ve taken a deeper look at the teaching materials being recommended by the ministry say the focus will clearly be on historical themes that stress national consolidation in the face of outside efforts to sow disunity, putting the national good above one’s own life, and seeing the state as the embodiment of all that’s trustworthy.

“This process of [reintroducing patriotic indoctrination] has been underway for some time,” says Nikolai Petrov, an expert on Russia with Chatham House in London. “Instead of a range of textbooks there is now only one approved version, especially in history, and the range of accepted interpretations is increasingly limited. ... Parents are different these days [from Soviet times]. Any body of government is interested in avoiding political scandals. When they encounter public resistance, they will try to pacify it. But, in many cases, they haven’t really changed their minds. They just set out to get the results they want by other means.”

“The state has no right to do this”

In recent years, especially since Russia’s confrontation with the West grew acute following the annexation of Crimea in 2014, restoring Soviet-style patriotic education has been a constant topic of debate among Russian educators and politicians.

Universal military-style cadet training has been restored, and this year a pilot project was launched in 10 Russian regions to install educational “advisers” in schools, whom many teachers fear will bring an ideological focus. Another development that activists complain of is the creation of a new state-sponsored youth organization called Big Change, reminiscent of the Soviet Young Pioneers which, although said to be voluntary, will have the effect of increasing the state’s role in the upbringing of children.

Russian Education Minister Sergei Kravtsov insisted in a recent interview that it’s not old-fashioned indoctrination, but a “set of conversations about events, people, their deeds, and ideas ... not a lecture, but a discussion.”

The lesson from the Conversations About Important Things course that Mr. Putin delivered personally on Sept. 1 mostly steered clear of the war in Ukraine, and stressed to students that cultivating individual excellence was the path to Russian national strength. But in responses to students, he veered into some of his own favorite themes.

He lamented the quality of education in Ukraine, saying that he was amazed to learn that students in Ukraine “do not even know that the Crimean Bridge exists. They believe it is a fake. ... They have no clue, no idea that Ukraine and Russia used to be part of a single state, the Soviet Union,” he said. “The Communist Party, which was in power back then, formed union republics, including Ukraine, and transferred a large number of historic Russian lands, including Donbas, to Ukraine, although Donbas residents did not want that.” Mr. Putin’s remarks are controversial personal opinions, but presented as teaching material they are prime exhibits for the critics’ case against this course.

Anastasia Kuznetsova, a human rights activist and founder of the independent Parents of Russia association, argues that the new lessons will undermine an important post-Soviet gain, in which the family became chiefly responsible for deciding what values should be most important for children.

“The state has no right to do this,” she says. “First they decided to introduce these classes, and now they are developing their plans on how to do it and what to teach. We are categorically against this. Children should form their ideas under the influence of family. If these lessons are going to take place, they should not be obligatory. ... Under the law, children have the right to opt out. Teachers who use threats or insist that pupils must attend do not understand the law. Many parents don’t know it either. It’s important to expand awareness of parents’ rights.”

Press reports suggest that in some areas parents have been granted the opportunity to withdraw their children from the lessons, which the ministry insists are “extracurricular” activities. But in a recent interview with the Tass news agency, Education Minister Kravtsov said that while students will not be graded for the Conversations class, skipping the lesson would be punishable. “Extracurricular activities are a mandatory part of the education program,” he said. Mr. Kravtsov added that the subject of the “special military operation” in Ukraine would certainly figure in the classes.

A tough lesson for teachers

Vladimir Volkov, a history teacher in a town north of Moscow, says he well remembers Soviet-era patriotic education, which included constant military training and civil defense drills. It’s all coming back, he says. “Everything is viewed as preparation for war, with the idea that there will be a war and students will take part in it. The principal figure is a man with an assault rifle and the main idea is that everyone should learn to defend their motherland. ... Students don’t seem to react much to this. They have their own lives. The majority seem to regard such lessons as a game, something that just isn’t real.”

Many teachers may not be ready, or even know what may be expected of them in delivering the new lessons.

“I’ve talked with quite a few of my fellow teachers about this,” says Tatiana Chervenko, a math teacher and member of the Alliance of Teachers trade union. “One said she will just talk with students about Russia as a country of possibilities in general for the full hour. Others seem to take it seriously and are trying to implement the guidelines. ... 

“A lot will depend on how teachers implement the material. I had a chat with one of my son’s teachers – he’s in the first grade – and she said that not all parents liked the idea of these classes, so she intended to use the hour to show the kids pictures of nature. But we heard that another teacher was telling children that the West is bad, that there are Nazis in Ukraine, and Russia is opposing that. In the Alliance of Teachers, we plan to go on opposing this order, with the aim of getting it canceled. We say so openly, but a lot of people remain silent because they are scared,” she says.

Experts say that Russia’s Education Ministry is in the process of rewriting textbooks and plans to introduce a whole new curriculum, including patriotic education, by next year. It’s not clear where all of this is leading, or even if there is any comprehensive set of ideas behind it, but it appears that the present mood of war is stifling debate and giving momentum to nationalist and pro-military voices.

“Clearly the war is driving the changes in education right now,” says Mr. Petrov, the Russia expert. “In these conditions it’s much easier to pressure teachers to teach in certain ways, and not in others.”