Schools have been ordered to conduct “patriotic” classes parroting the Kremlin line on the war, and teachers who refuse have been fired. Textbooks are being purged of almost all references to Ukraine and its capital, Kyiv.
Putin militarize schoolchildren
Russia seeks to militarize schoolchildren and censor textbooks amid war
Kremlin security chiefs are making radical changes in how history is taught
RIGA, Latvia — As President Vladimir Putin’s war against Ukraine drags on, Russia’s teachers are being turned into front-line soldiers in an information war designed to mold children into loyal militarized nationalists. The nation’s powerful security chiefs, leading propagandists and parliamentary hard-liners are pushing radical changes to the education system, as the Education Ministry takes a back seat.
Russia’s parliament rejected as unsatisfactory the Education Ministry’s plan on how it would review history textbooks, calling this a matter of “national security” and asking the head of Russia’s foreign spy service to take charge.
And the powerful chief of the Russian Security Council, Nikolai Patrushev, a close Putin ally, has demanded sweeping changes to education, as part of a whole-of-government effort to shape loyal citizens from cradle to grave.
Anton Litvin, a Moscow father of two, had a nice home and good job, but when the government began using schools for propaganda in the war against Ukraine, he quit and left the country. He said he was revolted by the thought that his children could be brainwashed by lessons about “patriotism” and Putin’s take on history. The breaking point came when teachers sent home brochures urging him to sign his 8-year-old son up for summer camp with the Young Army, a military youth group launched by the Defense Ministry in 2015.
“I don’t want my kids to join the regime at this young age and to be someone’s soldiers to fight against peaceful people,” said Litvin, who sacrificed his job at a prominent Moscow aeronautics company and is now a stay-at-home dad in the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, looking for a new job.
Since 2013, Putin has driven changes to the teaching of history as part of a campaign to build a national identity based on the Soviet Union’s role in defeating the Nazis in World War II. But after the invasion of Ukraine, the tempo of change in schools was “like a waterfall,” Litvin said.
“Everything is getting worse. It’s like it’s going back to the Soviet Union,” he said. “Children are taught that war is good, actually, from the perspective of our government.”
Russia’s efforts to militarize students underscores the Kremlin’s long-term ambitions: not just cementing Russian support for the war but also building a generation of youth loyal to Russia’s increasingly totalitarian regime — unlike many Russian millennials today who oppose the regime and the war.
Putin constantly plays on Russian nostalgia for past Soviet power to justify the war. But his “is not a new Soviet regime,” said Grigory Yudin, a professor of political philosophy at the Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences. “It is much closer to a fascist regime, and what they’re doing now is a different sort of propaganda,” he said. “They’re trying to actively militarize children to engage them in this war, to engage them in support for this war.”
Patrushev, the Security Council chief, last month demanded a major overhaul of Russia’s education system to develop a new “patriotic” generation. He urged the adoption of a comprehensive system to “implement the state’s program at all stages of a person’s maturation and formation as a citizen.”
A key proponent of the invasion known for his anti-Western rhetoric, Patrushev said teachers are at the forefront of a “hybrid war being waged against Russia.” But many of them, he complained, “manipulated” children and distorted history. He criticized the history curriculum and lamented that textbooks did not cover Soviet heroism in World War II properly.
Then, amid complaints that the Education Ministry had fallen short, Russia’s upper house of parliament asked on Thursday that Sergei Naryshkin, head of the Foreign Intelligence Service and chairman of the Russian Historical Society, take charge of reviewing history textbooks, because “the current situation requires a special attitude” to teaching.
“Today, it is one of the components of the country’s national security,” said Ekaterina Altabayeva, deputy chairwoman of the Science, Education and Culture committee.
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