SUNDAY, JUNE 12 , 2022. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ RE A
three editors.
One editor said that “we have a
task to make it look as if Ukraine
simply does not exist,” the outlet
reported.
Russian textbooks have just a
page about the millions of people
shot or jailed illegally in Soviet
times, according to Marina
Agaltsova, a lawyer with Memori-
al, a renowned nonprofit dedicat-
ed to exposing Soviet-era repres-
sion that was shut down by au-
thorities last year.
“If you have only one small
stain on the big, glorious history
of the Soviet Union, of course you
would think that the Soviet
Union is a great state, and we all
have to get back to that state,” she
said.
Memorial historian Nikita
Petrov said Russia’s insistence
that students unquestioningly
accept the Kremlin’s version of
history was “dangerous.”
In the late 1970s, Petrov, then a
chemistry student, got his hands
on a smuggled copy of British
historian Robert Conquest’s “The
Great Terror” about the Stalin-
era purges. Smuggled books on
Soviet history were like gold to
him, he recalled. He decided that
becoming a historian was more
important than being a chemist.
“In the Soviet Union, history
did not exist as a science. Facts
were hidden and not revealed.
And people did not know histori-
cal facts. They knew only what
they were told,” he said.history teacher, Alexander. He
said teachers were given guide-
lines on teaching history, “but
what we say is not officially
regulated.”
But officials seem determined
to curb teachers’ freedom to de-
cide how they teach history. Just
days after the February invasion,
Foreign Ministry spokeswoman
Maria Zakharova summoned
teachers to meetings where they
were ordered to toe the govern-
ment line on the war.
Some teachers who refused to
teach the patriotic lessons were
fired. Patrushev has warned that
authorities could target school
heads whose students did not
have books about World War II or
could not name Russian war he-
roes from past centuries.
“History is a subject that the
authorities are always trying to
use for propaganda purposes,”
said Dmitry, a teacher from pro-
vincial Russia, where most peo-
ple support the war. “History
teachers are much more vulner-
able than other teachers.”
Textbook publishers, mean-
while, are carrying out a Soviet-
style purge of almost all referenc-
es to Ukraine. After the invasion,
management at Russia’s main
textbook publisher, Prosveshche-
nie — meaning Enlightenment —
ordered editors to slash referenc-
es to Ukraine and Kyiv, according
to a report by the independent
Russian media outlet Mediazona
in April, based on interviews witheducation system, because it’s
been rapidly changing since Feb-
ruary,” Yudin said. He added,
“They want to get back control
over young minds, and they also
need these people as cannon
fodder.”
While the Education Ministry
has ordered teachers to give pa-
triotic lessons that reflect the
Kremlin’s line on Ukraine, they
have been a hard sell at times.
One history teacher in a Mos-
cow high school, for example,
failed to persuade several stu-
dents in his class, including a
17-year-old named Nikita.
“I don’t trust my history teach-
er. He is more of an overly patriot-
ic propaganda man,” Nikita said,
adding that students paid no
attention to the patriotic lessons.
The student declined to give his
surname to avoid problems at
school. “I just stood up and left
the classroom. Two others did the
same.”
But many students were wary
of openly opposing the war, he
added. “My friends do not sup-
port the war. We try to be careful.
For instance, I don’t want my
classmates to know what my
thoughts are.”
For some, the mandatory ses-
sions on the war are an onerous
but unavoidable duty.
“Both teachers and students, I
think, understand that it’s not a
real lesson. It’s not about learn-
ing. It’s something else, an ob-
ligatory event,” said a Moscowthe Foreign Intelligence Service
and chairman of the Russian
Historical Society, take charge of
reviewing history textbooks, be-
cause “the current situation re-
quires a special attitude” to
teaching.
“Today, it is one of the compo-
nents of the country’s national
security,” said Ekaterina Alta-
bayeva, deputy chairwoman of
the Science, Education and Cul-
ture committee.
The main impact of changes to
textbooks and curriculum is ex-
pected after the summer break.
“There’s a whole revolution
going on now in the Russiancitizen.”
A key proponent of the inva-
sion 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 com-
plained, “manipulated” children
and distorted history. He criti-
cized 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 fall-
en short, Russia’s upper house of
parliament asked on Thursday
that Sergei Naryshkin, head ofRussia’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 propa-
ganda 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 Minis-
try 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 Lit-
vin, who sacrificed his job at a
prominent Moscow aeronautics
company and is now a stay-at-
home dad in the Georgian capi-
tal, 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 Krem-
lin’s long-term ambitions: not
just cementing Russian support
for the war but also building a
generation of youth loyal to Rus-
sia’s increasingly totalitarian re-
gime — unlike many Russian
millennials today who oppose the
regime and the war.
Putin constantly plays on Rus-
sian 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 Mos-
cow School of Social and Eco-
nomic 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 milita-
rize children to engage them in
this war, to engage them in sup-
port for this war.”
Patrushev, the Security Coun-
cil chief, last month demanded a
major overhaul of Russia’s educa-
tion 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
RUSSIA FROM A
Russia accelerates p ush to alter how history is taught
AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
Schoolchildren enter the Museum of the Great Patriotic War, also known as the Victory Museum, i n Moscow on March 17. Since 2013, Russian President Vladimir 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.ANTON VAGANOV/REUTERS
A demonstrator in St. Petersburg holds a flag last month displaying
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