Wikimedia Commons<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\nThis approach is symptomatic of the manipulation of national consciousness. The state seeks to corral all of society into professional, gender-based, generational or other \u2018thematic\u2019 cells, forming corporatist structures. A society that has been systematized in this fashion is easier to control and to indoctrinate.<\/p>\n
Young people are one of the most important \u2018corporations\u2019 for the Putin regime. Support for Putin and his initiatives is lowest in this age category and the Putin system \u2013 like any authoritarian or totalitarian regime \u2013 sees young people as a key source of obedient human resources. This is why the state has become so involved at all levels of education, from primary schools to colleges and universities. The practices of \u2018patriotic\u2019 education are becoming more and more intrusive, simplistic and cliched.<\/p>\n
Fires everywhere<\/h2>\n
In the autumn of 2023, a course was introduced at universities entitled \u2018Foundations of Russian Statehood\u2019. Unified history textbooks were also published for the upper grades of secondary school for the 2023\u20132024 school year. But many ultra-conservative and militarist ideologists doubt that these are sufficient to convert pupils to a single ideological faith. Alexander Dugin, the ultraconservative head of the Ivan Ilyin Higher Political School (IIHPS) at the Russian State University for the Humanities, accuses the majority of educational institutions in Russia of reflecting the liberal order of the 1980s\u20131990s. \u2018What is necessary,\u2019 he argues, \u2018is the militarization of education, a sharp break in the vector \u2013 above all in the humanities \u2013 that has been established in recent decades under the direct control and at the orders of the West, with which we are at war today.\u2019<\/p>\n
On 3 April 2024, Andrei Ilnitsky, an advisor to the defence minister, visited Russia\u2019s leading physics and mathematics university, the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT), and gave a lecture as part of a course on \u2018processes in the world community\u2019. According to attendees, he told the students that \u2018plans are being hatched on the other side of Russia\u2019s borders to sow chaos, undermine sovereignty, and jeopardize history, traditions, values, convictions, and ideology\u2019. There were no protests at MIPT, but the students saw the lecture as an attempt to impose an obscurantic worldview at an institution whose graduates often emigrate from Russia because they do not see a place for themselves in a militarized state and society. The alumni, faculty, and students of this university spoke out against the so-called \u2018special military operation\u2019 right after it began. In early March 2022, almost 3,000 people signed a petition against the invasion: a significant number for an elite institution.<\/p>\n
Two years later, in April 2024, more than 5,000 people signed a student petition against the establishment of the Dugin-led IIHPS at the Russian State University for the Humanities. When news of the petition began to spread, the number of signatures reached more than 25,000 in a matter of days as people outside the university\u2019s student body, and even those who had no connection with the institution, began to sign it. The response from the university\u2019s rector and from Dugin himself was predictable and in line with current political mores in Russia: they speculated that the petition had been orchestrated by pro-Ukrainian forces, \u2018foreign agents\u2019 and supporters of \u2018unfriendly countries\u2019, all representing a minority view.<\/p>\n
It is important for the state to sustain the majority effect: the regime and its propaganda units try hard to make it look as if Russian society \u2013 with the exception of unconscientious citizens and those painted as \u2018fifth columnists\u2019 \u2013 is united in its support of Putin and his war. In particular, this support is supposed to be expressed by the 87 percent vote in favour of the \u2018eternal leader\u2019 in the presidential \u2018elections\u2019. In such a situation, the minority view is only held by outcasts, and the only sensible strategy for them is to join the majority (even if disingenuously, like the passive conformists who actually make up the sociological majority of the population).<\/p>\n
However, civil society is still alive, despite the atmosphere of fear, direct repression and professional purges in the education sector (above all in higher education \u2013 and particularly at the Higher School of Economics (HSE), which until recently was Russia\u2019s most liberal big university). Civil society is not fighting for power, it is putting up moral resistance<\/em>, as it did in the last decades of the Soviet Union. The students\u2019 actions are manifestations of this moral resistance to the system.<\/p>\nIncubators for the new human<\/h2>\n
As it matures, any totalitarian regime hits upon the idea of forming a new kind of human. This new human becomes the model for the labour market and the well-paid professions of the security service official (silovik<\/em>) or military-industrial complex employee. The \u2018special military operation\u2019 is the best career ladder for Putinists. This is how all totalitarian regimes were built: from the Stalin regime, which co-opted the entire Soviet population into youth, party, and trade union organizations, to the regime of Benito Mussolini in Italy and that of Ant\u00f3nio Salazar in Portugal.<\/p>\nIn all regimes of this type, the ideology is founded on the concept of a special path resulting from a glorious history. A totalitarian state views itself as \u2018the people\u2019s\u2019 and claims the right to mobilize the nation. In turn, the nation defines itself in the terminology of a special unity, such as the \u2018new historical commonality\u2019 in the USSR, Deutschtum<\/em> in Germany, and corresponding concepts of Italianit\u00e0<\/em> in Italy and Hispanidad<\/em> in Spain. If the state is involved in a war, then there is a cult of the fallen and of heroic death. Take, for example, \u2018Let\u2019s Rise!\u2019, a song by the popular Russian national-patriotic singer Shaman:<\/p>\n\nLet\u2019s rise, as long as God and the truth are on our side,<\/p>\n
We\u2019ll say thanks for granting us victory.<\/p>\n
For those who found their heaven and are no longer with us,<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s rise and sing a song.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
The subject matter and lyrics differ little from those found in Stalinist marching songs, the National Socialist \u2018Horst Wessel Lied\u2019, the Spanish legion march \u2018El Novio de la Muerte\u2019 (\u2018Bridegroom of Death\u2019), and the official hymn of the Italian fascist party, \u2018Giovinezza\u2019 (\u2018Youth\u2019). The unity of the people and the leader is one of the fundamental components of ideology in totalitarian regimes. And the strength of a nation is measured by its ability to function in economic isolation and as a political autarchy.<\/p>\n
Corporate cells are the organizational basis of such systems. Ideally, a network of these cells covers the entirety of public space. The organizations of the Soviet Union \u2013 the Little Octobrists, Pioneers, Komsomol, and the various trade unions \u2013 were modelled after those of their own enemies: the fascist and ultra-right regimes of the twentieth century. The Little Octobrists and the Pioneers had a lot in common with the Italian youth organization Balilla, above all the didactic examples of child heroes.<\/p>\n
Still, current Russian practices are not entirely totalitarian, although they lean towards it: the smiling, uniformly clad young creatures on posters are victims of semi-totalitarian practices, since they do not represent all young people.<\/p>\n
For now, the regime has not been able to incorporate all young people into its modern-day youth movements, including Movement of the First, Young Army and the I\u2019m Proud association of student clubs. The state doesn\u2019t require all students \u2013 or at least all members of student councils \u2013 to join pro-Kremlin movements, and this distinguishes classic totalitarianism from Putin neo-totalitarianism.<\/p>\n
For a semi-totalitarian (or neo-totalitarian) regime, patriotism primarily means the militarization of consciousness. Young Army, for example, was established two years after the annexation of Crimea, when the regime had already begun to transform from a purely authoritarian regime into a semi-totalitarian one.<\/p>\n
Naturally, a militarized organization must represent the struggle between all that is good and all that is bad. This is why the mission of the organization, as stated on its website, is \u2018to cultivate in Young Army members kindness, compassion, conscientiousness, loyalty, dignity and love for their Motherland\u2019. Young Army, its mission statement continues \u2018is dedicated to fostering respect for the institution of family, for the memory of the ancestors, and for elders\u2019.<\/p>\n
The start of the \u2018special military operation\u2019 sharply accelerated the formation of the state ideology and the organizations tasked with spreading it \u2013 including to young people. Established in 2022, the Movement of the First is a successor to the Soviet Pioneers, although the age range of the new organization is much wider: from six to 25, compared to nine to 14.<\/p>\n
Boys and girls who \u2018follow the traditions of our ancestors\u2019 are a natural element of a movement for an ideology that sees its bright future in a dark past. The movement\u2019s key characteristics appeal to a glorious history built on a negative identity; they hint at an enemy that undermines the pursuit of a unique historical path. According to the organisation\u2019s mission statement, \u2018members of the Movement study know and protect the history of Russia, oppose any attempts to distort and denigrate it. They preserve the memory of the defenders of the Fatherland\u2019. Family values that are \u2018uniquely\u2019 traditional \u2013 apparently unlike other countries and peoples \u2013 are a crucial aspect of self-identification: \u2018Members of the Movement share traditional family values. They are proud of the Russian culture of fatherhood and motherhood. They honour large families. They help younger children, take care of grandparents in the family\u2019.<\/p>\n
Ceremonies and rituals<\/h2>\n
Indoctrination at school level is easy to carry out, because the state is free to do whatever it wants: from mandating unified history textbooks to holding \u2018Conversations About Important Things\u2019 as the first class on Mondays. The website of the \u2018Conversations\u2019 programme contains thematic and methodological materials, frequently pegged to specific dates. Every topic is developed by a speaker specializing in the subject, often with the use of strange and laboured texts. For example, the lesson on \u2018Crimea and Sevastopol: Ten Years in Their Native Harbour\u2019 (a phrase that has become a propaganda clich\u00e9) is given by Metropolitan Tikhon, often referred to as Putin\u2019s confessor. His book Death of an Empire<\/em> (described in its blurb as a work \u2018about the mechanisms of cataclysms in Russia\u2019) has become another ideological weapon for the regime.<\/p>\nA special \u2018wooden language\u2019 (social dialect) for talking about \u2018values\u2019 is being developed as part of the increasingly symbiotic relationship between schools and the Movement of the First. This has also always been typical for totalitarian regimes. Additionally, indoctrination is cemented by ceremony (in particular, the raising of the flag in schools) and ritual, as well as initiatives like \u2018Letter to a Soldier\u2019, where pupils are supposed to congratulate the participants of the current conflict on the 9 May Victory Day holiday. \u2018Letter to a Soldier\u2019 is designed to create the impression of continuity between World War II and the \u2018special military operation\u2019, though no one seems to care that the people of Ukraine are just as entitled to celebrate victory over Hitler\u2019s Germany in World War II.<\/p>\n
There is also a mandatory (or at least strongly encouraged) campaign at all types of educational establishments throughout the country to make handmade supplies for the war. These efforts have been elevated to the status of an important common cause. In the spring of 2024, for example, the Minister of Education and Science of Dagestan, Yahya Buchayev, instructed schools to teach students to weave camouflage nets and make \u2018trench candles\u2019 as part of their extracurricular programmes.<\/p>\n
Blacked-out pages<\/h2>\n
The process of censorship and self-censorship at publishing houses and bookstores has spread to the literature curriculum in schools, including supplementary reading lists. However, this is only part of the overall picture of what is happening on the general book market, especially since reading lists (and lists of books not recommended for reading) include many non-children\u2019s books.<\/p>\n
On the general book market, an \u2018expert centre\u2019 has been established to assess whether print and electronic editions correspond to laws and norms, above all those that prohibit \u2018LGBTQ propaganda\u2019. A censorship agency has been established as a complement to denunciations and the efforts of law-enforcement agencies. This is not censorship preventing publication, but rather retroactive inspections of books that have already been published, sometimes as a result of warnings by the prosecutor\u2019s office.<\/p>\n
There is also another approach to censorship. For example, the Russian translation of Roberto Carnero\u2019s biography of the gay Italian filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini (Pasolini. Dying for Ideas<\/em>), which went on sale in May 2024, has been physically redacted, with fragments related to Pasolini\u2019s sexuality blacked out.<\/p>\nAnother important and telling example was an initiative by State Duma deputies to amend a law on library services in order to prohibit the lending of books by \u2018foreign agents\u2019, \u2018terrorists\u2019, and \u2018extremists\u2019. Of course, many libraries and bookstores have already stopped lending and selling books by \u2018foreign agents\u2019 in the spirit of preventive conformism. Some publishing houses have also stopped signing contracts with authors who have been declared \u2018foreign agents\u2019, fearing that they might have difficulty selling books by these authors or get in trouble themselves.<\/p>\n
There have also been changes to school curricula. Some books that had been integral to shaping the identity of the Soviet individual, such as Alexander Fadeyev\u2019s The Young Guard<\/em> and Nikolai Ostrovsky\u2019s How the Steel Was Tempered<\/em>, have been brought back from what now seems an archaic past. Some anti-Soviet (and primarily anti-Stalin) books are still on the reading list, such as Alexander Solzhenitsyn\u2019s The Gulag Archipelago<\/em> and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich<\/em>. Others have been struck from it, including Georgy Vladimov\u2019s Faithful Ruslan<\/em>, Varlam Shalamov\u2019s Kolyma Tales<\/em>, and Yuri Trifonov\u2019s The House on the Embankment<\/em>.<\/p>\nLiterature is becoming as ideological a subject as history, which is already an instrument of indoctrination in schools. An April 2024 decree issued by the Ministry of Education significantly increased the number of classroom hours allocated for the teaching of history. Under different circumstances this could be a welcome development \u2013 but not at a time of \u2018unified\u2019 textbooks and the politicization and mythologization of history. Naturally, a lot still depends on the individual teacher, as was the case in the Soviet Union. However, the system itself is putting pressure on teachers, even the best of whom are being forced to adapt to the proposed political circumstances \u2013 along with, of course, the pupils.<\/p>\n
The same decree drastically reduced the number of classroom hours for social studies: the subject has simply been eliminated in grades six to eight. Perhaps this is because reality now sits in catastrophic contradiction with the democratic, constitutional foundations of Russian statehood and the constitutionally protected rights and freedoms of the country\u2019s citizens.<\/p>\n
But Yana Lantratova, a State Duma deputy, explained the changes in the social studies curriculum as follows: \u2018If you look at the concepts being studied at this period of time, these are primarily western concepts, which say that a society that respects religion, large families and traditional values is a backward society, and that the only ideal model is the American model.\u2019<\/p>\n
Special anthropological operation<\/h2>\n
It is still possible to resist this oppression by ignoring it or pretending to conform to its rules. However, the state is increasingly saturating everyday life with propaganda and ideology. For example, St. Petersburg Governor Alexander Beglov has promised to rename the city\u2019s schools after participants of the \u2018special military operation\u2019.<\/p>\n
The Putin regime now seems to be eternal, and for that reason many Russians now coming of age find it natural to make use of the career lifts offered by the state. The requirements for using these lifts include political loyalty, a belief in mythologized narratives, and a defence-oriented consciousness.<\/p>\n
While the nationalization of the individual (as well as of property) is in full swing in Russia, it is yet to be completed. This is an escalating \u2018special anthropological operation\u2019 in which intellectual violence has enormous significance.<\/p>\n
Civil society has not yet lost the anthropological battle for the hearts and minds of Russians, particularly when it comes to the young. The state will not stop at what it has achieved so far, but nor will society abandon its fight to protect human dignity. A protracted domestic war of attrition lies ahead \u2013 one whose ultimate outcome is hard to predict.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
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<\/p>\n![Wikimedia Commons<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\nThis approach is symptomatic of the manipulation of national consciousness. The state seeks to corral all of society into professional, gender-based, generational or other \u2018thematic\u2019 cells, forming corporatist structures. A society that has been systematized in this fashion is easier to control and to indoctrinate.<\/p>\nYoung people are one of the most important \u2018corporations\u2019 for the Putin regime. Support for Putin and his initiatives is lowest in this age category and the Putin system \u2013 like any authoritarian or totalitarian regime \u2013 sees young people as a key source of obedient human resources. This is why the state has become so involved at all levels of education, from primary schools to colleges and universities. The practices of \u2018patriotic\u2019 education are becoming more and more intrusive, simplistic and cliched.<\/p>\nFires everywhere<\/h2>\nIn the autumn of 2023, a course was introduced at universities entitled \u2018Foundations of Russian Statehood\u2019. Unified history textbooks were also published for the upper grades of secondary school for the 2023\u20132024 school year. But many ultra-conservative and militarist ideologists doubt that these are sufficient to convert pupils to a single ideological faith. Alexander Dugin, the ultraconservative head of the Ivan Ilyin Higher Political School (IIHPS) at the Russian State University for the Humanities, accuses the majority of educational institutions in Russia of reflecting the liberal order of the 1980s\u20131990s. \u2018What is necessary,\u2019 he argues, \u2018is the militarization of education, a sharp break in the vector \u2013 above all in the humanities \u2013 that has been established in recent decades under the direct control and at the orders of the West, with which we are at war today.\u2019<\/p>\nOn 3 April 2024, Andrei Ilnitsky, an advisor to the defence minister, visited Russia\u2019s leading physics and mathematics university, the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT), and gave a lecture as part of a course on \u2018processes in the world community\u2019. According to attendees, he told the students that \u2018plans are being hatched on the other side of Russia\u2019s borders to sow chaos, undermine sovereignty, and jeopardize history, traditions, values, convictions, and ideology\u2019. There were no protests at MIPT, but the students saw the lecture as an attempt to impose an obscurantic worldview at an institution whose graduates often emigrate from Russia because they do not see a place for themselves in a militarized state and society. The alumni, faculty, and students of this university spoke out against the so-called \u2018special military operation\u2019 right after it began. In early March 2022, almost 3,000 people signed a petition against the invasion: a significant number for an elite institution.<\/p>\nTwo years later, in April 2024, more than 5,000 people signed a student petition against the establishment of the Dugin-led IIHPS at the Russian State University for the Humanities. When news of the petition began to spread, the number of signatures reached more than 25,000 in a matter of days as people outside the university\u2019s student body, and even those who had no connection with the institution, began to sign it. The response from the university\u2019s rector and from Dugin himself was predictable and in line with current political mores in Russia: they speculated that the petition had been orchestrated by pro-Ukrainian forces, \u2018foreign agents\u2019 and supporters of \u2018unfriendly countries\u2019, all representing a minority view.<\/p>\nIt is important for the state to sustain the majority effect: the regime and its propaganda units try hard to make it look as if Russian society \u2013 with the exception of unconscientious citizens and those painted as \u2018fifth columnists\u2019 \u2013 is united in its support of Putin and his war. In particular, this support is supposed to be expressed by the 87 percent vote in favour of the \u2018eternal leader\u2019 in the presidential \u2018elections\u2019. In such a situation, the minority view is only held by outcasts, and the only sensible strategy for them is to join the majority (even if disingenuously, like the passive conformists who actually make up the sociological majority of the population).<\/p>\nHowever, civil society is still alive, despite the atmosphere of fear, direct repression and professional purges in the education sector (above all in higher education \u2013 and particularly at the Higher School of Economics (HSE), which until recently was Russia\u2019s most liberal big university). Civil society is not fighting for power, it is putting up moral resistance<\/em>, as it did in the last decades of the Soviet Union. The students\u2019 actions are manifestations of this moral resistance to the system.<\/p>\nIncubators for the new human<\/h2>\nAs it matures, any totalitarian regime hits upon the idea of forming a new kind of human. This new human becomes the model for the labour market and the well-paid professions of the security service official (silovik<\/em>) or military-industrial complex employee. The \u2018special military operation\u2019 is the best career ladder for Putinists. This is how all totalitarian regimes were built: from the Stalin regime, which co-opted the entire Soviet population into youth, party, and trade union organizations, to the regime of Benito Mussolini in Italy and that of Ant\u00f3nio Salazar in Portugal.<\/p>\nIn all regimes of this type, the ideology is founded on the concept of a special path resulting from a glorious history. A totalitarian state views itself as \u2018the people\u2019s\u2019 and claims the right to mobilize the nation. In turn, the nation defines itself in the terminology of a special unity, such as the \u2018new historical commonality\u2019 in the USSR, Deutschtum<\/em> in Germany, and corresponding concepts of Italianit\u00e0<\/em> in Italy and Hispanidad<\/em> in Spain. If the state is involved in a war, then there is a cult of the fallen and of heroic death. Take, for example, \u2018Let\u2019s Rise!\u2019, a song by the popular Russian national-patriotic singer Shaman:<\/p>\n\nLet\u2019s rise, as long as God and the truth are on our side,<\/p>\nWe\u2019ll say thanks for granting us victory.<\/p>\nFor those who found their heaven and are no longer with us,<\/p>\nLet\u2019s rise and sing a song.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\nThe subject matter and lyrics differ little from those found in Stalinist marching songs, the National Socialist \u2018Horst Wessel Lied\u2019, the Spanish legion march \u2018El Novio de la Muerte\u2019 (\u2018Bridegroom of Death\u2019), and the official hymn of the Italian fascist party, \u2018Giovinezza\u2019 (\u2018Youth\u2019). The unity of the people and the leader is one of the fundamental components of ideology in totalitarian regimes. And the strength of a nation is measured by its ability to function in economic isolation and as a political autarchy.<\/p>\nCorporate cells are the organizational basis of such systems. Ideally, a network of these cells covers the entirety of public space. The organizations of the Soviet Union \u2013 the Little Octobrists, Pioneers, Komsomol, and the various trade unions \u2013 were modelled after those of their own enemies: the fascist and ultra-right regimes of the twentieth century. The Little Octobrists and the Pioneers had a lot in common with the Italian youth organization Balilla, above all the didactic examples of child heroes.<\/p>\nStill, current Russian practices are not entirely totalitarian, although they lean towards it: the smiling, uniformly clad young creatures on posters are victims of semi-totalitarian practices, since they do not represent all young people.<\/p>\nFor now, the regime has not been able to incorporate all young people into its modern-day youth movements, including Movement of the First, Young Army and the I\u2019m Proud association of student clubs. The state doesn\u2019t require all students \u2013 or at least all members of student councils \u2013 to join pro-Kremlin movements, and this distinguishes classic totalitarianism from Putin neo-totalitarianism.<\/p>\nFor a semi-totalitarian (or neo-totalitarian) regime, patriotism primarily means the militarization of consciousness. Young Army, for example, was established two years after the annexation of Crimea, when the regime had already begun to transform from a purely authoritarian regime into a semi-totalitarian one.<\/p>\nNaturally, a militarized organization must represent the struggle between all that is good and all that is bad. This is why the mission of the organization, as stated on its website, is \u2018to cultivate in Young Army members kindness, compassion, conscientiousness, loyalty, dignity and love for their Motherland\u2019. Young Army, its mission statement continues \u2018is dedicated to fostering respect for the institution of family, for the memory of the ancestors, and for elders\u2019.<\/p>\nThe start of the \u2018special military operation\u2019 sharply accelerated the formation of the state ideology and the organizations tasked with spreading it \u2013 including to young people. Established in 2022, the Movement of the First is a successor to the Soviet Pioneers, although the age range of the new organization is much wider: from six to 25, compared to nine to 14.<\/p>\nBoys and girls who \u2018follow the traditions of our ancestors\u2019 are a natural element of a movement for an ideology that sees its bright future in a dark past. The movement\u2019s key characteristics appeal to a glorious history built on a negative identity; they hint at an enemy that undermines the pursuit of a unique historical path. According to the organisation\u2019s mission statement, \u2018members of the Movement study know and protect the history of Russia, oppose any attempts to distort and denigrate it. They preserve the memory of the defenders of the Fatherland\u2019. Family values that are \u2018uniquely\u2019 traditional \u2013 apparently unlike other countries and peoples \u2013 are a crucial aspect of self-identification: \u2018Members of the Movement share traditional family values. They are proud of the Russian culture of fatherhood and motherhood. They honour large families. They help younger children, take care of grandparents in the family\u2019.<\/p>\nCeremonies and rituals<\/h2>\nIndoctrination at school level is easy to carry out, because the state is free to do whatever it wants: from mandating unified history textbooks to holding \u2018Conversations About Important Things\u2019 as the first class on Mondays. The website of the \u2018Conversations\u2019 programme contains thematic and methodological materials, frequently pegged to specific dates. Every topic is developed by a speaker specializing in the subject, often with the use of strange and laboured texts. For example, the lesson on \u2018Crimea and Sevastopol: Ten Years in Their Native Harbour\u2019 (a phrase that has become a propaganda clich\u00e9) is given by Metropolitan Tikhon, often referred to as Putin\u2019s confessor. His book Death of an Empire<\/em> (described in its blurb as a work \u2018about the mechanisms of cataclysms in Russia\u2019) has become another ideological weapon for the regime.<\/p>\nA special \u2018wooden language\u2019 (social dialect) for talking about \u2018values\u2019 is being developed as part of the increasingly symbiotic relationship between schools and the Movement of the First. This has also always been typical for totalitarian regimes. Additionally, indoctrination is cemented by ceremony (in particular, the raising of the flag in schools) and ritual, as well as initiatives like \u2018Letter to a Soldier\u2019, where pupils are supposed to congratulate the participants of the current conflict on the 9 May Victory Day holiday. \u2018Letter to a Soldier\u2019 is designed to create the impression of continuity between World War II and the \u2018special military operation\u2019, though no one seems to care that the people of Ukraine are just as entitled to celebrate victory over Hitler\u2019s Germany in World War II.<\/p>\nThere is also a mandatory (or at least strongly encouraged) campaign at all types of educational establishments throughout the country to make handmade supplies for the war. These efforts have been elevated to the status of an important common cause. In the spring of 2024, for example, the Minister of Education and Science of Dagestan, Yahya Buchayev, instructed schools to teach students to weave camouflage nets and make \u2018trench candles\u2019 as part of their extracurricular programmes.<\/p>\nBlacked-out pages<\/h2>\nThe process of censorship and self-censorship at publishing houses and bookstores has spread to the literature curriculum in schools, including supplementary reading lists. However, this is only part of the overall picture of what is happening on the general book market, especially since reading lists (and lists of books not recommended for reading) include many non-children\u2019s books.<\/p>\nOn the general book market, an \u2018expert centre\u2019 has been established to assess whether print and electronic editions correspond to laws and norms, above all those that prohibit \u2018LGBTQ propaganda\u2019. A censorship agency has been established as a complement to denunciations and the efforts of law-enforcement agencies. This is not censorship preventing publication, but rather retroactive inspections of books that have already been published, sometimes as a result of warnings by the prosecutor\u2019s office.<\/p>\nThere is also another approach to censorship. For example, the Russian translation of Roberto Carnero\u2019s biography of the gay Italian filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini (Pasolini. Dying for Ideas<\/em>), which went on sale in May 2024, has been physically redacted, with fragments related to Pasolini\u2019s sexuality blacked out.<\/p>\nAnother important and telling example was an initiative by State Duma deputies to amend a law on library services in order to prohibit the lending of books by \u2018foreign agents\u2019, \u2018terrorists\u2019, and \u2018extremists\u2019. Of course, many libraries and bookstores have already stopped lending and selling books by \u2018foreign agents\u2019 in the spirit of preventive conformism. Some publishing houses have also stopped signing contracts with authors who have been declared \u2018foreign agents\u2019, fearing that they might have difficulty selling books by these authors or get in trouble themselves.<\/p>\nThere have also been changes to school curricula. Some books that had been integral to shaping the identity of the Soviet individual, such as Alexander Fadeyev\u2019s The Young Guard<\/em> and Nikolai Ostrovsky\u2019s How the Steel Was Tempered<\/em>, have been brought back from what now seems an archaic past. Some anti-Soviet (and primarily anti-Stalin) books are still on the reading list, such as Alexander Solzhenitsyn\u2019s The Gulag Archipelago<\/em> and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich<\/em>. Others have been struck from it, including Georgy Vladimov\u2019s Faithful Ruslan<\/em>, Varlam Shalamov\u2019s Kolyma Tales<\/em>, and Yuri Trifonov\u2019s The House on the Embankment<\/em>.<\/p>\nLiterature is becoming as ideological a subject as history, which is already an instrument of indoctrination in schools. An April 2024 decree issued by the Ministry of Education significantly increased the number of classroom hours allocated for the teaching of history. Under different circumstances this could be a welcome development \u2013 but not at a time of \u2018unified\u2019 textbooks and the politicization and mythologization of history. Naturally, a lot still depends on the individual teacher, as was the case in the Soviet Union. However, the system itself is putting pressure on teachers, even the best of whom are being forced to adapt to the proposed political circumstances \u2013 along with, of course, the pupils.<\/p>\nThe same decree drastically reduced the number of classroom hours for social studies: the subject has simply been eliminated in grades six to eight. Perhaps this is because reality now sits in catastrophic contradiction with the democratic, constitutional foundations of Russian statehood and the constitutionally protected rights and freedoms of the country\u2019s citizens.<\/p>\nBut Yana Lantratova, a State Duma deputy, explained the changes in the social studies curriculum as follows: \u2018If you look at the concepts being studied at this period of time, these are primarily western concepts, which say that a society that respects religion, large families and traditional values is a backward society, and that the only ideal model is the American model.\u2019<\/p>\nSpecial anthropological operation<\/h2>\nIt is still possible to resist this oppression by ignoring it or pretending to conform to its rules. However, the state is increasingly saturating everyday life with propaganda and ideology. For example, St. Petersburg Governor Alexander Beglov has promised to rename the city\u2019s schools after participants of the \u2018special military operation\u2019.<\/p>\nThe Putin regime now seems to be eternal, and for that reason many Russians now coming of age find it natural to make use of the career lifts offered by the state. The requirements for using these lifts include political loyalty, a belief in mythologized narratives, and a defence-oriented consciousness.<\/p>\nWhile the nationalization of the individual (as well as of property) is in full swing in Russia, it is yet to be completed. This is an escalating \u2018special anthropological operation\u2019 in which intellectual violence has enormous significance.<\/p>\nCivil society has not yet lost the anthropological battle for the hearts and minds of Russians, particularly when it comes to the young. The state will not stop at what it has achieved so far, but nor will society abandon its fight to protect human dignity. A protracted domestic war of attrition lies ahead \u2013 one whose ultimate outcome is hard to predict.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n[ad_2]\nSource link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"[ad_1] In the age of mature Putinism, violence and control, accompanied by a new morality based on so-called \u2018traditional values\u2019, have become crucial instruments for<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":348175,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[154],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348174"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=348174"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348174\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/348175"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=348174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=348174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=348174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}](\"https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File:%D0%A1%D0%B8%D1%80%D0%B8%D0%B9%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B8%D0%B9_%D0%BF%D0%B5%D1%80%D0%B5%D0%BB%D0%BE%D0%BC_%D0%B2_%D0%9D%D0%B8%D0%B6%D0%BD%D0%B5%D0%BC_%D0%9D%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%B3%D0%BE%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%B4%D0%B5_12.jpg\"){kind=link}