TALLINN, Estonia — Clad in white shirts and carrying bouquets, children across Russia flocked back to school Friday, where the Kremlin’s narratives about the war in Ukraine and its confrontation with the West were taking an even more prominent spot than before.
Students are expected each week to listen to Russia’s national anthem and watch the country’s tricolor flag being raised. There’s a weekly subject loosely translated as “Conversations about Important Things,” which was introduced last year with the goal of boosting patriotism.
A new high school history textbook has a chapter on the annexation of the Crimean Peninsula and the “special military operation” — the Kremlin’s euphemism for the war, and some basic military training is included in a course on self-defense and first aid.
President Vladimir Putin even got involved, personally meeting Friday with 30 school students from different regions and describing Russians as “an invincible nation.” The Kremlin called it “an open lesson” as part of the “Conversations About Important Things” program of studies.
“School … is a powerful mechanism for raising a person subordinate to the state,” said Nikolay Petrov, visiting researcher at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs. “For a while the school was outside the active attention of the state. Today, it’s all coming back.”
The Kremlin became preoccupied with what was on the minds of young people several years ago, when teenagers and students flocked to unauthorized protests organized by now-imprisoned opposition leader Alexei Navalny.
“The Kremlin suddenly began to pay a lot of attention to children and the youth,” Petrov noted.
Putin started meeting with young people regularly, and authorities started investing in pushing its political narrative. The effort appeared to be driven by the realization that a whole generation of people who grew up with Putin as president “can think differently than the Kremlin wants them to,” the analyst said.
There have been frequent media reports in recent years about teachers dressing down, shouting at or calling police on students who express support for the opposition or anti-government views.
The crackdown intensified after Moscow sent troops to Ukraine, and teachers were fired or forced to quit after refusing to hold sessions of the “Conversations About Important Things.” Parents faced pressure from school administrators and authorities if their children skipped those lessons.
Earlier this year, authorities in the town of Yefremov, south of Moscow, convicted and imprisoned a single father whose daughter drew an antiwar sketch at school.
