In the age of mature Putinism, direct violence and control over society, accompanied by ideological postulates that form a new morality based on so-called “traditional values,” are a crucial instrument for managing society. Using the educational system and cultural institutions to indoctrinate the population—above all young people—is in fact a form of violence, only intellectual and spiritual rather than physical.
In some respects, the scale of political repression is higher now than in the late Soviet period. The absurdity of the accusations and even the number of convictions based on political charges is increasingly reminiscent of the Stalin era. On February 27, 2024, for example, the human rights activist Oleg Orlov was jailed for actions motivated by “hatred of traditional values.” We are seeing ideology acquire practical significance in the implementation of political repression.
The function of ideology and ideological agencies—from the Education Ministry and the Roskomnadzor communications watchdog to the Prosecutor General’s Office, the Justice Ministry, the Investigative Committee and the Federal Security Service (FSB)—is to present a single possible vision of the world and to punish anything that refutes or contradicts it. All of these agencies are becoming mechanisms for controlling ideology and culture.
The first decree that Russian President Vladimir Putin signed on May 8, 2024, the day after his fifth inauguration, was “On the Approval of the Fundamentals of State Policy of the Russian Federation in the Field of Historical Education.” This is a true foundation of the de facto state ideology and the indoctrination of the population by Putinism.
According to the decree, everything should be unified within the framework of “historical education”: a consolidated instructional methodology for all education levels starting with kindergarten, and of course a “unified state line of history textbooks.”
This approach is symptomatic of and useful for the manipulation of national consciousness. The state seeks to corral all of society into professional, gender- or age-based, or other “thematic” cells, forming corporatist structures. A society that has been systematized in this fashion is easier to control and to indoctrinate with the ideology of Putinism.
Young people are one of the most important “corporations” for the Putin regime. The authorities consider it necessary to work with them both because support for Putin and his initiatives is lowest in this age category and because the Putin system—like any authoritarian or totalitarian regime—sees young people as a key source of obedient human resources.
This is why the state is getting so involved at all levels of education: primary, secondary, higher, and supplementary. The practices of “patriotic” education are becoming more and more intrusive, simplistic, and cliched.
Little Fires Everywhere
The regime has recently started actively working with college and high school students. Many ultraconservative and militarist ideologists even think that the course that was introduced at universities in the fall of 2023, “Foundations of Russian Statehood,” as well as the unified history textbooks published for the upper grades of secondary school for the 2023–2024 school year, are insufficient means of converting students to a single ideological faith. In the words of Alexander Dugin, the ultraconservative head of the Ivan Ilyin Higher Political School at the Russian State University for the Humanities, “The overwhelming majority of educational institutions in Russia actually reflect the liberal order of the 1980s–1990s. Therefore, what is necessary is the militarization of education, a sharp break in the vector—above all in the humanities—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.”
Recently, there have been several examples of practical actions and resonant events. On April 3, 2024, Andrei Ilnitsky, an advisor to the defense minister, visited Russia’s leading physics and mathematics university, the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT), and gave a conspiratorial lecture as part of a course on “processes in the world community.” According to attendees, he told the students that “plans are being hatched on the other side of Russia’s borders to sow chaos; undermine sovereignty; and jeopardize history, traditions, values, convictions, and ideology.” 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 had spoken out against the so-called “special military operation” right after it began. In early March 2022, almost 3,000 people signed a petition against it: a significant number for a truly elite institution.
Meanwhile, in April 2024, more than 5,000 people immediately signed a student petition against the establishment of the Ivan Ilyin Higher Political School headed by Alexander Dugin 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 student body of the Russian State University for the Humanities, and those who had no connection with the university began to sign it. The response from the university’s rector and from Dugin himself was predictable and in line with current political mores in Russia: they irritably speculated that the petition had been orchestrated by pro-Ukrainian forces, “foreign agents,” and supporters of “unfriendly countries,” all representing a minority view.
This is a key aspect. 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—with the exception of unconscientious citizens and the fifth column—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 favor of the eternal leader in the presidential “elections.” 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).
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—and particularly at the Higher School of Economics, which until recently was Russia’s most liberal big university). Civil society is not fighting for power, it is putting up a moral resistance, as it did in the last decades of the Soviet Union. The students’ actions are manifestations of this moral resistance to the system.
Another controversy in the higher education sector was related to corporatization. Again in April 2024, the administration of the Higher School of Economics disbanded the university’s student council because it refused to admit as a member a representative of a pro-Kremlin youth organization, Movement of the First, which was created specifically based on corporatist principles. For now, the state doesn’t require all students—or at least all members of student councils—to join pro-Kremlin movements, and this distinguishes classic totalitarianism from Putin neo-totalitarianism (or hybrid totalitarianism).
Incubators for the New Man
As it matures, any totalitarian regime hits upon the idea of forming a new man. This new man becomes the model for the labor market and the well-paid professions of the security service official (silovik) or worker of the military-industrial complex. The “special military operation” is the best career ladder and forge for Putinists. The “patriotic” language adapted for intellectual violence—pompously accusing foreign and domestic enemies using cliched expressions, and inserting the Latin letter Z into Russian words as a symbol of support for the war (I tend to call this phenomenon the social Z-dialect)—is also a good match for the corporatist structure.
This is how all totalitarian regimes were built: from the Stalin regime, which co-opted the entire population into youth, party, and trade union organizations, to the regimes of Benito Mussolini in Italy and Antonio Salazar in Portugal.
In 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 “all-people’s” or simply “the people’s” and claims the right to mobilize the nation. In turn, the nation defines itself in the terminology of a special unity, such as the “new historical commonality” in the USSR, Deutschtum (“Germanness”) in Germany, and corresponding concepts of Italianità in Italy and Hispanidad in Spain. If the state is involved in a war, then there is a cult of the fallen and of heroic death. For example, the subject matter and lyrics of a song by the popular Russian national-patriotic singer Shaman, “Let’s Rise!”—
Let’s rise, as long as God and the truth are on our side,
We’ll say thanks for granting us victory.
For those who found their heaven and are no longer with us,
Let’s rise and sing a song.
—differ little from Stalinist marching songs, Germany’s Nazi-era national anthem the “Horst-Wessel-Lied,” the Spanish legion march “El Novio de la Muerte” (“Bridegroom of Death”), and the official hymn of the Italian fascist party, “Giovinezza” (“Youth”). 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 autarky.
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—Little Octobrists, Pioneers, Komsomol, and the various trade unions—were modeled 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 the child heroes.
Still, current Russian practices are not entirely totalitarian, although they strive toward it: the smiling, uniformly clad young creatures on posters are victims of semi-totalitarian practices, since they do not represent all young people. For now, the regime hasn’t been able to incorporate all young people into its modern-day youth movements, which include among others Movement of the First, Young Army, and the I’m Proud student clubs.
For a semi-totalitarian (or neo-totalitarian) regime, patriotism means first and foremost the militarization of consciousness. Young Army 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.
Naturally, a militarized organization must represent the struggle between all that is good and all that is bad—otherwise, why would a modern society need children’s war games? This is why the mission of the organization, as stated on its website, is “to cultivate in Young Army members kindness, compassion, conscientiousness, loyalty, dignity, and love for their Motherland. Young Army is dedicated to fostering respect for the institution of family, for the memory of the ancestors, and for elders.” The “case examples” in its educational process stem almost entirely from the Soviet legacy.
The start of the “special military operation” sharply accelerated the formation of the state ideology and its organizational manifestation—including as it relates to young people. The Movement of the First was established in 2022, and implies a continuity from the Soviet Pioneers, although the age range of the new organization is much wider: from six to twenty-five, compared with the Pioneers’ age range of nine to fourteen.
Good boys and girls who “follow the traditions of our ancestors” are a natural element of the very pathos of the movement for an ideology that sees its bright future in a dark past. The details of the key characteristics of the movement appeal to a glorious history built on a negative identity; they hint at an enemy that undermines the self-perception of a unique historical path: “Members of the Movement study, know, and protect [author’s italics] the history of Russia, oppose any attempts to distort and denigrate it. They preserve the memory of the defenders of the Fatherland.”
Family values that are “uniquely” traditional—apparently not inherent to other countries and peoples—are a crucial aspect of self-identification: “Members of the Movement share traditional family values. They are proud of the Russian culture of fatherhood and motherhood. They honor large families. They help younger children, take care of grandparents in the family.”
Ceremonies and Rituals
Indoctrination at the school level is easy to implement, because the state is free to do whatever it wants: from mandating unified history textbooks to holding “Conversations About Important Things” as the first class on Mondays. The website of the “Conversations” program contains thematic and methodological materials, frequently pegged to specific dates. Every topic is developed by a speaker specializing in the subject, often with strange and labored texts. For example, the lesson on “Crimea and Sevastopol: Ten Years in Their Native Harbor” (a phrase that has become a propaganda cliché) is given by Metropolitan Tikhon, often referred to as Putin’s confessor. His book Death of an Empire (described in its blurb as a work “about the mechanisms of cataclysms in Russia”) has become yet another ideological weapon for the regime.
A special wooden language (social dialect) for talking about “values” is being developed within the framework of the symbiosis of the school 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 part of the “Letter to a Soldier” initiative, for example, designed to create the impression of continuity between World War II and the “special military operation,” students are supposed to congratulate the participants of the current conflict on the May 9 Victory Day holiday. No one seems to care that the people of Ukraine are just as entitled to celebrate victory over Hitler’s Germany in World War II.
There is also a mandatory (or at least strongly encouraged) campaign at all types of educational establishments throughout the country to craft 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 Buchaev, instructed schools to teach students to weave camouflage nets and make trench candles as part of their extracurricular programs.
Disappearing Pages
The overall process of censorship and self-censorship at publishing houses and bookstores has spread to the literature curriculum in schools, including supplemental 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’s books.
On the general book market, an “expert center” has been established to assess whether print and electronic editions correspond to laws and norms, above all those prohibiting “LGBTQ propaganda.” There is now an actual censorship agency to complement denunciations and the efforts of law enforcement agencies. This is not censorship preventing publication, but rather retroactive inspections of and bans on books that have already been published, sometimes as a result of warnings by the prosecutor’s office.
There is also another approach to censorship: the Russian translation of Pasolini. Dying for Ideas, Roberto Carnero’s biography of the gay Italian filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini, which hit bookshelves and online stores in May 2024, is physically redacted, with fragments related to Pasolini’s sexuality blacked out. Here is a sample page: an absurd image unique for the post-Soviet period:
Another 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 “foreign agents,” “terrorists,” and “extremists.” Of course, many libraries and bookstores have already stopped lending out and selling books by “foreign agents” in the spirit of preventive conformism. Some publishing houses have also stopped signing contracts with authors who have been declared “foreign agents,” fearing that they might have difficulty selling books by these authors or get in trouble themselves.
Learning at Home and in School
It isn’t easy to achieve totality in anything, including in regulating literature for schoolchildren. It is easier to sell notebooks and other school supplies with “patriotic” images—such as notebooks released in April 2024 with portraits of a tank crew lauded for their feats in Ukraine—than it is to control everything the students read.
There are also changes in school curricula. Some books that had been integral to shaping the identity of the Soviet individual, such as Alexander Fadeyev’s The Young Guard and Nikolai Ostrovsky’s How the Steel Was Tempered, have been brought back from the now archaic-seeming Soviet past to the eleventh-grade curriculum. Metropolitan Tikhon’s aforementioned Death of an Empire has also made it onto the list of recommended literature: pushed by propaganda and by bookstores, it has become a bestseller. Some anti-Soviet (and primarily anti-Stalin) books are still on the reading list, such as Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. Others have been struck from it, for example—Georgy Vladimov’s Faithful Ruslan, Varlam Shalamov’s Kolyma Tales, and Yuri Trifonov’s The House on the Embankment.
Literature is becoming just as ideological a subject as history, an instrument of indoctrination in school. Under an April 2024 decree from the Education Ministry, the number of classroom hours allocated for teaching history is strongly increasing. Under different circumstances this could be a welcome development—but not at a time of “unified” 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—along with, of course, the students.
The same Education Ministry decree drastically reduced the number of classroom hours for social studies: in grades six through eight, the subject was simply eliminated. Perhaps this is because reality is in a catastrophic contradiction with the democratic, constitutional foundations of Russian statehood and the constitutionally protected rights and freedoms of the people and citizens. Yana Lantratova, a State Duma deputy, explained the changes in the social studies curriculum as follows: “If 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.”
Special Anthropological Operation
Intellectual violence and spiritual oppression are becoming a routine part of everyday life. They are also becoming increasingly intrusive and seeking to become all-encompassing. 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’s schools en masse after participants of the “special military operation.”
The Putin regime seems to be eternal, and therefore many Russians currently coming of age find it natural to make use of the career elevators offered by the state. The requirements for using these elevators include political loyalty, a mythologized mindset, and a defense-oriented consciousness.
The current state of Russia is that the nationalization of the individual (as well as of their property) is in full swing, but hasn’t been completed. This is an escalating “special anthropological operation” in which intellectual violence has enormous practical significance.
Civil society hasn’t yet lost the anthropological battle for the hearts and minds of Russians, particularly young Russians. The state will not stop at what it has achieved so far, but society too will continue to fight to protect human dignity. This will be a protracted domestic war of attrition, and the outcome is unpredictable.
