Russia is stepping up its efforts to ensure that even its youngest citizens are in line with the official narrative when it comes to the war in Ukraine.
The country’s education ministry this week unveiled new history books with sections on what it calls a “special military operation” in Ukraine, the annexation of Crimea and Western sanctions. Critics say the move is part of a sustained effort to indoctrinate schoolchildren and stifle any independent thinking.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has always maintained that Moscow’s unprovoked aggression against Ukraine is an effort to free the country from a “Nazi regime” and Western influence. He went so far as to suggest that there was no such thing as an independent Ukraine, insisting instead that the country was traditionally part of Russia and that Russians and Ukrainians are “one people”.
New textbooks endorse this narrative and include maps showing occupied regions in Ukraine as part of Russia. Photos from the books published by state media show that they call Ukraine an “ultranationalist state”, where all dissidents are persecuted and “everything Russian is declared hostile”.
Elsewhere, the authors tell students that when looking for information about Ukraine on the internet, they should remember that there is a “global industry for the production of staged videos and fake photos and videos”.
Russian Education Minister Sergey Kravtsov told state media on Monday that the textbooks include sections “on the reasons for starting the special military operation, the purpose of the special military operation, denazification, demilitarization, [e] the entry of new regions into the Russian Federation”.
Kravtsov also promised to update textbooks after the end of the war, “as soon as we win,” according to RIA Novosti.
Katerina Tertytchnaya, associate professor of comparative politics at University College London, said the new books “didn’t come out of nowhere”.
“There has been an increase in school indoctrination efforts through textbooks, curriculum content and extracurricular activities in Russia since 2014,” she said, citing surveys she conducted with several colleagues that showed an increase in pressure on teachers to promote a patriotic narrative of Russian history after Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014.
Source: CNN Brasil
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