Andrei Kolesnikov in Public Seminar:
In the age of mature Putinism, violence and control, accompanied by a new morality based on so-called “traditional values,” have become crucial instruments for managing Russian society. The use of the education system and cultural institutions to indoctrinate the population—above all young people—is a form of violence, only intellectual rather than physical.
In some respects, the scale of repression is greater now than in the late Soviet period. The absurdity of the accusations and even the number of convictions 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 allegedly motivated by “hatred of traditional values.” Ideology is acquiring a practical significance in the implementation of political repression.
The function of ideology and ideological agencies—from the Ministry of Education and communications watchdog Roskomnadzor to the prosecutor general’s office, the Ministry of Justice, the Investigative Committee and the Federal Security Service (FSB)—is to present a single 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 after his fifth inauguration in May 2024 was “On the Approval of the Fundamentals of State Policy of the Russian Federation in the Field of Historical Education.” According to the decree, which serves as the foundation of the state ideology and a blueprint for the indoctrination of the population, everything is to 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.”
More here.
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