[London 18th Archyde.com]–A few days after Russia started its invasion of Ukraine on February 24th, Andrey Shestakov (38), a teacher in the Siberian region of Russia, said on the message app “WhatsApp”. I opened a file in a chat with a group of history teachers.
The file contained dozens of pages of text, presentation materials, and links to videos that instructed teenagers how to teach the dispute. It was unclear who shared this file on chat, but many of the documents had the emblem of the Russian Ministry of Education in Moscow.
According to the materials, “Russian soldiers fighting in Ukraine are heroes”, “Ukrainian rulers have a common purpose with Nazi collaborators at the time of World War II”, “Western countries are in Russian society” It included guidance that argued that “we are trying to widen the division” and “the Russian people must unite.”
Shestakov, who has a tight body, said he worked as a police officer for 16 years before becoming a teacher in January. But over the last few years, it has been questioned whether Russia’s ruling class is loyal to its predecessor, democratic values. There was also the influence of Alexei Navalny, who is famous for criticizing the administration.
Shestakov, who teaches at the Second Middle School in Neryungri, a coal mining city in eastern Siberia, about 6,700 kilometers east of Moscow, decided not to teach her students this content.
Instead, he says he told the students what the curriculum was and why it was historically wrong. For example, this document claims that Ukraine was built by the Bolsheviks, the predecessor of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, but history textbooks teach that Ukraine’s history dates back centuries.
Shestakov went a step further. On March 1, he in class said that he was not encouraged to volunteer for the Russian army, opposed the war with Ukraine, and claimed that Russian leaders were fighting Ukrainian fascism, while on their own fascism. I told the students that they were showing signs. Archyde.com read the police records signed by Mr. Shestakov and confirmed these statements.
For the next few days, Shestakov was summoned by local police and the Federal Security Service (FSB) to be cross-examined, according to a March 5 record of what she said in the classroom. Shestakov said he was not charged with these statements. The FSB and he asked local police for comment, but did not get a response.
On March 18, the court fined Mr. Shestakov for 35,000 rubles (about 55,000 yen) for damaging the credibility of the Russian army. According to a ruling read by Archyde.com, this was in response to an online reprint of an interview video of Russian prisoners of war in Ukraine.
Shestakov told Archyde.com that she had quit her teacher last month, thinking she would be fired because she was openly opposed to the war. We asked local education authorities and the Russian Ministry of Education for comment on Mr. Shestakov’s case and his course of study, but did not get a response. When Archyde.com contacted the school by phone, a woman claiming to be the deputy principal came out and hung up saying she would refrain from commenting on Mr. Shestakov.
Two teachers and two teachers from the teachers’ union, and two schools reporting that teachers across Russia received the same or similar course of study, and that they taught using this program. Revealed from a social media post by. It shows that the Russian state, which is tightening its control over the mainstream media, is trying to extend the propaganda about the war in Ukraine to the educational field and increase the approval rating of the administration.
Since the beginning of the war, many schools in Russia have sent messages to support soldiers fighting in Ukraine, and the “Z”, which is a symbol of war support in Russia, is expressed in human characters. Posting the image you are posting on social media.
Teachers who oppose the war, along with dissident activists, non-governmental activists, and independent journalists, are falling into pressure from the Russian state in the form of fines, prosecutions, and possible job losses. In early March, Putin signed a bill that criminalized the dissemination of “fake” information about Russian troops and imposed fines or imprisonment for up to 15 years.
The course of study received by Mr. Shestakov states that it is intended for students aged 14-18. The content includes a detailed lesson plan for teachers, a link to President Putin’s speech video, and a short video of lesson examples.
According to this source, Western nations are launching information warfare to repel Russian domestic public opinion from their leadership, and all Russians need to resolutely resist this.
One lesson plan explains that Russia is waging a cultural war with Western nations trying to destroy the “traditional family system” and impose Western values on Russia.
According to it, Ukraine has promoted anti-Russian policy since the collapse of the former Soviet Union. “Attack on Russian distorted the common history of the two countries, and war criminals and criminal groups in World War II were celebrated as heroes,” the document said. What is being said here are the Ukrainian nationalists who allied with Germany during World War II.
Another lesson plan states that Western nations are waging a “hybrid war” that mixes propaganda, economic sanctions, and military pressure to overthrow Russia by fueling internal conflicts. “That’s why we’re encouraging people to participate in unauthorized demonstrations, urging them to break the law, and scaring them. We must not give in to provocation.”
The course of study includes a game that lets students decide in 15 seconds whether a sentence is true or false. A sentence looks like this: “Organizing protests, provoking authorities, and holding large rallies are effective ways to resolve hybrid conflicts.” According to the course of study, the correct answer is “a lie.”
Archyde.com found slides taken from the same file used in social media posts by a school in the city of Samara along the Volga River and a school in Minusinsk, southern Siberia.
Danil Protonikov, who teaches mathematics in the city of Chelyabinsk along the Urals, told Archyde.com that the school asked him to teach something similar, although the material package was different from what Shestakov received. .. She also heard that Tatiana Chernenko, who also teaches math in Moscow, was asked by a fellow teacher at another school to teach a similar program, but she did not teach at her school. Spoke.
Teachers interviewed by Archyde.com said that some areas and schools are promoting these learning programs more enthusiastically than others. The five teachers said they had not heard of any teachers being explicitly instructed to teach these programs. It is usually in the form of “requests” or “recommendations” by schools and community education authorities.
Daniel Ken, chairman of the independent teachers’ union, says some teachers have turned down such requests and have done nothing. Some teachers did not follow the course of study, but reported to their bosses that they did. Refusal is risky, he said. This is because the principal does not always ask for resignation.
He told the union that about six teachers a week would quit because they didn’t want to push the Putin administration’s line. Archyde.com couldn’t get its own backing for this.
Shestakov cuts her hair short and is doing a martial arts sambo developed by the Soviet Army. While he was working in the police, he was said to have worked for the Home Office Special Forces for a year. One of the law enforcement agencies, its officials are currently participating in the fighting in Ukraine. He asked the Home Office for comment, but did not get a response.
By 2018, when she was a local police officer working on juvenile delinquency, she was politically awake and began watching videos released by Navalny. He has been accused of corruption by Putin’s executives and is now a dissident in prison in Russia.
“I’ve just become a dissident,” says Shestakov.
When the war in Ukraine began, he was disturbed by the pictures of the victims and watched the fighting videos on social media for hours.
According to a court ruling dated March 18, read by Shestakov and Archyde.com, he posted an interview video of Russian prisoners of war in Ukraine in the comments section of a local media site with about 5,200 registrants. It is said that it was reprinted under a pseudonym.
The court ruled that Mr. Shestakov’s actions violated a law prohibiting the damage to the credibility of Russian troops.
Shestakov suspects that the FSB has been tapping the phone for the past few weeks, although there is no evidence. He also said he had seen several people identified as FSB undercover agents three times in the last few days. He asked the FSB for comment on whether he was monitoring Mr. Shestakov, but did not respond.
Shestakov is currently planning to leave Russia, fearing further punishment from authorities. Tens of thousands of dissidents have fled Russia since the Putin administration tightened its crackdown in 2018, with Shestakov joining. He will go to Turkey unless authorities ban him from leaving the country.
Shestakov says it is unthinkable to stay in the country and put up with voices against the war. “It will be difficult to keep your mouth closed.”
(Translation: Acrelen)