LONDON (Reuters) – Days after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24, Andrei Shestakov opened a set of files in a WhatsApp group chat for history teachers like him in his city in eastern Russia.
The files – reviewed by Reuters and containing dozens of pages of documents and presentations, as well as video links – are instructions on how to teach teenage children from school about conflict. It is not clear who shared the files in the group chat, but many of the documents bear the coat of arms of the Ministry of Education in Moscow.
The material includes tutorials that teach that Russian soldiers fighting in Ukraine were heroes, that Ukrainian rulers made a common cause with people who collaborated with the Nazis of World War II, that the West was trying to spread divisions in Russian society and that Russians should stick together.
Shestakov said he flipped through the files during one of his lessons. The sweet 38-year-old said he had spent 16 years as a police officer before becoming a teacher in January. But he has had growing doubts in recent years, he said, of whether Russian rulers live up to the values they profess for democracy, influenced in part by prominent Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny.
He decided not to teach the modules to his students at Gymnasium 2, where he worked in Neryungri, a coal-mining town in eastern Siberia, about 6,700 km (4,160 miles) east of Moscow.
Instead, Shestakov told his students about the content of the textbook and why it was historically inaccurate, he told Reuters. For example, he said he explained that the materials claimed that Ukraine was an invention of Bolshevik Communist Russia, but that history textbooks had been discussing Ukrainian history for centuries.
He went further. On March 1, he told students during a citizenship class that he would not advise them to serve in the Russian army, that he opposed the war against Ukraine, and that Russian leaders were showing elements of fascism, even when they said they were fighting fascism in Ukraine, according to a signed statement taken by police and reviewed by Reuters.
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In the following days, local police and the Federal Security Service, known as the FSB, summoned Shestakov for questioning, according to a March 5 statement about his comments in the classroom. He said he had not been charged in connection with the comments. The FSB and local police did not respond to requests for comment.
The court fined him 35,000 rubles (about $ 420) on March 18 for discrediting the Russian armed forces after he republished online videos of interviews with Russian soldiers captured in Ukraine, according to a court ruling seen by Reuters.
He said he left his job last month because he believed he would be fired anyway because of his public opposition to the war, he told Reuters. The local education administration and the education ministry did not respond to requests for comment on Shestakov and the training manual. When Reuters reached the school by phone, a woman who introduced herself as acting head teacher said she declined to comment on Shestakov’s case and ended the conversation.
Teachers across Russia have received the same or similar training manuals, according to two teachers’ union officials, two other teachers and social media posts from two schools announcing they have taught the modules.
Olga Miryasova, a union employee called Teacher, said regional education authorities had distributed the textbook received by Shestakov to a number of schools across the country. Reuters was unable to determine no matter how many schools received the modules. One of the teachers said that they had received a study package different from Shestakov’s, although it contained similar content.
The initiative shows how the Russian state – which is stepping up its grip on the mainstream media – is now expanding its propaganda efforts for the war in Ukraine in schools as the Kremlin seeks to consolidate support. Since the start of the war, many Russian schools have posted images on social media showing students sending messages of support to troops fighting in Ukraine and standing in line to write the letter “Z”, a symbol of support for the war. in Russia.
Teachers who disagree with the war are now joining the ranks of opposition activists, NGO activists and independent journalists, feeling pressure from the Russian state, with fines, prosecution and the prospect of losing their jobs. In early March, President Vladimir Putin signed a law disseminating “false” information about Russia’s armed forces, a crime punishable by fines or up to 15 years in prison.
Even before the invasion, the Kremlin was tightening its opponents’ bolts using a combination of arrests, internet censorship and blacklists.
The Kremlin has not responded to requests for comment on its stance on opposition to the war, the training leadership and Shestakov’s case.
Russian Education Minister Sergei Kravtsov told a parliamentary committee in March that his ministry had launched a national campaign to discuss Russian-Ukrainian relations with students amid questions from children about the situation in Ukraine and sanctions.
The Kremlin has said it is enforcing laws to thwart extremism and threats to stability. She says she is conducting what she calls a “special operation” to destroy her southern neighbor’s military capabilities and “denazify” Ukraine and prevent genocide against Russian-speakers, especially in the east. Kyiv and its Western allies have rejected this as an unfounded pretext for war and accuse Russian forces of killing civilians.
THE HYBRID WAR IN THE WEST
The textbook Shestakov received says it is aimed at students between the ages of 14 and 18. It includes detailed lesson plans for teachers, links to videos of President Putin’s speeches, and short films to illustrate the lessons.
According to the training materials, the West is waging an information war to try to turn public opinion against Russian rulers and that all Russian people must stand firm against this.
One lesson plan explains that Russia is waging a cultural war against the West that has destroyed the “institution of the traditional family” and is now trying to impose its values on Russia.
It says that since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Ukraine has pursued an anti-Russian policy. “There have been attacks on the Russian language, our common history has been falsified, war criminals and World War II criminal groups have been turned into heroes,” the document said, referring to Ukrainian nationalists who allied with Germany during the war.
Another lesson is that the West is waging a “hybrid war” – a mixture of propaganda, economic sanctions and military pressure – to try to defeat Russia by fomenting internal conflicts. “That is why they are urging us to attend unauthorized demonstrations, urging us to break the law and trying to scare us,” it said.
“We must not succumb to provocations,” the document said.
The modules include a game in which students have 15 seconds to decide whether a statement is true or false. A statement said: “Organizing protests, government provocations and mass gatherings are effective ways to resolve hybrid conflict.” According to the lesson guide, the correct answer is “incorrect”.
Reuters found posts on social media from a school in Samara, on the Volga River, and a school in Minusinsk, southern Siberia, showing used slides from the same presentations.
Danil Plotnikov, a math teacher in Chelyabinsk, Urals, told Reuters that his bosses had asked him to teach similar content, but from a different study package than the one Shestakov received; Plotnikov did not identify the bosses. Tatiana Chernenko, a math teacher in Moscow, said colleagues at other schools had told her they had been asked to teach similar modules, but they had not been taught at her school.
Reuters teachers said some regions and schools were pushing lessons harder than others. None of the five teachers said they had heard of cases in which teachers were explicitly instructed to teach the modules. They said it was usually formulated as a request or recommendation from school or regional education authorities.
Some had said no and no consequences, said Daniel Ken, chairman of an independent teachers ‘union called the Teachers’ Alliance. Others did not teach the lessons, but told the bosses that they had, Ken said. He added that the refusal was a risk, as teachers did not know whether their head teachers would pressure them to leave.
Ken said his union had heard of about half a dozen teachers a week saying they were leaving because they didn’t want to promote the Kremlin’s line – something Reuters failed to verify independently.
POLITICAL AWAKENING
Shestakov wears well-cut hair and practices sambo, a martial art developed in the Soviet army. He said his police career included a one-year stay in special units of the Interior Ministry, a unit of law enforcement whose officers are now fighting in Ukraine. The Interior Ministry did not respond to a request for comment.
Until 2018, when he was a community worker working with juvenile delinquents, he had a political awakening, according to Shestakov. He said he had started watching videos released by Navalny, the opposition figure who is now in a Russian prison, alleging corruption by Kremlin leaders.
“I became a real oppositionist,” Shestakov said.
He said that when the war in Ukraine started, the images of the victims disturbed him and he spent hours watching videos of the fighting on social media.
Under a pseudonym, he republished videos of interviews with Russian soldiers captured in Ukraine in the local media’s comment section, which has about 5,200 subscribers, according to Shestakov and a March 18 court ruling seen by Reuters.
The court said that his actions were a violation of a law prohibiting …
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