From Talking About What's Important to Hating the Armed Forces of Ukraine: Will Propaganda Make Patriots Out of Zoomers?

Elena Petrova, Tatyana Sviridova

This was written in 1942 by the poet Ilya Ehrenburg. The famous poem was first called "Kill the German", then it was renamed "Kill the Fascist", and now on the website "Kultura.rf " the monument to the history of the Great Patriotic War can be found under the name "Kill".

The day before, State Duma Vice Speaker Anna Kuznetsova, at a round table in the State Duma held by the Committee on Youth Policy, complained that “little is said in schools about the crimes of the Kiev regime.”

There are desks of heroes, "Conversations about the Important" have been held since 2022, but it is unclear who our heroes are fighting, the deputy said:

“All museums have information about the crimes of the fascists, but as for today, there are shortcomings,” Kuznetsova said.

Ideological work with children, starting from kindergarten age, has been actively carried out since the beginning of the SVO. These include memorial plaques of fallen graduates and meetings with participants in the military actions in Ukraine.

The new initiative by the former ombudsman and mother of seven takes the replay of Cold War propaganda to a new level.

New cold winds are blowing “from behind the wall,” and the idea of ​​a long-term confrontation with an external enemy should further unite society, we hear from many government mouthpieces.

School days are becoming more severe, teachers say.

Evgeny Yamburg is perhaps one of the most famous teachers in Russia. Doctor of Pedagogical Sciences, academician of the Russian Academy of Education, has worked for many years as the director of the school - Moscow Education Center No. 109.

Yamburg became a teacher 50 years ago, and when he claims that the past has returned to school, he knows what he is talking about:

"Yes, the education system is approaching it. It is closer to the 70s, a fairly vegetarian time, but with ritualistic touches. The Brezhnev era, which is now being poeticized. As if everything was wonderful. Everyone has forgotten a lot," the honored teacher believes.

As a result, not only Soviet practices with the game "Zarnitsa", dismantling the Kalashnikov assault rifle, meetings with veterans under portraits of the Young Guards are reproduced, but also doublethink, well known to the older generation.

"I have been working in schools for half a century. There was a wonderful film with a wonderful song, "I didn't even know the guy who promised, 'I'll come back, mom.'" But as soon as the patriotic initiative arose, working "for that guy," all this turned into cynical jokes. They started drinking "for that guy," having women "for that guy"... any falsehood turns into cynicism. Therefore, there must be sincerity and the absence of propaganda fervor," Evgeny Yamburg reminds fans of the ideologization of education.

Doctor of Political Science Yuliy Nisnevich teaches not schoolchildren, but their teachers – teachers of social science:

"I deal with a more select group of teachers, but they listen to everything very carefully, weigh it up, and evaluate it. I clearly see that this is not exactly a myth, maybe they are a little wooden in their mass, but there are many teachers who think well enough and try to evaluate what needs to be done. You shouldn't think that they are all wooden. This is not true," he believes.

There are more questions not to those who teach, but to those who create the standards. And they are definitely not suitable for the current generation of children. Their success raised many questions before, but now the patriotic developments are completely unsuitable, the professor is sure:

"When a person who is two generations apart from today's youth starts to come up with methods, he works within the framework of his generation, and it has changed. Those comrades who come up with this do not want to realize that if they want to achieve something, do something, they must understand who they are dealing with. Especially the latest generation, the so-called Generation Z, is built on completely different principles. You can't just raise it with "old-fashioned methods," says Nisnevich.

For Russians born from the mid-90s to the 2010s, the most important thing is a sense of their own comfort, Yuliy Nisnevich shares his observations.

Zoomers are ready to leave any job, even the highest paid one, without hesitation if it does not bring satisfaction. For them, the most important thing is their own comfort.

If patriotic work fits into the comfort zone, then it can work. However, it is difficult to imagine that the Soviet ideological set will be able to interest zoomers and millennials.

Earlier attempts to instill ideological attitudes into the minds of children were also doomed to failure.

American sociologist Ronald Inglehart has deduced a law according to which values ​​are formed in children at the age of 11-12. If the state wants to influence the formation of future citizens, then it can do so in early adolescence through the family.

Matinees for five-year-olds with dressing up in military uniforms or “expelling the liberal-minded Barmaley from the kindergarten” bring nothing but points for the teachers in the eyes of the education department employees.

Supporters of the introduction of ideology into upbringing and education motivate it by an external threat. The peace process that has begun now will remove the effectiveness of ideological pressure.

"After the end of the Great Patriotic War, people who came from the front perceived the pressure in a completely different way. That's why Stalin sent a large number of officers to the camps. He understood the threat. These were people who had been through the war, they had a completely different perception, they saw what was happening in other countries. This experience already exists," says Yuliy Nisnevich.

This is good news. On the other hand, historians know that, contrary to popular belief, the fires of the Inquisition did not burn in the Middle Ages, but in the New Age.

The authorities in Russia, says writer and publicist Anatoly Nesmiyan , in any case live between the desire to maximally disunite society in order to allow only permitted self-organization, and the call for maximum unity.

"It is impossible to demand two opposing behavior strategies from a person at the same time. The psyche reacts in a standard way in the event of such a conflict - it disconnects from the source of the conflict. Normal people save their sanity by switching from what is happening and stop giving in to any practices of power at all," writes Anatoly Nesmiyan.

That was the case before. Now the answer to excessive pressure looks like this, says Yuliy Nisnevich confidently:

"It will cause a backlash. Especially among Generation Z. I guarantee it. As soon as something is imposed on them, they immediately send everything, excuse me, to hell. This is how this generation is made. I mean the generation as a certain trend, of course, there are different people there, but the main trend is exactly this," the scientist is sure.