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In the age of mature Putinism, direct violence and control over society, accompanied by ideological postulates that form a new morality based on so-called “traditional values,” are a crucial instrument for managing society. Using the educational system and cultural institutions to indoctrinate the population—above all young people—is in fact a form of violence, only intellectual and spiritual rather than physical.   

In some respects, the scale of political repression is higher now than in the late Soviet period. The absurdity of the accusations and even the number of convictions based 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 motivated by “hatred of traditional values.” We are seeing ideology acquire practical significance in the implementation of political repression. 

The function of ideology and ideological agencies—from the Education Ministry and the Roskomnadzor communications watchdog to the Prosecutor General’s Office, the Justice Ministry, the Investigative Committee and the Federal Security Service (FSB)—is to present a single possible 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 on May 8, 2024, the day after his fifth inauguration, was “On the Approval of the Fundamentals of State Policy of the Russian Federation in the Field of Historical Education.” This is a true foundation of the de facto state ideology and the indoctrination of the population by Putinism. 

According to the decree, everything should 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.” 

This approach is symptomatic of and useful for the manipulation of national consciousness. The state seeks to corral all of society into professional, gender- or age-based, or other “thematic” cells, forming corporatist structures. A society that has been systematized in this fashion is easier to control and to indoctrinate with the ideology of Putinism. 

Young people are one of the most important “corporations” for the Putin regime. The authorities consider it necessary to work with them both because support for Putin and his initiatives is lowest in this age category and because the Putin system—like any authoritarian or totalitarian regime—sees young people as a key source of obedient human resources. 

This is why the state is getting so involved at all levels of education: primary, secondary, higher, and supplementary. The practices of “patriotic” education are becoming more and more intrusive, simplistic, and cliched. 

Little Fires Everywhere

The regime has recently started actively working with college and high school students. Many ultraconservative and militarist ideologists even think that the course that was introduced at universities in the fall of 2023, “Foundations of Russian Statehood,” as well as the unified history textbooks published for the upper grades of secondary school for the 2023–2024 school year, are insufficient means of converting students to a single ideological faith. In the words of Alexander Dugin, the ultraconservative head of the Ivan Ilyin Higher Political School at the Russian State University for the Humanities, “The overwhelming majority of educational institutions in Russia actually reflect the liberal order of the 1980s–1990s. Therefore, what is necessary is the militarization of education, a sharp break in the vector—above all in the humanities—that has been established in recent decades under the direct control and at the orders of the West, with which we are at war today.”

Recently, there have been several examples of practical actions and resonant events. On April 3, 2024, Andrei Ilnitsky, an advisor to the defense minister, visited Russia’s leading physics and mathematics university, the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT), and gave a conspiratorial lecture as part of a course on “processes in the world community.” According to attendees, he told the students that “plans are being hatched on the other side of Russia’s borders to sow chaos; undermine sovereignty; and jeopardize history, traditions, values, convictions, and ideology.” There were no protests at MIPT, but the students saw the lecture as an attempt to impose an obscurantic worldview at an institution whose graduates often emigrate from Russia because they do not see a place for themselves in a militarized state and society. The alumni, faculty, and students of this university had spoken out against the so-called “special military operation” right after it began. In early March 2022, almost 3,000 people signed a petition against it: a significant number for a truly elite institution.   

Meanwhile, in April 2024, more than 5,000 people immediately signed a student petition against the establishment of the Ivan Ilyin Higher Political School headed by Alexander Dugin at the Russian State University for the Humanities. When news of the petition began to spread,........

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