In September basic military training, including tips on how to handle a Kalashnikov, will become mandatory for students from 16 onwards
Last year Russia’s parliament enacted plans to create a youth movement emulating the Pioneers, a communist-era organisation that used to promote Soviet ideology. The Kremlin also introduced lessons in “Russian values” into the school curriculum, to fend off Western decadence. .
This patriotic push is designed to justify President Vladimir Putin’s invasion, which he casts as the defence of traditional values against the West. Children must have a positive impression of army life—after all, many of them may soon be enlisted. Russians seem receptive. In May last year the Levada Centre, an independent pollster, found that some 80% of them endorsed reviving the Pioneers; 87% of those aged at least 55 were keen. Though younger Russians were less eager to justify their army’s actions in Ukraine, most of them still approved.
Nonetheless, researchers at Russia’s Higher School of Economics found before the invasion that the young preferred less ideological acts of citizenship, such as local community service. The Friedrich Ebert Foundation, a German think-tank, found that young Russians doubted the state’s ability to transform their lives for the better, thanks to stagnant politics and endemic corruption.
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