Kremlin’s Militarization of Russia’s Youngest Has Far-Reaching Consequences

Executive Summary:

• The militarization of Russia’s education system demonstrates that Russian President Vladimir Putin intends to continue an aggressive foreign policy and to ensure that Moscow will follow a similar approach even after he departs.
• Studies on the effect of Nazism in Germany indicate that values acquired at an early age are likely to remain far longer than is the case with older members of a population, increasing the likelihood that Putin’s values will remain with militarized children for life.
• Such an outcome is likely in this case as Russia, a nuclear power, is unlikely to be subject to a transforming defeat after Russia’s war against Ukraine ends, and militarization is becoming a part of the more general redefinition of Russian identity.

Russian educational institutions, especially kindergartens and early childhood education, have been militarized since the start of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The regular use of army songs, posters, and guns in the curriculum to promote military values and the employment of returning veterans as instructors now dominate the kindergartens and early grades of Russian schools (Govorit Nemoskva, February 17). Many Russian parents and outside observers dismiss this as a passing phase. They believe that children who are now being subject to pro-war propaganda in kindergartens and the early grades will not be affected for very long and will adopt different positions when they grow older. Aleksandra Arkhipova, an independent Russian anthropologist, however, argues that a landmark study of the impact of anti-Semitic propaganda in Nazi-era German schools suggests otherwise (Voigtländer, Nico and Hans-Joachim Voth, “Nazi indoctrination and anti-Semitic beliefs in Germany,” PNAS Vol. 112, No. 26 (June 2015): 7931-7036). Arkhipova believes that what is happening in Russian early childhood educational institutions now is likely to cast a dark shadow on the future. The children now passing through these schools are disposed to support militarism and aggression long into the future, serving as an important base of support for those in the Kremlin now and decades hence who want to pursue such policies (Telegram/anthro_fun, reposted at Echo fm, February 7; Telegram/anthro_fun, February 7, reposted at Echo fm, February 8).

The German study to which Arkhipova refers found through the use of surveys that Germans who were subjected to anti-Semitic messaging in schools during Nazi times were far more likely to remain anti-Semitic decades later than those born either earlier or later and not having had that experience (Voigtländer, Nico and Hans-Joachim Voth, “Nazi indoctrination and anti-Semitic beliefs in Germany,” PNAS Vol. 112, No. 26 (June 2015):7931-7036). This finding strongly suggests, Arkhipova continues, that the same pattern will hold with Russian children who are now being subjected to pro-war propaganda and are likely to remain more pro-war than those older or younger and thus form an important reservoir of support for aggressive and pro-war Kremlin policymakers long into the future.   

Unsurprisingly, Arkhipova’s posts have attracted widespread attention among Russians in particular because they challenge the assumptions and hopes many in that country have about a post-Putin Russia. Additionally, unlike in the case of Germany, there is virtually no chance that Russia will suffer the overwhelming defeat and occupation that transformed German society after 1945. This transformation helped to reduce to a minimum the ideas promoted by the Nazis in kindergartens and schools. Some Russians fear, although may seldom feel free to say, that if there is no such imposed transformation in Russia, the militarist and aggressive policies Putin has implemented will continue. These policies will enjoy the support of the rising generation, in whom many placed their hopes to create a better Russia.

One Russian observer who has given particular attention to Arkhipova’s argument and the evolving state of Russian national identity is Vladimir Pastukhov, a Russian scholar now based in London. In a telegram channel post picked up by Russian internet portals, Pastukhov says that Arkhipova’s argument has prompted him to think “about the evolution that Russian society has undergone over the forty years of post-communism … from ‘new Russians’ to ‘other Russians’” (Telegram/v_pastukhov, February 8, reposted at Echo fm, February 9). Pastukhov’s argument extends the one posited by Arkhipova by expecting a very different Russia than the one others like him have lived through or hoped for since the end of the Soviet system.

Since Putin launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Pastukhov says, many commentators have focused on the way in which the war has become an important part of the genesis of a new Ukrainian nation. Few, however, have focused on how it is playing an analogous function for the Russian nation (Telegram/v_pastukhov, February 8). He continues that for the reasons Arkhipova proposes as well as broader ones, it seems almost certain that “a completely different Russian society will emerge from the war than the one which entered it” (Telegram/v_pastukhov, February 8). Russia’s war against Ukraine marks “the end of the history of post-communism with its ‘new Russians’ and the beginning of a fundamentally different era … the main character of which will be ‘the other Russian’” (Telegram/v_pastukhov, February 8).

This represents, Pastukhov says, the latest round of nation-building in Russia, extending the argument of others that the tragedy of Russia is that the country became an empire before the people became a nation (Telegram/v_pastukhov, February 8). Therefore, it has little chance to become a nation-state and every chance to remain a people defined by the retention and pursuit of empire (Asia Russia Daily, January 12, 2015; Gorod 812, December 14, 2020; Svoboda, March 2, 2024). It is a contested issue, with the opposition hoping for one kind of Russian nation and the Kremlin hoping for a very different one. This struggle has not, however, attracted as much attention as it deserves, the London-based Russian analyst says. While many in Russia and the West are more than willing to suggest that Ukraine does not exist as a nation, very few are prepared to recognize that Russia is not a nation, in the modern sense. Russia’s attachment to the state and the idea of imperial expansion reflects that reality (Telegram/v_pastukhov, February 8).

According to Pastukhov, the Kremlin has a better understanding of this reality than its opponents (Telegram/v_pastukhov, February 8). It is actively working to institutionalize itself by shaping the youngest members of society as Arkhipova suggests, anticipating to “mold golems from ‘the inhabitants’ in the hope of sitting out ‘behind the battlements’ for the time required for the golems to begin to speak” (Telegram/anthro_fun, February 7). In the meantime, this rising generation will be far more likely to speak positively of the Kremlin than promote the formation of a democratic Russian nation at peace with itself and its neighbors. The danger of that negative outcome, again as Arkhipova indicates, is likely to remain in place far longer than Putin himself (Telegram/anthro_fun, February 7).