New University Course on Russian Statehood Confirming Students' View that Russian State is All about 'Crude Force,' Studies Suggest

Paul Goble

    Staunton, Apr. 25 – The Russian government had hoped hat the new course on Russian statehood that it introduced in 2023 would not only ensure that those who took it would be more knowledgeable but also more loyal, but any such hope has not been realized, according to three new scholarly studies reviewed by Nakanune commentator Yevgeny Chernyshov.

    The first of these by Andrey Andryushkov and other Moscow specialists on youth culture found that almost half of students in IT fields do not see themselves linked to Russia. and more than 70 percent do not think they can have any impact on the adoption of new laws or the taking of political decisions (vovr.elpub.ru/jour/article/view/5235/2403 cited by Chernyshov at nakanune.ru/articles/123431/).

    Such attitudes certainly highlight the need for a course on Russian statehood, the Nakanune commentator says; but other studies show that things have not worked out as Moscow had hoped. Andrey Andreyev, a specialist on the history of education, says that the course hasn’t done what it needs to do (vovr.elpub.ru/jour/article/view/5373).

    Instead of giving students a comprehensive picture of Russian history, Andreyev says, it is so constructed that it has promoted the notion that Russian statehood is all about “crude force,” the way in which those in power control the situation rather than statehood being something of which the people and its intellectual leaders are a part.

    And a third study, in which the Institute of Humanitarian Technology and Social Engineering examined publications about the new course in 2023-2024 confirmed that, suggesting that the course as currently constructed was in fact alienating students from the state more than integrating them, exactly the opposite of what the powers that be had hoped for (vovr.elpub.ru/jour/article/view/5372/2430).

    These three studies in a journal devoted to Russian higher education of course are a plea for the rewriting of the course on Russian statehood; but they are also and perhaps even more a protest against the messages that the Kremlin is sending to the population, especially since it claims to want to send ones exactly opposite those.