Russia is indoctrinating young people with nationalistic and imperialistic ideology — one university fraternity says it’s grooming “Russia’s future elite” — and experts told BI that Russia’s patriotic education system is designed to ensure Putinism endures long after President Putin’s death.
The Kremlin is trying to create a new generation of Putin clones, and Russian youth have been indoctrinated with a hardline nationalist ideology for years.
Last July, senior Kremlin official Sergei Novikov said Russia was fighting three wars: a war on the Ukrainian front, an economic war and an ideological war “aimed at the hearts and minds of young people.”
The Russian government has taken important steps to win the battle to strip young people of their intelligence by pouring funds into so-called “patriotic education.”
Russian daily RBC reported last year that the Kremlin plans to allocate around 45.85 billion rubles ($520 million) for the “Patriot Project” in 2024.
Since Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, state-run youth organizations have also expanded dramatically in size.
The First Movement group, which aims to provide Russian children with a “national and patriotic education,” was founded by Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2022. As of January this year, it had just under 5 million members, according to Russian authorities.
According to Russian state news agency TASS, the head of the group said that as of December 2023, it had opened around 40,000 offices across Russia.
Ian Garner, a historian and analyst of Russian culture and war propaganda, believes these figures show that the spectacle of young Russians fleeing the country, smashing ballot boxes and publicly protesting is “ancient history”.
“Russia knows that this generation is never going to be extremely ideological,” Garner said.
As a result, “Russia has spent enormous amounts of money and resources over the past decade developing a highly ideological and highly nationalized younger generation.”
Mikhail Komin, visiting fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations’ Wider Europe Programme, told BI that new “ideological subjects” being introduced in Russian schools and universities are likely to create a generation of young Russians over the next decade who will “share conservative values” and become more “anti-Western”.
“Academic fraternity”
One of the most conservative fraternities in Russian universities is the “Academic Fraternity.”
The Academic Fraternity opposes Ukrainian statehood and sees Russia as the “Third Rome,” the idea that Russia, led by Moscow, is the successor state to the former capitals of the Roman Empire, Rome and Constantinople, and “a unique civilization, distinguished by a special spiritual and historical mission.”
“Russia never ends,” the fraternity’s website states.
Nikita Izhumov, the Academy’s coordinator, told BI that they “openly and explicitly promote imperial ideals in society.”
“We are heirs to the traditions of the ancient empire of the first Rome and the new Rome, which accepted Christ,” he added.
The organization is backed by Western-sanctioned Russian billionaire Konstantin Malofeev, owner of the nationalist Tsargrad media network.
Academic fraternities use their websites, social media and YouTube channels to recruit potential new students.
The fraternity said in January it had about 1,000 members in 28 regions of Russia.
Izhumov said Academia is present in “almost all major Russian universities.”
The Kremlin, meanwhile, is “cautious about working directly with” Tsargrad and the Fraternity, Komin said. “We think they are too radical.”
While the various academic fraternity groups are largely similar in style, some exhibit more extreme behavior than others.
The Chelyabinsk chapter, for example, is one of the more extreme variants, publishing anti-immigrant news, memes that attempt to denigrate members of the LGBTQ+ community, and derogatory slurs against local feminists.
But Academics’ marginal status means its main activity is “accusing certain artists and activists of being ‘anti-Russian’ on social media and getting their concerts cancelled”, David Lewis, professor of politics at the University of Exeter, told BI.
Preparing for war in Ukraine
“One of the academy’s tasks is to train defenders of the Motherland,” Izimov said.
They’ve learned to fly drones, weaved camouflage netting, made trench candles and even held master classes teaching students how to make military dry showers.
“Russian men have always been warriors. It was so 1,000 years ago and it will be so for the next 1,000 years,” Izhumov said. “If a scholar decides to go to the front, we will provide him with all the necessary support.”
The UK Ministry of Defence has confirmed that some members of the fraternity are already taking part in fighting in Ukraine.
Creating the next generation of Putin clones
According to the UK Ministry of Defence, the existence of such a movement shows that “there are supporters in Russia who want a more militant approach to Ukraine and the war against the West”.
The ministry said this was likely to affect “the generational change that will take place among Russia’s administrative elite over the next decade.”
The academic community says they will shape “Russia’s future elite”.
But the government “wants to avoid the emergence of a powerful ultra-nationalist movement that could pose a future threat to the regime,” Lewis said.
“On the one hand, the Kremlin wants this ‘patriotic’ civil society to grow, but at the same time it wants to ensure that it remains under strict political control,” he added. This is all part of a “much larger campaign targeting the next generation of Russian youth.”
Though they may not be large, organizations like academic fraternities offer “the illusion of choice,” Garner said.
Young people may join the Youth Army or smaller clubs like the Scholars Fraternity, he continued, “but when you strip them down to their core, they’re all spreading the same message, which is very much steeped in this nationalistic, hateful ideology.”
Young people are made to feel that if they want to have a successful career or participate in civil society, “they have no choice but to get involved in some of these organisations’ activities”, Garner added.
This is an attempt to keep Putinism alive after Putin is dead and buried. “Putin is not essential to the Putinist project,” he said.
