How Have Russian Schools Changed Since the War in Ukraine Began?

0:00Today on State of the World, how have Russian schools changed since the war in Ukraine began? You're listening to State of the World from NPR. We bring you the day's most vital international stories, up close where they're happening. I'm Greg Dixon. Life for Russians has changed in countless ways since the start of the full-scale war in Ukraine in 2022. It has affected everything from what they can say to what they can buy. But perhaps the most far-reaching change is in what Russians can and must learn. NPR's Charles Means in Moscow tells us about a new undercover documentary that shows the changes to Russian schools.

0:46After President Vladimir Putin announced the invasion of Ukraine, it didn't take long for the war to be felt across the Russian heartland, in communities and the classroom, says Pavel Talankin.

1:00A teacher in a small-town school in Russia's Ural Mountains, Talenkin watched as directives came in from Moscow, demanding the war be placed at the center of academic life. The state campaign, it wasn't even subtle, adds Talenkin. In my opinion, it was all done so that we could create the illusion that the people were with the army. But it wasn't like that. They made us do this. We had no other choice. Talenkin's story lies at the center of a new documentary, Mr. Nobody Against Putin. The film shows firsthand the war's impact on Tulankin school in Karabash, a small copper mining town where life often seems as bleak as the landscape.

1:41But not to Tulankin, the Mr. Nobody of the title. Known to everyone, including his students affectionately as Pasha, he has a lot to say about a war he doesn't support and what it's doing to the town and school he so clearly loves.

1:58You see how the future can change in a minute, because what we should be saying is that war is bad and peace is good. We should be saying that it's better to talk than to fight. As the school's resident videographer, Talankin is given the assignment of filming the school's compliance with state propaganda directives.

2:22It's a job he takes on reluctantly until he realizes it's also the perfect cover to shoot a documentary. Enter David Borenstein. It's something of a miracle that the film exists in the first place. As we soon learn, Talonkin reached out to Borenstein, an American filmmaker based in Copenhagen, more or less on a whim, setting off a remarkable long-distance collaboration between strangers, with Talonkin surreptitiously uploading his footage at enormous personal risk. Again, Borenstein. He was so committed to showing what was happening in his school, and he was willing to do anything to make it happen.

3:00And then I thought that what he wanted to show in his school was so important for the world to see. And through Tolanquin's lens, what you see is this, both the tragedy and absurdity of a community navigating the required patriotism of wartime Russia.

3:18One of the school's teachers, a member of Putin's ruling United Russia Party, easily embraces the new dogma, telling students, for example, that economic sanctions only hurt the West. Others just go with the flow, even as they struggle to grasp, much less pronounce new Kremlin buzzwords like the demand for Ukraine's demilitarization.

3:47As for the students, they seem both bewildered and amused by demands to perform patriotic songs and marches, even attend graphic lectures by war mercenaries. Talankin is clearly heartbroken by all of this, just as he's saddened by how his students' lives and futures are being warped by events they have little control over. Take this moment when Talankin documents the funeral of a student's brother killed fighting in Ukraine, some 1 ,500 miles away.

4:19It's the one moment he turns off his camera, sound alone, telling you everything you need to know.

4:46It's intimate scenes like this, rarely witnessed by Western reporters, that earned the documentary honors at this year's Sundance Film Festival. And yet, since the film's release, the state's intrusion into educational life has only deepened. The government has expanded a program of compulsory lessons, so-called conversations about important things, in which leading political figures, including President Putin, heard here, introduce students to a Kremlin worldview.

5:17And as of this school year, lectures start with children as young as five. Meanwhile, textbooks and curricula have been revised to justify Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

5:28And online, propaganda videos routinely show children promoting the war effort and their president. Kremlin supporters say these and other measures, such as the return of nationalist Soviet-style youth movements, are a welcome antidote to what they argue were years of Western-influenced education policies that fostered a sense of shame about Russia and its past. Yet in all of it, Tolantkin sees Putin preparing a new generation for a war far beyond Ukraine. He is building the foundation of the future of his regime. For all its insight, Mr. Nobody Against Putin is a movie most Russians won't see, certainly not these days, when criticism of the war is criminalized.

6:09And Tolanquin is no longer in his beloved karabash, for obvious reasons, says the director Borenstein. The risk became too great. We thought maybe that at the beginning this would be like a quick thing, and then about three or four or five months into it, we realized Pasha cannot do this without leaving Russia. Tolongan, now living abroad in exile, says with the documentary out and playing at international film festivals, he still gets threats from Russia to never show his face in Karabash again. But some locals have reached out in support. Tolongan hopes Russians will find a way to see his documentary to better understand how a school, a town, and yes, a country lost its way.

6:54How many questions are we going to ask ourselves later? And what answers will we find to understand how this happened? Why silence became the norm? Because Talonkin may be the unlikely hero many in the West will cheer for, but this Mr. Nobody has no illusions over who has the larger megaphone.

7:19Because propaganda works, he tells me. It's why they do it. Charles Maines, NPR News, Moscow.

7:35That's the State of the World from NPR. Thanks for listening.