Canada Arab Channel
Canada Arab Channel
  • NEWS
  • Canada Arab Press
  • CANADIAN ARABIC COMMUNITY SERVICES
  • WEATHER
  • TRAFFIC
  • PODCAST
  • SPORTS
 Russian students are turning in teachers who don’t back the war
washingtonpost

Russian students are turning in teachers who don’t back the war

by Adam Said April 10, 2022

RIGA, Latvia — When Irina Gen’s students in western Russia asked why a European sports competition had barred them from attending, the 55-year-old teacher let loose with a tirade against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“So long as Russia doesn’t behave itself in a civilized way, this will go on forever,” she fumed, adding that she endorsed the European ban. Russia “wanted to get to Kyiv, to overthrow Zelensky and the government. This is a sovereign state,” she said. “There’s a sovereign government there.”

Little did she know that her students were recording her outburst and that a copy would make its way to law enforcement authorities, who opened a criminal investigation under a new national law banning false information about the military.

Gen is one of at least four teachers recently turned in by students or parents for antiwar speech, in some of the starkest examples of the government’s quest to identify and punish individuals who criticize the invasion.

Advertisement

It’s a campaign with dark Soviet echoes, inspired last month by President Vladimir Putin, who praised Russians for their ability to identify “scum and traitors” and “spit them out like a fly.”

“I am convinced that this natural and necessary self-cleansing of society will only strengthen our country,” Putin said March 16 in a televised speech, accusing the West of wanting to use a “fifth column” to destroy Russia.

In the last several weeks, a list of “traitors and enemies” has cropped up online, published by the Committee for the Protection of National Interests, a shadowy group claiming a duty to expose public figures who support “anti-Russian” sanctions and political pressure.

The regional government of Kaliningrad sent text messages to local residents urging them to report “provocateurs and scammers” who were undermining the “special operation in Ukraine,” according to the Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta. And a string of activists, journalists and opposition politicians have found the word “traitor” and vile graffiti painted on their front doors.

Putin’s war propaganda becomes ‘patriotic’ lessons in Russian schools

“After a rather significant period of freedom … fear has returned to Russian society, and informants have become more active against those who express disagreement with the authorities,” said Nikita Petrov, a longtime historian at the human-rights group Memorial, which a Moscow court abolished in December after years of government pressure on the group.

Advertisement

New censorship restrictions make it easy for war opponents to run afoul of the law. Recent additions to the criminal code make it illegal to discredit the armed forces or to spread “fake” information about the military — which in practice means anything contradicting official government reports.

The cases of children informing on teachers recall the young Soviet folk hero Pavlik Morozov, who, legend had it, betrayed his father to the authorities for anti-Soviet activity. Generations of Soviet children were encouraged to be like Pavlik, to show loyalty to the state above all else.

Russian propaganda today stresses similar themes. “To be a human, to be a good citizen, to be moral, is to identify with the state and to identify in particular with the state’s language,” said Ian Garner, a historian of Russian propaganda. “That is especially the case when it comes to young people,” whom the Kremlin hopes to mold into obedient citizens, he said.

Advertisement

In the weeks since the invasion began, Russian social media have been flooded with photos of schoolchildren attending special patriotic lessons or posing for pictures as they formed the letter Z — a symbol signifying support for the war.

Education Minister Sergey Kravtsov said in early March that more than 5 million children across Russia had watched a lesson called “Defenders of Peace.” It was part of a government-produced series reviewed by The Washington Post that promotes many of the Kremlin’s arguments and justifications for the attack on Ukraine.

Until her resignation under pressure this month, Gen taught English to eighth-grade students in the city of Penza, 400 miles southeast of Moscow, according to Pavel Chikov, the head of an association of human rights lawyers now representing Gen. She did not respond to requests for comment.

Advertisement

Gen’s answer to the students’ questions about why they couldn’t compete in the sports event was “emotional,” Chikov said. “Somebody recorded this conversation and then reported it to the police.” The recording was passed to federal authorities, who on March 30 opened a criminal investigation under the new censorship law.

A copy of the recording spread quickly online. In it, Gen can be heard sparring with her students. One girl seems to object to the teacher’s criticism of the invasion, saying “we don’t know all the details.”

“Exactly, you don’t know anything. You don’t know anything at all,” Gen replies. “I look at 100, 200 different independent sources … We have a totalitarian regime. Any dissent is considered a crime of thought.”

“We’re a rogue country! We’re North Korea,” she adds. “We’re not accepted anywhere now.”

Informants have turned in a variety of war critics, including a church deacon who shared his views with parishioners and colleagues, according to a Russian media report.

Advertisement

A 17-year-old in the Siberian city of Novosibirsk is being investigated for a news report about the war that he shared in a chat group on the social media platform Telegram, according to his lawyer, Stanislav Seleznev. He said it was possible that law enforcement was monitoring the group or that one of the 400 participants reported his client.

Several other teachers have also been targeted, including a university lecturer in the Siberian region of Amur, who was fined for disseminating “false information” to her students about Russian military actions in Ukraine, according to a local court. Witnesses to the offending lecture gave testimony that helped establish the teacher’s guilt, the court added.

On Sakhalin Island, off Russia’s Pacific Coast, another teacher of English was secretly recorded by a student last month. She was fired from her job and fined 30,000 rubles, about $375, by a court that said she had discredited Russian troops.

Advertisement

The teacher, Marina Dubrova, told a Siberian news site affiliated with the U.S.-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty that she had called the war a mistake during after-class discussions. The student’s tape of her comments ended up with the police — possibly through the parents, Dubrova said, though she wasn’t certain. She did not respond to The Post’s requests for comment.

“On Monday morning at school I was greeted with the words: ‘Marina Gusmanovna, the police are here for you,’” Dubrova said in the interview, using her formal name with patronymic.

“A protocol was drawn up against me, and the trial took place on the same day. I explained my position that the president of our country is just a person, like everyone else, that he can make mistakes. And I think this decision is wrong,” Dubrova continued.

“I was told that, as a teacher, I cannot say such things to students. But I don’t agree,” she said. “Teaching is a humanistic profession, first and foremost, to teach people to hear different opinions, to form positions based on different points of view. Is that really a bad thing?”

War in Ukraine: What you need to know

The latest: Officials in the Luhansk region of eastern Ukraine this weekend urged residents to evacuate immediately, as shelling intensified amid Russia’s shift to the country’s east. Luhansk’s governor, Serhiy Haidai, on Saturday said there were “far fewer people” willing to evacuate after a missile strike on a railway station killed at least 52 people and injured 98.

The shift east, away from Ukraine’s largest cities, could prove challenging for Ukrainian troops and advantageous for Russian troops, who Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, noted last week are more skilled at fighting in rural terrain. Meanwhile, Russia has appointed Gen. Alexander Dvornikov, who commanded Russian forces in Syria, to oversee its war on Ukraine, a senior U.S. official confirmed on Saturday. His appointment marks the first time a single commander has taken control of the operation in Ukraine, which has faltered amid low morale.

The fight: Russian forces continue to mount sporadic attacks on civilian targets in a number of Ukrainian cities. Ukrainian prosecutors have been taking detailed testimony from victims to investigate Russian war crimes.

The weapons: Ukraine is making use of weapons such as Javelin antitank missiles and Switchblade “kamikaze” drones, provided by the United States and other allies. Russia has used an array of weapons against Ukraine, some of which have drawn the attention and concern of analysts.

In Russia: Putin has locked down the flow of information within Russia, where the war isn’t even being called a war. The last independent newsletter in Russia suspended its operations.

Photos: Post photographers have been on the ground from the very beginning of the war — here’s some of their most powerful work.

How you can help: Here are ways those in the U.S. can help support the Ukrainian people as well as what people around the world have been donating.

Read our full coverage of the Russia-Ukraine crisis. Are you on Telegram? Subscribe to our channel for updates and exclusive video.

Loading…

Previous post
Next post

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Copyright © 2025 Qoxag. All Right Reserved.