Politics in Russia by Remington Thomas F;

Author:Remington, Thomas F;
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 3570007
Publisher: Taylor and Francis

Political Socialization in Contemporary Russia

Whereas the Soviet regime devoted enormous effort to political indoctrination and propaganda, controlling the content of school curricula, the mass media, popular culture, political education, and nearly every other channel by which values and attitudes were formed, today both the forms and content of political socialization have changed substantially. Gone is the comprehensive control over all forms of socialization by the ruling party. Citizens are exposed to a much broader array of values and beliefs. The regime uses the media and the education system to promote a more minimal set of messages revolving around patriotism, national identification, and loyalty to the regime. In place of the old Soviet doctrine of the class struggle and the international solidarity of the working class, today school textbooks emphasize love for the Russian national heritage and the importance of state sovereignty. Historical figures who in the communist era were honored as heroes of the struggle of ordinary people against feudal or capitalist masters are now held up as great representatives of Russia’s national culture.52 Patriotic education aims to build loyalty to Russia as a state as well as to Russia as a nation. This is logical, in view of Russia’s effort to create a sense of national community within the new post-Soviet state boundaries.

But because building patriotic loyalty to the state means inculcating identification with aspects of both the pre-Soviet and the Soviet regimes, as well as acceptance of the transition to a post-Soviet, ostensibly democratic, political order, the message conveyed by Russian history textbooks can be somewhat self-contradictory. Past regimes and periods of history tend to be evaluated according to two general criteria—whether they contributed toward the strengthening of the state and whether they built up the economy. The Yeltsin years, for instance, are officially praised for breaking down the communist regime and laying the foundations of a market economy, but are condemned for bringing about a weakening of state power. The Brezhnev regime is criticized for allowing stagnation both in the state and in the economy.53

The Stalin period is the most controversial and sensitive topic for political education. Stalin is given credit for increasing state power and capacity and for defending the state in World War II. At the same time, the current regime officially condemns the enormous scale of terror and repression under Stalin. At a religious ceremony in October 2007 remembering Stalin’s victims, then president Putin called the terror “a particular tragedy for our nation.”54Moreover, after Alexander Solzhenitsyn died, Putin instructed the Ministry of Education to incorporate Solzhenitsyn’s works into both history and literature courses in schools. The Ministry of Education duly prepared instructions to teachers: “Paying attention to this work permits us to raise the theme of the tragic fate of an individual in a totalitarian state and the responsibility of a people and its leaders for the present and future of the country,” according to the ministry’s memorandum.55 But one member of the Federal Expert Council on Education commented that as a result of

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