The course is one – Newspaper Kommersant No. 64 (7509) dated 04/13/2023

On Wednesday, the Expert Institute for Social Research (EISI) held a round table discussion on the course “Fundamentals of Russian Statehood”, which will begin to be taught to all students in September. Recently, this is the third public event on this topic. The participants of the round table traditionally briefly described the content of the course and additionally explained that for 30 years they tried to impose on Russian society the Western opposition of society to the state, as well as the idea that the most important thing in life is money. The Russians have managed to fight back this approach, but now there is a vacuum that the new course will have to fill.

In the previous two weeks, the authors of the course “Fundamentals of Russian Statehood” managed to publicly talk about it twice already: to members of the Public Chamber and representatives of the State Duma Committee on Science and Education. However, this did not prevent them from telling stoically about the results of their work for the third time – now at the EISI round table, which took place on April 12 at the Rossiya Segodnya MIA site. Although, perhaps, the frequency of presentations of the initiative, which was once born in an atmosphere of secrecy and not without the active participation of the presidential administration, nevertheless affected the speakers: at least in the first part of the discussion, they spoke quite concisely.

“It is from this course that all students of the Russian Federation will begin their educational activities at any university, regardless of its focus and specialization of the educational program that the student entered,” declared Vladimir Shapovalov, deputy director of the Institute of History and Politics of the Moscow State Pedagogical University. According to him, the course will contain “the necessary baggage of knowledge about Russia” that will help students become “worthy citizens.” At the same time, Mr. Shapovalov also used the favorite argument of many Russian political scientists to justify certain domestic initiatives: “For many years and decades, such courses have already existed in the United States of America and other countries of the world.”

The baton was picked up by Deputy Minister of Science and Higher Education Olga Petrova, who spoke about the training that had already begun for future teachers of the course. Preparation will be carried out all summer long, including remotely, so that students can already in September get acquainted with the fruits of the work of the “DNA of Russia” project. Ms. Petrova said that in fact the course is already “inside us all”, since it deals with values ​​”that have always been inside the Russians.”

Andrey Polosin, scientific director of the DNA of Russia project, briefly listed the main educational blocks that the course will consist of. The first of them is devoted to what Russia is “as a state, as a country, as peoples inhabiting it, as cultural phenomena, as a person.” The second block will describe the civilizational nature of Russian statehood (the developers of the course defend the thesis of President Vladimir Putin that Russia is precisely a separate civilization). The third is devoted to “the formation of a worldview corpus and the values ​​of Russian civilization.” The fourth block will tell students about the political structure of Russia, and the fifth – about the challenges facing the country in order to help students understand what state problems they themselves are ready to take part in solving.

To refresh the discussion a little, its moderator, political scientist Alexander Asafov, noted that at one of the conferences, Mr. Polosin mentioned the gap between society and the state: “What kind of gap are we talking about and how can the course heal it?” the host asked. Andrei Polosin said that his words were somewhat taken out of context, but explained that in his view, over the past 30 years, a very simple model of interaction between a person, society and the state has been taught in Russia. It was important in it that “here and now”, it was not important, “how others react”, but what mattered most was money. The values ​​in this system were “for not very smart people,” the expert complained. As a result, this system, according to him, could not saturate the Russians, as their “healthy body” began to resist it. But still, “we got quite serious problems in the public perception of the world order, the role of the state, the role of a person and attitude towards one’s country,” Mr. Polosin stated. In addition, he added, there are different ideas about the state in society, and practically all “systems of our country” have to overcome this difference.

These theses received a lively response from the participants in the discussion. “There is a Western approach that opposes the state and civil society. Such a dichotomy that makes us think that there is a state that is not a society, and there is a society whose main task is to fight this state. But in Russia there has never been and never will be such an opposition. We consider both Russian society, and the state, and Russia as a country as a whole,” said Vladimir Shapovalov, citing a poll by the All-Russian Public Opinion Research Center (VTsIOM), according to which the majority of Russians consider themselves patriots, as evidence.

Here Alexander Sokolov, the head of the Kirov region and a former employee of the presidential administration, entered the discussion (probably invited to the discussion as a member of the collegium of the Ministry of Education). Rumors that the spirit of money and unscrupulousness has established dominance over the society and territory of Russia are exaggerated, Mr. Sokolov assured. According to him, in the country, on the contrary, the process of liberation from such imposed values ​​is being carried out with great enthusiasm. But as this liberation develops, a “vacuum” is formed, and the new course, according to Mr. Sokolov, must fill it – otherwise the youth will fill it on their own.

Andrey Vinokurov