Paul Goble
Staunton, Dec. 15 – Under Putin, Russian schools have promoted patriotism and called on students to identify first and foremost as citizens of Russia; but a new sociological study of 653 students in higher educational institutions in Oryol Oblast suggests that this Kremlin effort has been far from successful.
Fifty-two percent identified as citizens of Russiaople while over a third said they were simply people (Viktor Sapryka et al., “On the formation of civic identity among students of Oryol Oblast” (in Russian), Vestnik Instituta sotsiologii, 16:2 (2025): 86-107, full text at https://www.vestnik-isras.ru/files/File/Vestnik_2025_53/Sapryka_i_ko_53_86-107.pdf).
Because Oryol is a typical predominantly ethnic Russian federal subject, Yevgeny Chernyshov of the Nakanune news agency says, these findings are likely typical for ethnic Russian areas as a whole and highlight the ineffectiveness of existing programs of patriotic education in the Russian Federation (nakanune.ru/articles/124187/).
In part, of course, this lack of identification as citizens of the Russian Federtion is generational; but in part, Chernyshov suggests, it highlights the fact that students have a relatively poor knowledge of their country’s history and are affected by foreign news that has left them with an inaccurate or at least in complete understanding of Russia’s place in the world
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