Compulsory Russian statehood course for all undergrads

Russia is launching a compulsory patriotic course for all undergraduate students and is set to reform higher education humanities provision. The reforms are a response to the ever-growing isolation of the country in the international arena since the start of the ongoing military conflict in Ukraine.

Implementation of the reform will be conducted both by the Russian presidential administration (AP) and the Ministry of Science and Higher Education. At the heart of the reform will be the new patriotic course, “Fundamentals of Russian Statehood”.

Grigory Gurov, Russia’s deputy minister of science and higher education, who is one of the main initiators of the reform, said during a recent educational conference in Sochi on the problems of social sciences titled “DNA of Russia”, that the most important thing is to develop a unified position on studying in Russian universities in the light of current events and in accordance with the official position of the Russian state.

Gurov said: “It is important that teachers in Russia use the domestic knowledge base, and not concentrate on the Western model of philosophy, political science and other social sciences. Often we are faced with interpretations that infringe on the role of Russia, Russian science, Russian thoughts.”

Therefore, he said, it is important to develop a single basis for university teachers and students, that became part of the existing Russian state policy, “For the retention and strengthening of spiritual and moral values in Russia”, which was approved by the government on 9 November.

Official teaching of the new course in Russian universities will begin in January 2023. According to the state, the new course will be taught to students of all specialties with the aim of “shaping their worldview”.

According to the Moscow Times, history and political science students will reportedly be required to take the course throughout their studies. Those studying other social sciences and humanities disciplines will take the course for at least two years. All other students will take the course for one year.

It will cover Russian culture, Russian foreign policy, and Russia’s “future image”, the paper reported.

As part of preparations for its launch next month, a network of federal teacher training centres will be developed in Russia that will focus on the training of teachers and professors who will teach the new course in Russian universities.

It is planned that by 1 September 2023 up to 6,000 university teachers should be undergoing training within these courses. By this time “special educational and methodological materials” for the new course are expected to be prepared.

Alexander Vilkov, head of the department of political science of Saratov State University, who is involved in the development of the “Fundamentals of Russian Statehood” programme, said in an interview with the Russian Kommersant business paper that the course will consist of several blocks.

“Students will be told how the Russian state appeared, what are its specifics, what traditions Russian statehood relies on, what role the natural and climatic factor plays. From another block, known as ‘Russia and rest of the world’, students will learn why Russia ‘always had to withstand the onslaught from a variety of external opponents’,” Vilkov said.

According to him, the developers want the course to be based on “historical evidence” and “the values that underlie the Russian state”.

Representatives of leading Russian universities generally welcomed the new course but refused to provide details.

At the same time most independent Russian analysts in the field of higher education consider it rather counter-productive since even the ideology imposed in Soviet times had little effect on universities, which have generally remained non-political since the 1960s.

Abbas Galyamov, a well-known Russian analyst in the field of economics and higher education and a former speechwriter for Putin, said in an interview with the Russian Novye Izvestia business paper that the initiative is meant not only to provide new ideological guidelines to Russian youth, but also to demonstrate that the Russian system of higher education continues its development, despite all the existing problems.