More Racist Outrage in Kondopoga

Radio Free Europe reports that on Tuesday night “a sports school was torched in Kondopoga, a small city of 35,000 inhabitants in the northwestern Karelia Republic. Reports say that one of the trainers employed there is of Caucasus origin and that several families from Central Asia were living in the school at the time.”

Looks like Chechens are not the only ones ready, willing and able to launch attacks on Russian schools.

As RFE notes, this comes after “angry mobs burned down the restaurant where the Russians were killed and destroyed a street market and several stores owned by Chechens and other people from the Caucasus. The violence has been accompanied by street rallies in Kondopoga demanding the expulsion of immigrants.”

Meanwhile, RIA Novosti reports that huge numbers of dark-skinned people have fled the town and are now refugees, impoverished and imperiled. To its credit, RIA refers to the actions of the local population as a “pogrom.”

Even more horrifying than the violence itself, RFE documents various political leaders in Russia expressing support for the racists, while “President” Putin has remained nauseatingly silent:

Several nationalist parties have expressed support for the riots. Some reports claim these parties actually orchestrated them. Aleksandr Belov, the leader of the radical Movement Against Illegal Migration, denies involvement in the rampage. But he backed the protests in Kondopoga during a news conference in Moscow on September 5. “People gathered spontaneously to express their demands,” Belov said. “Their demands were simple: [foreigners] get out of here, you have 24 hours. Why? You’ve come here without invitation and we’re fed up with you. These are the two reasons behind the problems in Kondopoga and elsewhere.” Belov said representatives of his movement, know for its aggressive xenophobic rhetoric, had plans to station representatives permanently in Karelia to “help,” in his words, local residents.

But the Movement Against Illegal Migration is not the only group to publicly support the events in Kondopoga. Nikolai Kuryanovich, a deputy from the ultranationalist Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, joined forces with Belov at the news conference. This is the solution he proposed to tackle ethnic tensions in Russia: “Once again, this time totally, subjugate the Caucasus and toughen migration laws,” Kuryanovich said. “Total cleansing. All criminal elements must be brought to responsibility — even destroyed — like the president said. We are waiting for him to make good on his promise to ‘wipe them out in the outhouse.'” Kuryanovich also proposed to build what he called a “wall of China” that would separate the North Caucasus republics from the rest of Russia.

Despite President Vladimir Putin’s silence, the crisis in Kondopoga has spiraled into a national issue. Ramzan Kadyrov, the prime minister of the pro-Moscow government in Chechnya, has blamed Karelian officials for failing to stop the riots and has vowed to restore order if necessary.

It’s quite amazing, even by Russian standards, that a “liberal democrat” in Russia can not only openly call for “ethnic cleansing” but purport to be merely following the edicts of the president of the country, without any challenge from the president himself to that claim, much less public opposition.

Interfax quotes Communist Leader Gennady Zyuganov as seeking to rationalize the violence by claiming that “despair, substandard living conditions, the absence of jobs and respect for the past engender extremism and aggressiveness.” It’s a sad day indeed, as it was when the Communists presented the only credible opposition to Yeltsin and Putin, when a Commie Pinko like Zyuganov is a source of truth, but he’s right when he says Russia is an economic disaster despite the rising price of oil. How can Russians favor “President” Putin with 70%+ approval ratings when this is so? Ah yes, riddle wrapped in a mystery stuff. But Zyuganov likes to overlook the fact that the only reason Russia is in this economic state today is because his party bankrupted it, and the current president is a proud KGB spy.

But the most horrifying prospect of all is “President” Putin using these events as an excuse for even more draconian crackdowns on civil liberties which will do nothing (as he stands mute on the topic) to quell race violence but which will slam the door on freedom and democracy in Russia, dooming the country to a bleak and hopeless future.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

Annals of Cold War II: Already, a Doomsday Scenario for Russia Emerges

Publius Pundit has reported the discovery by America of perhaps 15 billion barrels of oil, enough to meet 100% of America’s energy needs for nearly seven years, under the sea floor in the Gulf of Mexico. It cites a Globe & Mail story.

Now, just for the sake of argument, let’s say that America and Russia are involved in a Cold War, and America wants to destroy Russia’s economy, destabilize the Putin regime and drive its KGB miscreants from power the same way it did with the Bolsheviks.

If this oil reserve is as large is predicted, all America has to do is stop buying oil on the world markets. For seven years.

Or it could buy 50% less oil. For fourteen years.

Or it could buy 25% less oil. For twenty-eight years.

Do you have any idea what would happen to the price of oil on world markets if America, by far the world’s largest consumer of crude, announced it was going to buy 25% less oil for three decades? The Kremlin would be driven into insolvency and ruin, easily within the first decade if not sooner. If America stopped making purchases entirely, Russia probably wouldn’t last the first year.

During those three decades, America would have plenty of time to fully develop the massive Canadian oil shales which can make American energy independent for centuries, making the price drop permanent. That’s to say nothing of conservation measures in the U.S. (wind and solar power, fuel cell cars, etc.).

And it’s to say nothing of all the other measures America can take to ratchet up economic pressure on Russia’s pathetic excuse for an economy and wretched sham of a currency, much less what America’s many allies can do.

And, come to think of it, there is a Cold War brewing between the U.S. and Russia. Why, just yesterday La Russophobe reported that Russia had cancelled joint military exercises with the U.S. and filed a lawsuit to block a Western oil company from doing business in Russia. She has a whole sidebar section devoted to the unfolding cold war events between the two countries.

Gee, if La Russophobe were Vladimir Putin, she’d be pretty worried.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

Intelligent.ru: A Festival of Crazed Russopilia

If you check out the English language version of the Russophile blog “Intelligent.ru” (a misnomer if there ever was one) on Technorati, you will find that the blog itself isn’t even listed there and has only been linked to 20 times by blogs that are listed, mainly the the wacko Russophile blogs “Russian Blog” and “Russia Blog.” (La Russophobe for instance has been linked to more than 150 times). That’s a good thing, because if people were paying any attention to the crazed propaganda found on this blog, they’d be walking around in a fog of ignorance.

If you check out the biography of one of Intelligent‘s “authors” (to use the blog’s term), Mike Averko, you will learn that he “has served as a consultant for several mainstream American news shows.” Interestingly, no mention is made here of Mr. Averko’s claim, documented previously on La Russophobe, that he is a commentator published in the likes of the New York Times (as La Russophobe is shown, all he’s ever done is write letters to the editor). Oddly, Mr. Averko doesn’t care to mention which “news shows” he has “consulted” on — perhaps because that would make it too easy to ridicule him (or expose him as a liar), and he doesn’t identify himself as a TV consultant when he writes for Russia Blog (there, he’s a Times columnist). This sort of thing is the classic hallmark of the Russophile propagandist, namely the total absence of any obligation to dwell in the real world, source facts or otherwise substantiate claims. This is the way business was done in the USSR, and it’s why the USSR doesn’t exist any more.

Other “authors” at Intelligent include Russia Blog’s Yuri Mamchur, Russophile extremist Sharon Tennison and wacko Russophile nutjob Kirill Pankratov. Pankratov is not only a scientist but also a writer/pornographer: his website refers to his Russian prose collection by warning “ranging from lyrical to erotic (very explicit, a warning should be added).” Naturally, he’s a qualified expert in political affairs, and a regular contributor to that bible of authoritative analysis the eXile, and the author of a really bizarre stream-of-consciousness blabbering article called “America Your Time is Up” on the People’s Voices blog. Mamchur, by contrast, touts his being a “graduate of the Russian Tax Academy School of Law in Moscow” as previously discussed by La Russophobe. Tennison is “president of the Center for Citizen Initiatives, USA and Russia.” Wikipedia says of her: “President Sharon Tennison is a political pragmatist, favoring the rapprochement of U.S.-Russia relations at the expense of debate on divisive topics including human rights and political freedom issues.” She has written a staunch defense of KGB spy Vladimir Putin. It’s argued that the Wikipedia article about her has been planted by a sycophant and is not reliable. Note that it’s just fine for all these people to hate and scathingly attack America, but if anyone dares to reciprocate where Russia is concerned then they are of course a “bigot” and “racist” (even though Russia isn’t a race but nationality, a fact they never tire of ignoring).

If you review the current contents of Intelligent you find a remarkable barrage of Russophile propaganda. First there’s Yuri Mamchur’s attack on the Wall Street Journal‘s coverage of the extremism law, already thoroughly discredited on La Russophobe and for which Mamchur apologized on Russia Blog. Then there’s the “editor’s column” by Intelligent’s English version boss, Sergei Roy. Roy is identifed as a linguist. Here’s what this crazed, hysterical Russophile has to say about the President of Georgia:

Recently, seven leading medical institutions (Norway’s Tonsberg Psychiatric Center; Norway’s National Institute of Public Health; Germany’s Center for Diseases of the Nervous System at Christian Albrecht University; the Psychiatric Department of Geneva University; Vienna Medical School’s Department of Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy; Finland’s Psychiatric Department; and Amsterdam University’s Department of Clinical Psychology) were asked to evaluate Georgian President Saakashvili’s mental health. The evaluation excerpts published in various oppositionist papers in Georgia describe Saakashvili as a negative and aggressive person with extreme egocentricity, a hysteroid typetending toward megalomania and an obsessive or maniacal syndrome characterized by a personal conviction of being destined to be the “chosen one,” etc. etc. There’s lots of this psychiatric gobbledegook in the published materials, but the diagnosis is clear enough: “Expansive type of paranoid dysfunction (according to ICD-IO) combined with narcissist type of hysteroid personality.” Beautiful. To me, it translates into one brief word: psycho

If you look in a Russophile dictionary, you will see that the definition of “psycho” is anyone who opposed Russian hegemony.

Reviewing the other current contents of Intelligent we find an article bashing Israel, accusing the U.S. Congress of insulting Russia’s dignity by daring to discuss Russian imperalism, touting Russia’s wonderful success at the G-8 Summit (where it got booted out of the WTO and confronted by several world leaders on its human rights record), attacking the U.S. for “disastrous” new Cold War policies and begging the world to “give the Bear some time.” Time for what? Time to consolidate dictatorial power and try again to enslave the world? Intelligent also, not surprisingly, published the crazed tirade of Professor Steve Cohen already thoroughly discredited on La Russophobe.

La Russophobe thinks Intelligent is a perfect example of insular Russian and Russophile on-lookers firing bits of propaganda back and forth between themselves and imagining, just as did the members of the old Politburo, that they are conclusively proving their own superiority. All the while, Russia continues sinking into a morass of incompetence and corruption from which it likely will never emerge.

Who funds Intelligent? The website doesn’t say, nor does it say that it’s a charitable enterprise. Does its money come from the Kremlin? From Yuri Mamchur’s Discovery Institute? La Russophobe intends to explore the matter further.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

The Extremism Law Exposed as Neo-Soviet Censorship

The Moscow Times offers a column from Mikhail Fedotov, secretary of the Russian Union of Journalists and one of the authors of the federal media law, obliterating the obscene Russophile canard (propagated most especially by the nefarious Yuri Mamchur of Russia Blog) that Russia’s new law on extremism is a reasonable measure designed to guard against racism.

The author Vasily Grossman once said the hardest problems always generate the simplest and most incorrect solutions. Amendments to the federal media law and administrative code introduced as measures to combat terrorism, which go before the State Duma for a first reading Wednesday, contain a definition of “extremism” that expands the term to the point of absurdity. This in a country where official reaction to real acts of violence against individuals based on their racial, ethnic, linguistic, religious or social backgrounds is rare and selective.

The broader the definition of extremism, the easier it is for the authorities to use it against anyone who has displeased them. The latest amendments define it as “infringing on the rights and freedoms of a citizen or citizens or doing damage to the health and/or property of citizens on the basis of their convictions, racial or ethnic affiliation, creed, social affiliation or social origin.”

Translated from legalese, almost any derogatory article can now be interpreted as extremism if the author cannot prove that a statement corresponds strictly to reality. Thus, journalists will need the investigative authority of a prosecutor and faith that a voice recording (which they had better have) will be enough against a high-placed crooked official.

This legal novelty has drawn scant attention from commentators. Everyone has been talking about the fact that the anti-extremism law passed earlier this year includes “the public defamation of any government official” in the definition. The first application of this legal novelty was against Viktor Shmakov, the editor of Provintsiyalniye Vesti, a newspaper in Bashkortostan. He was charged after the publication of the articles “Experienced advice. Instructions for the Behavior of Revolutionaries During Mass Popular Demonstrations” and “The Bashkir Revolutionary Committee Short Program of Emergency and Frontline Measures For the First 100 days After the Revolution.”

Shmakov shouldn’t be worried, however, as the defamation of officials must be, according to the law, established by the courts. The Criminal Code does not as yet contain such an article.

But this loophole will undoubtedly be closed. Criticizing the authorities will be defamation, and defamation will be extremism. And, according to the new amendments, any media outlet can be closed down for acting as the “cause of damage to the person or health of citizens, the environment, public order, public safety, property or the legal economic interests of individuals or legal entities, society or the state.” This net is wide enough to snare just about anyone, especially if those doing the fishing are acting on personal interests and the victim has only the Constitution and the European Court of Human Rights on his or her side.

What is important is that we don’t confuse extremism with opposition, criticism, or dissent — even when these are expressed in extreme terms. Established democracies long ago not only stopped punishing dissent, but also those who promoted it. Those statutes that do remain long ago became dead law. In British law, for example, “incitement to mutiny” remains a serious crime, but since 1945 has been interpreted to cover actions designed to provoke social unrest and civil disobedience with the aim of disrupting the government’s legal functioning and has not been invoked since 1947.

French legislation still includes an 1881 statute that criminalizes defamation of a state institution, minister, lawmaker or civil servant. But this law also has not been applied in practice for decades and, in effect, has lost its power. This is the result of the simple fact that these societies now look differently on criticism and interpret freedom of speech more broadly.

All of this has to be balanced against matters of necessity in a Russia where extremism, and ethnic hatred in particular, have clearly become a reality. Horrific events like the murder of a 9-year-old Tajik girl or a Peruvian student in St. Petersburg, or the recent bombing of Moscow’s Cherkizovsky market can no longer be dismissed as isolated incidents. Political discussion is rife with conspiracy theories that nationalist groups like the White Patrol and the Movement Against Illegal Immigration are just parts of a highly clandestine extremist nationalist organization seeking to take power. Implicit in these theories is the prescription that only a powerful Kremlin can stop this absolute evil from triumphing.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like law enforcement or security bodies are serious about countering the real growth of extremism in the country. Law-enforcement agencies are themselves hotbeds of xenophobia. A nationwide survey by the Levada Center polling agency said 40 percent of police officers supported the idea that Russia should be a country for ethnic Russians, while 67 percent expressed negative views about people from the Caucasus and Central Asia.

Moreover, state officials still frivolously label extremist acts as simple hooliganism or the escapades of madmen. Statements from the top addressing the issue seriously are interpreted further down the “power vertical” as necessary rituals, but little else. “We know very well all of those who should be [behind bars], and it would only take a couple of days to haul them all in,” a friend in law enforcement told me recently. “But nobody seems to be interested in this.”

So a vicious circle is forming. The authorities refuse to take systemic corrective action against the growing problem of extremism in society, preferring instead to use it as a pretext for maniacally plugging any cracks through which free thought could have an influence on the political process. In turn, the deliberate undermining of democratic institutions fans extremism further, as it does not allow outlets for protest or opposition on the field of normal political competition. The authorities could still break this vicious circle. The question is whether they have the will, ability or time.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

Russian Untouchables

The Chicago Tribune reports on the slavery-like horrors of the Russian labor market:

SOFRINO, Russia – A glimpse of Russia’s immigration conundrum can be found behind the pallets of brick, lumber, sheet metal and iron at a sprawling construction-materials yard in this Moscow suburb, where ironworker Abdumalik Kholikov eats and sleeps in a trailer smaller than a prison cell.

The mattresses he and a fellow Tajik laborer sleep on take up most of the space. They store their clothes in plastic bags hung on the walls. A hot plate caked in grease and resting on bricks substitutes as a stove. There’s no toilet and no shower; they pour plastic bottles of water over each other to wash.

“I’ve lived like this for four years,” said Kholikov, who sends much of his $370 monthly pay home to Tajikistan to support his wife and five children. “I doubt things will change anytime soon.”

Kholikov and legions of immigrants like him from Central Asia’s dirt-poor economies are much of the brawn behind Moscow’s frenzied building boom – the construction workers, welders, loaders and bricklayers changing the cityscape with every new high rise.

They’re also Russia’s untouchables, stymied by a bureaucracy that makes attaining legal status virtually impossible, and are routinely exploited by corrupt police and unscrupulous employers.

Estimates of the number of illegal migrant workers in Russia range from 5 million to 14 million. Long before they emigrate, they know the Catch-22 they’ll face.

As citizens of former Soviet republics, they don’t need visas. But within three days of their arrival in Moscow they must notify authorities of their new residence. Most Russian apartment owners refuse to rent to Tajiks and other Central Asian migrants. So without an apartment, they become instant lawbreakers.

That makes them easy prey in a society where a shadow economy flourishes and corruption is rife.

Construction companies routinely renege on paying wages to Central Asian migrant laborers. The housing they provide workers at job sites amounts to little more than ramshackle one-room cabins or abandoned railway cars. As many as a dozen laborers can be crammed into the cars for several months, often through the Russian capital’s unforgiving winters.

In many instances, groups of workers are traded from one construction firm to another like chattel, said Gavkhar Dzhurayeva, head of the Migration and Law Center, a Moscow-based advocacy group for migrant workers.

“The system doesn’t allow these workers to become legalized, because there are too many people in government and at these companies with a stake in what’s going on,” Dzhurayeva said. “The whole system is predicated on these workers being treated as slaves.”

Russia needs workers like Kholikov. The country’s economy is in the midst of an epic comeback, but a relentless plunge in population has leaders worried about having a labor force large enough to sustain that comeback. Russia’s population, now 142.4 million, is dropping at a rate of about 600,000 people each year.

So far, the government has waded gingerly into the problem.

Last year, it embarked on a pilot project to grant amnesty to 7,000 illegal migrant workers in 10 Russian provinces. There was talk of expanding the program to millions of other migrant workers, but no action has been taken. Immigration remains a sensitive subject in Russia, where nationalist-minded segments of the population look upon Central Asians and people from the Caucasus region with deep resentment.

Elena Tiurukanova, a researcher at Moscow’s Institute for Socioeconomic Population Studies, cited recent polls suggesting that, while more than half of Russians acknowledge using services provided by immigrants, “60 percent are intolerant of immigrants – they don’t want them here.”

Employers who rely on illegal migrants have a very different reason for resisting meaningful change in Russian migration laws. By using illegal workers, employers can avoid paying taxes, hold back wages whenever they want and impose 12- or even 14-hour workdays. If a worker complains, they simply turn him over to the police.

Workers rarely complain, though. As bad as they have it in Russia, their lot is worse back home. In Tajikistan, wages are as low as $4 a month and average about $30 monthly. Their desperation is easily witnessed on any given day along Yaroslavsky Highway in the Moscow suburb of Mytishchi.

Each morning, dozens of illegal Tajik immigrants swarm around every car that pulls up. The man behind the wheel offers a handful of jobs, waves a few Tajiks into the car and drives away. Those left behind sit on their haunches or on guardrails and wait for the next car.

Zafar Bachayev, 23, has been a regular along Yaroslavsky Highway for six years. At his last job at a suburban apartment building construction site, his employer promised him $600 and paid him $150. “We slept in a railroad car, 12 people in the car,” said Bachayev, who is saving up to finish his studies at a Tajikistan university. “We worked 14 hours a day.”

Fellow Tajik Said Vatoyev came to Mytishchi when he was 14 and has bounced between construction sites and odd jobs ever since. “They give us cabins without beds or mattresses and allow us to wash once a week,” said Vatoyev, now 18. “We’re treated like dogs at these work sites.”

The Federal Migration Service expects the situation to improve in January, when the only document that migrant workers will need is a work permit, said Natalya Vlasova, deputy chief of the agency’s foreign labor department. Advocates for illegal migrant workers say such steps don’t go far enough.

The agency needs to beef up the ranks of its inspectors to ferret out exploitation of migrant workers at job sites, Dzhurayeva said. And Russian authorities need to clamp down on the corruption that makes the use of illegal migrant workers so lucrative for employers and local police.

“For 15 years, a lack of law enforcement has given rise to this entrenched network between employers, authorities and migrant workers,” Dzhurayeva said. “Breaking up that network won’t be easy.”

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

Annals of the Neo-Soviet Union: Textbook Censorship is Renewed

The Moscow Times reports that Russia has adopted a neo-Soviet textbook review process which will force Russians to continue living in ignorance indefinitely, just the way a dictatorship likes the people to be kept:

India is a continent, the oceans are infested with squid that stretch 20 meters, and the human soul is known to leave the body during sleep. These are just a few of the many, many errors found in grade-school textbooks across the country.

Now, the state is returning to its old Soviet ways to cleanse textbooks of obvious and embarrassing mistakes, although some educators wonder what kind of cleansing is taking place. Last year, a new review process was adopted. A lot of work remains: In 2006, just 18 percent of the textbooks reviewed passed muster.

“There are many typos and errors that are simply ridiculous,” said Sergei Sidorenko, a member of the panel from the Russian Academy of Sciences charged with weeding out the errors.

The Education and Science Ministry could not provide exact figures for how many error-filled textbooks were in circulation. Nor is it clear when all books in use will have the Academy’s stamp of approval. Svetlana Teterina, who heads the textbook division at the ministry, said the government was targeting fall 2007, but given there are hundreds, if not thousands, of books yet to be reviewed, that date seems overly optimistic.

The problem dates to the Soviet collapse, when the rigorous, communist-era system of reviewing — and, in many cases, whitewashing or editing — textbooks ended. Beginning in the early 1990s, publishers were required only to get the approval of two “independent experts,” Teterina said. Often, those experts were paid off to facilitate publication.

Compounding the problem is the fact that many schoolteachers do not know enough to spot errors.

Larisa, a Moscow-region research biologist with a son in the ninth grade, was appalled by her son’s biology textbooks. She declined to give her last name for fear he would suffer consequences in the classroom.

Larisa noted that in her son’s textbook, bacteria were incorrectly referred to as bacilli, plant sugars were improperly classified, and a discussion of cell structure omitted the mention of cell membranes. The missing cell membrane — and the schoolteacher’s failure to incorporate it into her lectures — was noticed by at least one student, who recalled a guest lecture on cells Larisa had given her son’s class a few years earlier. After the student brought it to the teacher’s attention, Larisa’s son was apparently penalized.

“Since then, my son can’t get anything above a 4 in biology,” she said. Students are graded on a scale of 1 to 5, with five being the highest mark.

These are not the only mistakes and oddities found in Russian science books, Sidorenko said. One biology text, he said, included a section on the soul, which has never been empirically proven to exist. Several chemistry books, he said, assign the wrong formulas to substances.

And math books, Sidorenko observed, are rife with sloppy problems. One problem, he recalled, stated that Masha lived 3 kilometers from school, and Kolya lived 5 kilometers from school, and then asked: How far away from each other do they live? The correct answer given was 8 kilometers. But Sidorenko pointed out that would only be true if Masha and Kolya lived at perfectly antipodal locations, or opposite coordinates. Because the problem does not specify this, the answer could be anywhere between 2 and 8.

Problems like this were largely absent in times past.

Under the Soviet regime, textbooks were reviewed by multiple boards and panels of experts and teachers at the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Academy of Pedagogic Sciences (now the Academy of Education), and then were tested in special schools before being mass produced by state publishers.

The education ministry’s recent recentralization of the review process is strongly reminiscent of the old, more airtight system, said Dmitry Zuyev, who served as editor-in-chief of Prosveshcheniye, one of the Soviet Union’s major academic publishing houses, from 1969 to 1993.

In keeping with their Soviet predecessors, Russian authorities place a premium on history — once viewed as the scientific basis for socialism, and now considered a key ingredient in the making of an upstanding Russian citizen.

“History books are very important in bringing up Russian citizens,” Teterina said. “They receive our special attention and interest.” She added that four of the “most responsible publishers” have sent in history books for early review.

Platon Manotskov, who has been teaching history in St. Petersburg grade schools for 37 years, said the only errors he had spotted in textbooks over the years were relatively minor — for example, wrong dates.

The more serious problem facing history teachers, Manotskov said, was that the education ministry’s new teaching mandated jettisoning the traditional, chronologically organized curriculum. Now, he said, students study world history in a compressed, two-year period and then focus on selected periods.

Manotskov was skeptical of the ministry’s new review process. “I have a strong hunch that the ministry means something else by mistakes — not factual errors but rather interpretations of history,” he said. “I would not want, as a teacher, to be strictly told to inculcate civic pride or to teach within a certain ideological framework, and I’m afraid that might happen.”

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !