Russian summer camps to teach children patriotism

A new Russian summer camp designed to teach children basic military skills as well as the virtue of loving their motherland opened in the city of Nizhny Novgorod last week. In addition to patriotic lectures and military training in chemical and biological protection, the camp also runs activities such as paintballing and parachuting for children aged 12 to 18.

The summer camp, the brainchild of Minister of Culture Vladimir Medinsky, is to be the first of many, with plans being made to launch further programmes in Volgograd, Chelyabinsk and Crimea if sufficient funds can be raised.

Plans for the nationwide camps, which have been given the unwieldge name “I am a citizen and protector of a great country”, were unveiled by the Russian Military-Historical Community (RVIO), an organisation chaired by Medinsky, last week. “If the education of teenagers is left unattended, then Maidan happens,” Denis Sadovnikov, head of the RVIO’s department for state and community work, told Izvestia newspaper, alluding to last year’s protests in Kiev.

“The main aim of the camps is to help people, not to teach them to kill,” said Irina Strelkova, the head of Becoming a Cub Scout, an adventure and history camp. She added: “Instead of military training we have different citizen and humanitarian courses in place. We teach participants first aid, how to rescue people who are drowning, navigate terrain and survive in nature.”

Others have been less receptive to the initiative. Tamara Eidelman, a Moscow history teacher and board member of the Association of History Teachers, told Izvestia that preparation for military action, “from a pedagogical point of view, harms children’s minds”.

Medinsky’s proposal comes on the heels of a flurry of new bills ushered in by the Russian government following the crisis in Ukraine, which have given the Kremlin greater control over the distribution of information and the portrayal of Russian history.

In March, Oleg Savchenko, a politician from the ruling United Russia party, put forward a bill to criminalise the distortion of Russian history in films, books and video games. The bill also suggested mandatory school trips to important Russian historical sites. Both this bill and Medinsky’s camp initiative have fuelled concerns that culture and education are creeping back to the models of Soviet times, when political propaganda was extensively used by the state to shape citizens’ understanding of current events and international affairs.