CHAPTER 15

Formal Education of the Younger Generation

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February 2013 marked the seventieth anniversary of the Malaia zemlia landings and the liberation of Stalingrad, currently known as Volgograd. To mark the occasion, Novorossiisk schoolchildren from five schools, university students and Cossack cadet soldiers took part in a Skype conference with counterparts in Volgograd. Organised and scripted in advance by the mayor’s office, this ‘tele-bridge’ also linked Novorossiisk veterans with those of the Battle of Stalingrad in an explicit comparison of the two hero cities: ‘Malaia zemlia – Mamaev kurgan’. With a spectrum of age ranges taking part, the event contrived to link themes appealing to the old using the modern technology attractive to the young, thereby effectively closing any virtual generation gap. The conference, ‘The Patriotic Education of the Young on the Basis of an Heroic Past’, claimed to instil patriotic values amongst young people, including a respect for the past and loyalty to their country, by its new approach to military-patriotic education and citizenship.

One of the ambiguities facing traditionalists wishing to propagate a war myth is the fact that history inevitably looks backwards to the past, whereas the tendency for the younger generation is to look forwards to the future. If not carefully nurtured in memorial tradition, the young may rebel against their elders, promoting a dismissal of the past with its inherent values. In contrast, successful propagation of a war myth may lead to a memorial vicious circle and consequent stagnation, leading eventually to unquestioning acceptance, which seems to be largely the case today in a younger generation inculcated with vospitanie. Older generations may tend to select the content, transmitting a simplified, positive message in order to promote cultural consensus and maintain the continuity of the war myth, although its interpretation may change slightly from generation to generation.

The renewed emphasis on moral education of the young has become almost synonymous to many respondents with the belief system of remembrance: in Novorossiisk well brought up young people are expected to pay respect to the dead in accordance with tradition. A vospitannyi young person today is deemed to be almost a clone of his or her Soviet counterpart, with the qualities of patriotism, respect, modesty and good moral behaviour both recalled and judged positively by older generations. According to Svetlana, an historian in her sixties, it is precisely these aspects of vospitanie that won the war, ideologically embedded through a unique type of patriotism expected of communists. There was a period during the 1990s when vospitanie and patriotism were not seen as so important, however, according to several respondents of all ages, who criticised the mass failure to maintain the war myth and remember the dead. Under the current war cult the state has driven a nationwide campaign to involve young people in patriotic activities, just as in the youth clubs, Young Pioneer and Komsomol organisations of the Soviet Union under Brezhnev.

The noticeable return to a more conservative style of education under Putin is exemplified by the re-introduction of school uniforms throughout Russia from September 2014. Today, once again, it is vospitanie that is viewed as both instilling patriotism and as a necessary foundation for the propagation of the war myth. Vospitanie is seen to be bred mainly by families and schools, while some recognise the role of social rituals and the local authorities. I have found that it is at the confluence of school and family that the war myth is most effectively transmitted.

Moral education of the young is effected in schools thanks to the new emphasis on patriotism, a topic now included in the school curriculum and dictated by the state, according to three head teachers, to the endorsement of many parents and grandparents.² A new syllabus for ‘Patriotic Work’ was introduced in Russian schools in 2010, following a state decision to prioritise citizenship in the school curriculum. This decision was endorsed by the regional authorities, such that each school is now responsible for designing and delivering its own courses. These include some material in common with other educational establishments across the country and some location-specific content. Furthermore, every school and the Maritime Academy have designated senior members of staff who are responsible for the design and implementation of the syllabus and for the vospitanie of the students.

A formal argument for the introduction of Patriotic Work into the curriculum forms the preface to the new syllabus for School Number Six and the Bekar School. It points to governmental concern at the loss of ‘spiritual values’ and growing ‘social diffidence’ during the period of economic and political changes in the 1990s. The document recognises that during this period the sense of patriotism and respect for Russian culture was much reduced, leading to a decrease in vospitanie of the younger generation.³ Endorsing the government’s educational findings, Catherine Merridale observes in the twenty-first century an increasing degree of collective amnesia in Russian society, where the young often lack any interest in the past, despite a stated desire to look back promoted by the new war cult.⁴ There is also some reticence among the young about entering military service.⁵ Moreover, there may be a potential conflict between the need to remember of survivors and their descendants, as the event remembered becomes increasingly alienated in time and space from those remembering.⁶ Making no apologies for the ideological content of the new curriculum, the Bekar syllabus specifically bemoans the increase amongst young people of diffidence, self-centred individualism, cynicism, aggressiveness and lack of respect towards veterans, largely attributed to ‘media propaganda [ . . . ] falsifying national history’ and the propagation of non-Russian traditional values, with a commensurate decrease in the motivation of young people to join the armed services.

The aim of the new syllabus is to introduce ‘a renewed emphasis on patriotic upbringing [vospitanie] as one of the most important educational tasks’. At the top of the list of themes is the ‘desire to observe memory of dead troops’, closely followed by the encouragement of ‘respect for elderly people’; love for the town of Novorossiisk within the Russian Republic; ‘pride in the Russian army’ and its veterans, linked with a ‘wish to serve one’s Fatherland’; and the ‘development of a sense of patriotism’ based on ‘the cultural and patriotic values of the glorious [. . .] military traditions of the Russian people’, encouraging participation in regional and town commemorative events. The transfer of the war myth to the younger generation at school also takes place through a variety of other mechanisms: history lessons; a series of ‘lessons in courage’ (‘uroki muzhestva’); dedicated class periods (klassnye chasy); local studies (kraevedenie or Kubanovedenie); and visits to libraries and museums, both in the school and the town.

History remains central to the school curriculum from an early age, often taught by specialists. The teaching of modern history in schools and universities has evolved over the decades since 1945, the subject of historical revisionism at the mercy of the political ideology of the state.⁷ During Stalin’s rule history lessons revolved around Leninist dogma and rote learning. Little was written about the war in the postwar years: archives were closed to researchers and questioning of the official version of the past was not encouraged. A subjective and dogmatic Stalinist version of the history of the war, full of distortions and omissions, finally appeared in 1963 with the publication of the multi-volume The Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union. It depicted the devastating German invasion of the first few months of the war in 1941 in a less disastrous light, while also inflating the role of Stalin and the Communist Party at the expense of that of the military leaders and the Allies.⁸ Party members became officially endorsed role models for young people in a string of selected exploits, reinforcing the impression of state-sponsored mythology rather than analytical history. For example, the work refers to a Komsomol member at Stalingrad who died whilst blowing up nine tanks,⁹ an exploit similar to that of young Viktor Chalenko on Malaia zemlia. Some attempted revisionism and a cautious attempt at historical accuracy in Khrushchev’s thaw of the early 1960s was followed by the intellectual conservatism and neo-Stalinism of the Brezhnev era. Aleksandr Nekrich’s work of 1965, 1941, 22 iiunia (22 June 1941: Soviet Historians and the German Invasion), was officially condemned and the author expelled from the Communist Party in 1967. An increase in censorship during the 1970s led to further clamp-downs on revisionist historians who had allegedly gone too far in the pursuit of historical accuracy.¹⁰

No wonder that oral memory was considered by some to be more accurate than that propagated by the state, a situation that is the opposite of that generally accepted in the West, but is still observed in Russia.¹¹ In general official memory had been so shaped by the narratives provided by their leaders that accounts of the war depended largely on mythology rather than accurate historical evidence until the Gorbachev years. An increase in interest in history in the mass media of the late 1980s, when previously taboo topics were gradually opened up to historical glasnost’, led to a plethora of revelations from 1988 to 1991.¹² Gorbachev himself appeared to encourage such openness about history:

We have studied it, admitting miscalculations and mistakes, and learning lessons even from the difficult and tragic periods of our history. For us it is not acceptable to smooth out history. It already exists. And it is only a matter of showing it correctly. It is a matter of our honesty, responsibility and scientific approach.¹³

This new official attitude resulted in the evolution of a more questioning society after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. It remained shortlived, however. Igor Dolutskii’s particularly influential anti-Stalinist, anti-communist school history textbook Otechestvennaia istoriia XX vek (History of the Fatherland in the Twentieth Century) was published in 1994, only to be removed from the Ministry of Education’s list of approved books in 2003 following criticism of its less than positive treatment of the Great Patriotic War. Overseeing a return to state officialdom in history, Putin himself intervened in the discussions, demanding that school textbooks should help imbue patriotism amongst the young in the interests of social solidarity. After Dolutskii’s extreme anti-Soviet work, more positive assessments were demanded in a textbook competition administered by the Ministry of Education, resulting in the publication of a new national favourite in 2007, Nikita Zagladin’s Istoriia Otechestva. XX vek (Twentieth Century History of the Fatherland). Although Zagladin’s previous work on global history, Istoriia Rossi i mira v XX veke, had continued the theme of the anti-Stalinism of the 1990s, his new prize-winning text failed to condemn the Soviet Union outright for its weaknesses during the war, choosing rather to recognise its successes in a more balanced and analytical style, more acceptable to a society looking for a sense of pride in their recent history.¹⁴

There is now one authorised history textbook used widely in Russia, including in senior classes in Novorossiisk schools. This book promotes an ‘official’ view of the past, nurturing a sense of national pride in Russian history. It seems to have a more balanced judgment on the strategic importance of Novorossiisk in the context of the whole war, by mentioning it briefly and only once, in a list of towns liberated in September 1943, as part of a chapter on the Great Patriotic War covering 43 pages.¹⁵

This uncontroversial textbook contrasts with another history book by A.V. Veka, which, according to one bookshop assistant, is popular in the town, if not used in schools.¹⁶ This work, although making no mention at all of Novorossiisk, includes decidedly negative comments about Stalin, for example his absence from the centre of power in the first days of the war and his notorious ‘Not one step back’ order.¹⁷ In complete contrast to the hype of Victory Day in Russia today, Veka attributes war victory to the Soviet people rather than to Stalin or his generals. Similarly treated are the controversial penal battalions (shtrafnye batal’ony) to which ‘cowards and traitors’ were dispatched, despite what the author deems the equally incompetent actions of their leaders.¹⁸ This is an aspect of the war which some of my respondents wished to see fully exposed and dissected in the media, probably following a popular television series, Shtrafbat, aired in 2004, which prompted wide discussion and a wish to ‘learn the truth’ about the past.¹⁹ The current vogue for national introspection appears to be in complete contrast to Stalin’s fear of historical accuracy.

A whole spectrum of publications exists today, ranging from this example to the most conservative texts lauding the country’s successes throughout and supporting the triumphal nationalism disseminated by Putin in his construction of a victorious continuity from the past through to the present. Exposés of the past may surface in some more liberal publications, but these are read largely by adults who grew up in the 1990s rather than by schoolchildren today. Historical revisionism during the Putin era has led to some overgeneralisation of events of the war in schools, such that children are socialised politically not to question in detail the accepted message of a victorious nation.

Works that counter the state-sponsored version have suffered since 2014, when a controversial law condemning the propagation of ‘false’ history came into force. As a result, books on World War II by military historian Antony Beevor have been removed from some regional libraries, accused of spreading a pro-Nazi message by his detailed examination of the role of Soviet troops.²⁰ It may be politically useful to disseminate a more generalised history when a detailed narrative risks detracting from the accepted war myth. Novorossiiskii rabochii actually bemoans the lack of specific information in modern school textbooks, appreciating that it is only because the town is a hero city that the myth is so strong and schools are able constructively to supplement the official books with solid local background.²¹ Teacher Albina concurs that more concrete facts about the war are taught now than previously. Perhaps in Novorossiisk the myth of Malaia zemlia is so positive that it bears more detailed scrutiny in school lessons than many other local war myths. However, there is a potential danger of too close an examination of a myth that is so entwined with local identity. This myth is needed for a stable society and is increasingly likely to be defended robustly. Those questioning such widely accepted myths as the siege of Leningrad and even other blatantly propagandised Soviet war myths are simply not welcome in Novorossiisk: ‘Don’t mess with our history!’, warns the local newspaper on the eve of Beskozyrka.²² This recent vehement attack on revisionism gets to the core of the real issue: Don’t mess with our identity!

Here there is little evidence of the degree of historical amnesia observed in the capital, where there is a distinct lack of engagement with the past on the part of the younger generation.²³ While my observations show evidence for the continuation of the local myth in provincial Novorossiisk, Catherine Merridale observes in the larger cities a clear generation gap, with older people recalling, albeit at some temporal distance, the ‘dismal days of fake heroes and bogus achievements’, while the younger generation demonstrates almost no understanding of the situation in which their parents were raised.²⁴ Merridale argues robustly that a lack of knowledge of the past breeds a failure to read any warning signs of a potential new dictatorship, a situation of collective amnesia which may in some ways suit the country’s ruling elite. This insight suggests that a return to the domination of top-down manipulation of memory may flourish in the face of public apathy, linked to uncertainty about the constantly changing interpretations of the past.²⁵ From my findings in Novorossiisk, however, the state war cult is thriving not in the face of public apathy, but fuelled rather by a local self-interest in the promotion of the war myth, which boosts the status of the town regionally and nationally and inculcates a sense of pride which is passed on to the younger generation.

This pride is propagated also by school lessons in courage, which foster, by their very name, a positive genetic concept of military prowess. They concentrate on local patriotism in the war through films, seminars, essays and competitions. These lessons are mainly held during periods of the academic year when commemorative events take place locally, for example during January in the approach to Beskozyrka, leading up to Victory Day in May, and around the anniversary of the town’s liberation in September. Starting in a narrow context, where the youngest pupils learn to ‘love their small Motherland’, the syllabus aims to develop military-patriotic consciousness through an appreciation of the local war myth. Children of all ages are taken on guided tours of the town’s monuments; watch educational films on the history of Novorossiisk;²⁶ learn about the heroes of Malaia zemlia; read books about the war; build up exhibitions of memorabilia and literature, often collected from home; meet with former pupils now serving in the armed forces or as military cadets in the Maritime Academy and veterans of the war in Afghanistan; and take part in class competitions to produce creative work on the war theme.

There are no official textbooks in Novorossiisk for these lessons in courage, in contrast to the situation in the hero cities of Moscow and Volgograd. Although material suitable for the whole age spectrum is suggested in recommended lesson plans, the choice and delivery is largely left to the discretion of the individual class teacher. There is inevitably some repetition of material from year to year with the inherent risk of boredom amongst the older pupils, although one teacher at School Number 28 was praised by the town’s official online news site for getting the pupils to use ‘innovative technology’ through the compilation of their own PowerPoint presentations.²⁷ This proactive approach appears, however, to be the exception rather than the rule in the face of the usual more didactic material.

A more personal approach is realised through the visit of local veterans to schools in a renewal of the Brezhnev-era system, when veterans would go into the classrooms on special commemorative occasions.²⁸ Only veterans of the Great Patriotic War are involved in such ‘meetings of generations’, which are often also held in local libraries, sometimes with specific aims formulated by the local authority’s youth department as in the Skype conference with Volgograd. This practice allows a confluence of living generations that should, in theory, be more effective at propagating the war myth than films or books, although the age of the veterans today means that their presence is largely symbolic. There is evidence that veterans still welcome the experience of transmitting their memories to the younger generation; they may even find it easier to talk to unknown young people than to their own families. However, offering the same clichéd stories as in previous years, they may find it hard to make themselves heard or understood across what in reality is an almost insurmountable generation gap. While appreciating the importance of such meetings, teachers realise that veterans’ narratives can fail to resonate with some pupils, particularly less than conscientious boys, who may be more attracted to war films depicting young men closer in age to themselves.

I have found that aspects of the patriotism syllabus that may be more effective include those where the young people have some control of the situation and are able to make their own choices. This applies across the age range; for example, one eight-year-old child became absorbed in a project on Malaia zemlia about which he had written three whole pages, while teenager Nikita had written a longer essay on his computer about Brezhnev’s memoirs, demonstrating a notable exception to his peers in his interest.

Students at the Maritime Academy and the Moscow Institute for Economics and the Humanities also follow courses on local history, which remain largely popular, according to senior academics, such that some modules on Malaia zemlia are also broadcast on local television.²⁹ Unlike the school curriculum, local war history is set in the context of the whole of World War II in Maritime Academy courses on twentiethcentury history. The head of the Faculty of History and Philosophy finds that about 50 per cent of student cadets choose to write essays or dissertations on Malaia zemlia, some of whom go on to write doctoral theses on related subjects. Not all students are equally motivated, however: apparently a minority demonstrates no real interest in local history, although Dr Denisov contends that it is the duty of the faculty to counteract any indifference. This is done partly by an emphasis on personal links, despite the fact that this area of history is becoming increasingly abstract, as family members who participated in the war have died and students are no longer able to discuss at first hand their roles in the war. The Maritime Academy has a policy of inviting cadets to do family research and to bring family photographs into the academy, where a substantial display of enlarged images was mounted in the entrance hall in 2010 to mark the sixty-fifth anniversary of Victory Day.

The linking of influences from both family and educational institutions is particularly effective in the transmission of memory. The onus is on the young people in both schools and the Maritime Academy to collect photographs, memoirs, letters and other artefacts, such that they have nominal responsibility for the propagation of the war myth, if actually required to do so by their teachers. The act of collection of such mnemonic material also prompts discussions in the home about the past, serving to revive family history at the instigation of the younger generation, another example of reverse propagation. The information collected by schoolchildren is either displayed for all to see, uploaded onto internet websites collating such data, or used as material for classroom presentation. By means of digital technology, old family photographs and other documents may be refreshed and brought to a wider audience, especially those parents of older classes invited into school to observe some lessons in courage.

In the past, a stark division between academic and popular history has been observed in Russia.³⁰ In today’s schools and universities in Novorossiisk, however, there seems to be a greater merging of the two, as personal family stories are integrated into class history lessons. The aim of the syllabus ‘to strengthen the role of the family in patriotic education’ is apparently achieved through children taking home ideas from school and then returning with more information gathered from discussions within the family which may be shared with their peers to stimulate further collaborative study. This personal approach permits the incorporation of the individual family’s history into the myth, enabling the construction of a unique bank of material in each school in the area. Information about family participants in the war may also be deposited in a growing number of nationally available online ‘memory books’, such as that linked to the Immortal Regiment movement, whose creation is probably prompted both by a fear of forgetting and the political environment of the war cult, while offering a site where more specific memory may be held in a largely uncensored environment.³¹ Having captured huge numbers of testimonies, these memory banks, constructed from below and eminently accessible through the medium of modern technology attractive to the younger generation, may be seen by young people as more truthful, if more complex and multi-voiced, than the one-dimensional official war myth. Similarly, students often have internet access to information from other countries, leaving them with the difficult unfiltered decision of what information to trust.

Digital school archives complement the collections in school museums, which focus on specifically local material. Unlike English school archives, which often maintain a list of alumni who fell in the war, they largely contain artefacts collected in the immediate area. For example, the museum in School Number 27 in Myskhako was opened in 2007 thanks to the parent of a pupil who wished to have a space for his finds while conducting searches in the vicinity, whereas the museum in the Maritime Academy was created by Shkhunatik Galina Krympokha as a repository for records of the ‘Shkhuna rovesnikov’.³² Furthermore, the administrative head of Myskhako is planning a new museum there to cater for the increasing numbers of visitors to the village who are interested in its war history.

Schools also have their own small libraries, but the 19 public libraries in and around Novorossiisk work closely with teachers, especially with regard to the delivery of lessons in courage. Teachers sometimes walk their classes to the closest library for special occasions to make use of the better facilities and resources, and librarians sometimes go into schools to deliver lessons on the war. For example, a lesson in courage entitled ‘Thanks to the heroes who died in battle’ was delivered by librarians in School Number 11, while children in School Number 26 had a lesson in their local library called ‘Let’s meet by the Eternal Flame’.³³ Similarly, the patriotism syllabus for the Bekar School refers to library presentations such as ‘The young heroes of Novorossiisk’ and ‘The streets of Novorossiisk are named after them’. The latter topic is seen as significant by librarians, as, through their children, it teaches newcomers to the town about the heroes of the past through the geography of the present in a further example of reverse propagation.

Schools similarly send children to the libraries to conduct independent research on local history, although one young respondent claimed never to have set foot inside a library during his school years. The role of libraries in the propagation of the war myth was welcomed by some parents: Klavdiya, for example, appreciated the gift by the children’s library to seven-year-olds of different books on local war history that they could exchange with their class-mates. This type of education is important, according to librarians, because a survey conducted by the Novorossiisk Historical Association indicates that today’s young people tend not to read many books, relying mainly on films, television and the internet for information. In response, the Novorossiisk central library has created a small cinema and a large audiovisual room, where I observed a group of Cossack cadets watching a film about Beskozyrka. On a smaller scale, the community library in Myskhako has a computer linked to a large screen, gifted by the councillor for Myskhako, which is suitable for group presentations on war history. A history club for young people also holds meetings in the central library and a catalogue of war-related works suitable for children has been posted on the central library’s website in an attempt to attract younger readers to the library.³⁴

Furthermore, one large room in the central library is devoted to kraevedenie (local area studies).³⁵ Rooted in the region, this subject has become increasingly important in the twenty-first century, probably viewed as a more humanistic antidote to the new post-Soviet history texts, which may have been deemed either too general or too negative in their revelations about the war. Librarians collate photograph albums and newspaper cuttings about the Novorossiisk area to cater for the research interests of students and the delivery of school lessons on the locality. Kraevedenie is also part of the school patriotism syllabus, if largely in a peaceful style. With its emphasis on cultural and environmental geography, it situates the Malaia zemlia campaign within the immediate area, reinforcing children’s patriotic identification with this relatively small geographical area and highlighting the interconnectedness of a sense of place with the topography of Novorossiisk, its environment and the urban and political landscape.

There may be no alternative for young people but to remember, based on the substantial content of the patriotism syllabus in schools and the equivalent emphasis on local history in the institutions of higher education. However, the patriotic education of young people is not restricted to the classroom: perhaps the most noticeable role of schoolchildren and students in the town is their attendance at ceremonies of remembrance under the auspices of their educational establishments. It is expected by the local authorities that children from the Bekar School perform in a town concert for veterans just before the Beskozyrka ceremony, while most schools take members of older classes to the ritual itself. Schoolchildren are similarly expected by both the state and the local authorities to attend the traditional ritual at Heroes’ Square early on 9 May. At the eternal flame the headmistress of School Number Six reads Robert Rozhdestvenskii’s poem ‘Requiem’ before the playing of Shostakovich’s Novorossiisk Chimes and the official minute’s silence, after which the generations are united in their respect for the dead as children and veterans lay flowers together. Families also take children of all ages to the Victory Day commemorations, just as in the Brezhnev era, although Boris suggested that there is no longer a duty to attend. Aleksei recalled being dressed in a sailor suit on Victory Day in the 1960s. Nothing much seems to have changed in this respect: young boys and girls nowadays are sometimes dressed up in wartime soldiers’ uniforms, while their parents can buy a Soviet-era military cap ( pilotka) to wear for the day. Young children are present with their parents in both the town centre and in Myskhako, although lone teenagers are more common in the centre of Novorossiisk than in rural Myskhako. This is a probable reflection of the greater buzz and more dynamic activities in the town centre, where teenagers and young adults say they are are attracted by the Victory Day procession with its increasing quantities of military hardware, in a provincial replication of the impressive column of tanks and rockets that thunders over Moscow’s Red Square, leading to a sense of nationalistic pride.

The most obvious participation of schoolchildren in rituals, however, is their standing on guard duty at war memorials – the so-called ‘guard of memory’ (‘vakhta pamiati’) – a nationwide tradition dating from the Soviet era.³⁶ While most monuments have their guard on Victory Day only, the eternal flame has a constant daytime squad of older pupils drawn from local schools. This tradition, dating from the height of the Brezhnev-era war cult, is known as ‘Post No. 1’, reflecting the special significance of the place where the tomb of the heroes of Malaia zemlia is located on Heroes’ Square. This ritual was inaugurated in 1975, the year following Brezhnev’s visit to Novorossiisk, by veteran naval captain Vitalii Lesik, with the support of the Communist Party and Komsomol Gorkom.³⁷ Nowadays, however, the tradition is facilitated and funded by the town council through its department of culture, which also provides uniforms for the young guards.

According to interviewees Elvira, Albina and Aleksei, some parents recall with nostalgia their own stints of guard duty from their youth and appreciate a constructive activity provided by the state for their children which replicates the values of the older generations. Welcoming this aspect of vospitanie for her children, Alisa proudly watches and photographs them. For different reasons, the young people themselves appear content to take part in this ritual, regarding selection for the duty as an honour. Nikita, in particular, was not unhappy to miss school for a few days and actively enjoyed the chance to strut around the square armed with an automatic rifle.

Composed originally from Komsomol or Young Pioneer members, the guard of ‘living memory’ is now fulfilled by 20 schoolchildren, ten boys and ten girls aged 14 to 16, who have a whole week off school for their turn in the duty roster, involving 1,900 young people annually drawn from most schools in the town. The tradition is so longstanding – the only one in the region to continue during the 1990s – that it now commemorates not only the heroes of Malaia zemlia, but also former postovtsy (the people who stand on military guard) who died in Afghanistan or Chechnia. In an almost unchanging continuation of the Soviet tradition, the young guards wear naval uniform and take a solemn oath, a reminder of that made by the Malozemel’tsy prior to the landings:

As I start my guard duty at Post No. 1 by the flame of eternal glory, I solemnly swear to be worthy to the end of my days of the memory of the heroes who gave their lives in the battles for the fatherland!

I swear to hold my weapons in my hands as firmly as did Tsezar’ Kunikov and Nikolai Sipiagin, defenders of the Hero City of Novorossiisk!³⁸

Previous postovtsy include influential members of the local community, including the Deputy Director of the Maritime Academy and current town councillors, who have an inherent wish to retain the tradition. In this way a self-propagating mechanism for the intergenerational maintenance of memory is effected, which is endorsed by schools, parents and young people.

For decades Captain Lesik taught groups of young people how to march and hold their rifles, presenting the official face of the town to important visitors and foreign delegations as he patrolled his territory on Heroes’ Square until well past his ninetieth birthday. Both the ritual and its leader have apparently built up their own myth over the years: Lesik is an honoured citizen of Novorossiisk and Post No. 1 appears in school lessons of patriotism, stimulating creative work by pupils, such as the acrostic poem composed collaboratively by a group of children for the sixty-fifth anniversary of Victory Day.³⁹ Praising Lesik for his vospitanie of postovtsy, the poem sites him at the centre of Heroes’ Square. Although he is an integral part of Post No. 1, the local authorities recently felt the need to install two deputies to work alongside Lesik, to ensure provision for succession and the continuity of this tradition, which places the young generation at the heart of the memorial identity of the town.

Not all the activities for children are organised under the auspices of the school or family, however. Those without families live in social institutions, which are also included in the official memory campaign. Children from an orphanage near Myskhako are taken with veterans on trips to war monuments, led by the village youth worker and the head of the Veterans’ Council. In a similar fashion, coachloads of children from sanatoria in Gelendzhik are taken to visit the main Malaia zemlia monument on the sea shore. Furthermore, Oleg, a man in his late sixties, organises hiking and orienteering tours for teenagers from other regions to sites of memorial interest in the rugged hinterland of Malaia zemlia. Although this may be seen by some as ‘dark tourism’ for children,⁴⁰ its proponents argue for increasing historical understanding in what may also be an emotional experience that promotes cross-generational empathy while offering days out in the fresh air.

Monumental tourism is nothing new: trips for children to famous war sites were led by the Red Pathfinders, an organisation founded by the Komsomol and the army in 1965. The Vsesoiuznyi pokhod molodezhi dorogami otsov-geroev (Pan-Union Youth March along the Routes of our Heroic Fathers) encouraged Komsomol ratification of young people’s activities at sites of special wartime interest. According to Tumarkin, teenagers also took part in search activities, collecting military artefacts, while occasionally finding soldiers’ remains.⁴¹ Search work was started in a coordinated fashion in 1960 and children still seem to be interested in this type of activity, organised in Myskhako by School Number 27. The teenage searchers themselves sometimes take part in the re-interments of any human remains, marching alongside the coffins and giving a final rifle salute. This participation is apparently voluntary, as testified by a short film made by local schoolchildren of one such ceremony in 2008.⁴² The continuation of both monumental tourism and search activities well into the twenty-first century demonstrates a further, if sometimes necessary, continuity with the Soviet past, while also indicative of the apparent need still to complete the perceived duty of exhumation, identification and re-interment of the fallen.

If the state, according to the Bekar School syllabus for patriotism, wishes to combat disaffection amongst youth, it is clearly successful judging by the actions of the pupils of School Number 27. The attitude they display to fallen soldiers in their amateur video appears very different from that of the young men in the opening scenes of the film We are from the Future, whose cynicism about human remains was highlighted as they searched the bodies for marketable items. These youths were portrayed as examples of the extreme right-wing nationalism which has surfaced in Russia over the last two decades, particularly among young people, sometimes skinheads, epitomised by the Pamiat’ (Memory) group with its black shirts typical of a neo-fascist, often anti-Semitic ideology.⁴³

Although five respondents pointed to the growth of neo-fascism in major cities, my research in Novorossiisk uncovered a little but no overwhelming evidence of disaffection in regard to the war myth on the part of young people. Indeed, seven respondents across the age spectrum declared that it was impossible for children in the hero city of Novorossiisk to question the need for patriotism. Even young adults Misha, Polina and Yuliya stated that, although disaffection may exist elsewhere, there could be no dissent or disrespect for remembrance in Novorossiisk, while Boris, a veteran of Afghanistan, declared that ‘people like that could only exist on another planet’. Older respondents Zinaida and Lyudmila felt that, if young people were not interested in the war, it was simply the result of poor teaching, shifting the responsibility for any apathy towards the war myth on the part of young people onto the education system. Elderly Leonid roundly blamed the parents for a poor upbringing, reminiscent of the verdict handed down by the judge in the case of the young twerkers of Malaia zemlia.

Some isolated incidents of vandalism around the war graves in Myskhako have also been observed. This, though, is definitely the exception rather than the rule. The notable lack of disaffection on the part of the young may partly be due to the efforts of families, educational institutions and the town council, largely members of Putin’s United Russia party, which actively promotes the war cult. Young people are also the subject of a wider state campaign to mobilise youth in the cause of nationalism. For example, the pro-Kremlin nationalist youth movement, Nashi (Our People), was formed in time for Victory Day in 2005 to encourage patriotism, probably by no coincidence in the same year that the St George ribbon movement was first seen on the streets. These top-down intitiatives to mass produce patriotic young people were introduced partly as a response to the perceived threat of a potential rebellion in Russia similar to the 2004 Orange Revolution in Ukraine. By its very name, Nashi promoted unity of attitude to both the country and the state, whilst also provoking some feelings of xenophobia to those foreigners who were not ‘ours’. In an attempt to foster model citizens of the future, young Nashi members were encouraged, just like their Komsomol predecessors in the Soviet Union, to engage in civil activities and projects, often validated by their link to the war, for example giving presents to veterans.⁴⁴

If veterans are exploited by the state for their political capital, then the younger student generation appears also to be deployed strategically to drum the rest of the population into the desired quasi-military order, a tactic sometimes attributed to Nashi activists before this authoritarian, anti-Western movement was disbanded in 2012. The Nashi summer camp for young people aged from 18 to 30 organised annually at Lake Seliger continued to be run until 2014 by Rosmolodezh, the Federal Agency for Youth Affairs. Reminiscent of the Komsomol camps of the Soviet period, it promoted both patriotism and service in the armed forces in what appeared to be a training camp for the leaders of tomorrow. With its own eternal flame and links to elite regiments, it reproduced in the twenty-first century the military-patriotic work prevalent in the Komsomol in the latter stages of the Soviet Union. This national initiative was replaced in 2015 by a series of regional gatherings around similar themes. One of the first took political advantage of a southern site in the sun in the newly-annexed Crimea, although the momentum of the original Seliger camp was somewhat diluted.⁴⁵

Despite some evidence of local disaffection in Novorossiisk due perhaps to a lack of family interest or right-wing extremism, Councillor Andrievskii is optimistically convinced that, with the continuing conservative emphasis on vospitanie of the young citizens of Novorossiisk, the upcoming generation will continue to uphold and propagate the war myth. In general, my observations and responses from interviewees support the attitude that Novorossiisk has a special identity with respect to remembrance in comparison with other regional centres, which will probably override any potential disengagement among its young for years to come.

The cross-generational propagation of the war myth to the young depends on the mutual reinforcement of a complex and closed social network. The hierarchical diagram (Figure 15.1) shows the influence of the various agencies involved, highlighting the driving force of the state in its cultivation of the new war cult under the Putin regime, which feeds down directly via the mass media and indirectly via the regional and town authorities to the younger generation. Dating from the early years of the Beskozyrka ritual, young people have played a key role in the transmission of the war myth. Parents may even learn aspects of the war myth from their children through the largely unplanned mechanism of reverse propagation. This not only reinforces the traditional propagation mechanism, but also unifies the generations in commemorative practices. This is a tendency that may increasingly result in future mnemonic stagnation, apparently a desired product of the sponsors of the war cult today.

I have disclosed a mixture of top-down and bottom-up mechanisms for propagation of the war myth, where the state, school and family play the most important roles in socialisation of the young. Young people are subjected to a concerted mnemonic campaign which is successful in most cases, although resisted by some. The most ubiquitous means of transmission is the school, the nexus for other multiple influences, where propagation is most effective when it fosters the proactivity of students of all ages, and joins with the family to render lessons on local history more personal and geographically relevant for pupils. Attempts by some educational institutions to digitise memory appear also to make it more appealing to young people. Furthermore, my evidence suggests that the most effective methods of cross-generational transmission of memory are those that reduce the temporal and spatial distance between older and younger generations with the vividness of film or war reconstructions.

My interviews show that many modern citizens of Novorossiisk are avid consumers of television and newspaper revelations of the ‘truth’ about the war period, revealing a change in transmission mechanism from the oral propagation of the postwar years and the state-sponsored narrative of the Brezhnev and Putin war cults. Although access to information is changing, respondents indicate a continuing reliance on informal family discussions, although eye-witness testimony is now scarcely viable. For the moment both the state and the family remain guardians of memory, while the local authority takes responsibility for the custody of the many artefacts that will replace direct oral propagation in the future.

Through their youth policy, covering both formal education and special projects such as summer camps, the Putin and Medvedev governments have managed to unify many thousands of young people as a political force to project the state’s desired nationalistic image. With a renewed emphasis on vospitanie and patriotism under the Putin regime, the youngest and the oldest generations are increasingly united in often contrived social meetings – a forum for the transmission of memory under the conditions of a new war cult that aims to revive the traditional moral values of the Brezhnev era. This includes the cultivation of an attitude which regards military service and patriotic courage in a positive light, where making war (successfully) is valued and those not willing actively to endorse the war myth are frowned upon by society.