Article 13 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation establishes a mandatory norm: no ideology may be instituted as state-sponsored or obligatory. The Constitution was adopted following a nationwide referendum in December 1993.
Thirty years ago, the country effectively acknowledged its defeat on the global geopolitical stage. In the context of the near-total collapse of the “USSR” project, what sovereignty or coherent system of indigenous ideological views could realistically be discussed? A “raw-materials appendage” of the West across virtually all spheres of life inevitably adopted the templates of the victors and, as a result, rapidly began to transform into a colony.
From as early as the late 1980s, Soviet citizens were deliberately instilled with a sense of shame for their own history and contempt for their country. Enormous funds were spent on denigrating our history and on recoding the worldview of young people, who were led—through films, the internet, and glamorous opinion leaders—to believe that everything in the USSR had been bad and that its existence was a historical mistake.
In return, a one-directional path was proposed, turning people into genderless individuals without kin or tribe, severed from their roots and endowed with a sense of belonging to the false freedoms of the global world. This process continues today. Under the guise of promoting digital thinking, analog thinking is being displaced. Trial balloons are launched in the form of “expert opinions,” followed by the emergence of “irrefutable evidence presented by historians”.
From there, the process unfolds along a well-worn path: an active, well-funded minority “subjugates” a passive, voiceless majority mired in doubt. Politicians then take up the idea—those for whom approval ratings matter above all else. Before one has time to look back, a new interpretation of history is already enshrined in law. This unfolds against the backdrop of a rapid loss of continuity—the natural passing of a generation that still retained a living connection to generations shaped by a different worldview, one formed within the framework of analog thinking.
There is yet another aspect. The foundation of elite university education in the countries of the “golden billion” is classical philology, theology, history, philosophy, politics, and other humanities disciplines, while the exact sciences (mathematics, physics, economics, and others) and engineering fields are regarded as the domain of a small number of enthusiasts. School curricula in these countries do not include the exact sciences as mandatory subjects. Unfortunately, this contemporary system of upbringing, education, and cultivation of national elites in those countries has also been adopted by our own.
Former U.S. National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski put it bluntly:
“Strengthening the position of U.S. culture as a ‘model’ for all nations is an indispensable strategy for sustaining U.S. hegemony.”
American political scientist Hans Morgenthau argued that “the most successful state policy is aimed not at conquering territory or controlling economic life, but at conquering and controlling the minds of people.”
The campaign to colonize consciousness poses a threat to our entire technogenic civilization and its development. It destroys ideological sovereignties and indirectly governs states; inserts cognitive wedges and incites geopolitical conflicts; eradicates philosophical independence and facilitates the cultivation of pro-Western factions; imposes a Western model of development and undermines autonomous progress; creates conditions for the degradation of the level and quality of state regulation of the education system, forcing it onto a chaotic trajectory of development; and continuously refines new technologies in this effort, including the use of artificial intelligence, acting ever more covertly and pursuing increasingly expansive objectives.
The results of such influence on our education system are evident. Today, the situation has reached the point where children are simply drilled to pass two subjects for the Basic State Examination (OGE) in the 9th grade and three subjects for the Unified State Examination (EGE). In essence, they are taught how to solve tests rather than being given a deep and coherent system of knowledge. The EGE is an exam for assessing teachers, while students and their parents need knowledge and a non-exhausting educational process. Topics in textbooks are presented illogically: arithmetic, geometry, and trigonometry, for example, are combined into a single modern arithmetic textbook, making it difficult for children to master the rules of each discipline. Unnecessary simplifications are gradually eliminating such important subjects as calligraphy, basic logic, astronomy, and technical drawing.
The Soviet educational curriculum was distinguished by its scope and integrity. Subjects were studied thoroughly and in depth because teachers relied on unified methodological guides in which everything was prescribed in detail, down to how a child should be seated at a desk.
On November 9, 2022, by decree titled “Fundamentals of State Policy for the Preservation and Strengthening of Traditional Russian Spiritual and Moral Values,” President Vladimir Putin clearly delineated constructive and destructive ideologies. The former serves the interests of the citizen and the state; the latter serves their enemies.
It is evident that we must counter Western practitioners with our own national doctrine for educating future generations. What kind of graduate do we at Empress Catherine II Saint Petersburg Mining University seek to cultivate? A patriot of both country and profession, a person of broad intellectual horizons, and a bearer of strong moral and ethical principles. The key factor here is the environment—the academic community into which a former school student enters—and the opportunities available to them beyond purely professional training.
These include, naturally, volunteer activities: from custodianship of Nevsky Pyatachok and Krasnaya Gorka, to students’ participation in producing so-called “dry showers” for the special military operation. The opportunity to acquire competencies in parallel with one’s core studies—both industrial and digital—helps students become true enthusiasts of their profession; today, they may choose from more than 300 such programs. This is in addition to over 40 specialized evening clubs. One further detail regarding the broadening of horizons: alongside English, students may study Chinese and Persian during their education. Added to this are international internships that open a window onto the world. Sport is also an essential component—after all, what kind of mining engineer can do without it? As for ethical norms, their formation is driven primarily by the institution of mentorship, involving senior students, faculty members, industry practitioners, and academic supervisors.
But what, in fact, is “ideology”—not in bureaucratic abstractions, but through living examples as applied to education? In Ancient Rome, the central postulate taught in schools of the third level was the maxim of Plautus: Homo homini lupus est—man is a wolf to man. Boys were raised first and foremost to be aggressive, in accordance with the needs of the state. In the Middle Ages, the Ten Commandments became the foundation of theology and all other sciences. Under Nicholas I, the Minister of Public Education Sergey Semyonovich Uvarov formalized the triad “Orthodoxy — Autocracy — Nationality.”
During his tenure, in 1848, the “Instructions for the Institute of the Corps of Mining Engineers”—the principal engineering institution of the Russian Empire—were approved. This multi-page document regulated students’ lives in meticulous detail, from the list of compulsory disciplines to ballroom dancing and attendance at the institute’s house church. A self-respecting state cultivated its future elite according to its own templates rather than borrowing external ones. This is precisely what we at Empress Catherine II Saint Petersburg Mining University today understand by the primacy of ideology as a program for goal-setting and meaning-making.
History repeats itself. In the same 1840s of the nineteenth century, the foreign agent Alexander Herzen, writing from London, dreamed that Odesa would become a “free English city.” We all know Lenin’s famous phrase: “The Decembrists awakened Herzen. Herzen unfolded revolutionary agitation.” Perhaps the emigrant journal The Bell (Kolokol) can be considered as the starting point of systematic efforts to create a nihilist stratum within Russia.
Today, geopolitical confrontation and the resolution of our country’s strategic goals objectively contribute to the growth of patriotic sentiment, mutual support, discipline, and cohesion in society. At the same time, however, there is clear political influence exerted by a number of figures drawn from a self-serving, mercenary, and to a significant extent Western-oriented elite—an elite that our president has identified as “national traitors.”
It is clear where they came from. In the 1990s, the process began of mass commercial education for Russia’s wealthy youth at Western educational institutions. It is evident that universities in Britain and the United States cultivate an ideology of social-hierarchical division of the surrounding world into “us” and “them.” Today, the first “Harvard hatchlings” are approaching fifty, and these are individuals who exert influence across the entire vertical of power. Yet the process has not stopped. Even now, graduates of foreign universities become adherents of Anglo-Saxon views and values instilled during prolonged educational and formative processes, and this “new” worldview turns them into “sleeper agents,” capable of practically demonstrating their usefulness to an alien ideology and, possibly, later obtaining its citizenship.
The original article by the Rector of Empress Catherine II Saint Petersburg Mining University, Vladimir Litvinenko, was published on the website of RIA Novosti.