Stolen youth

Bans and workarounds

“Thank you, another part of my life is destroyed ... Carry on like this and soon I’ll have no friends.”

The comment appeared under a video discussing the blocking of popular gaming platform Roblox by the Russian authorities, following earlier restrictions on Discord and YouTube in 2024.

Discord, which allowed users to make audio and video calls with little delay, quickly became popular with gamers. Users could also create open and closed chats and communicate with large groups of people from all over the world. Roskomnadzor said it was concerned that such chats contained extremist material.

“Sometimes it feels like Russian schoolchildren are smarter than all of Roskomnadzor,” another teenager wrote, referring to the speed with which instructions for bypassing blocks appeared online, including the use of special software or VPN services.

Nadezhda, the mother of an 11th-grade pupil from the Khanty-Mansiysk autonomous district in the Urals, said her family also relied on a VPN. “My son has various programmes and VPNs on his laptop to bypass blocks, so Roblox works for him,” she said.

Oksana, a mother from Moscow, also uses a VPN. “I have two children, aged 12 and five. After YouTube was blocked, we installed a VPN. My eldest did it himself, while I installed it for my youngest, and he can already use it with ease.”

Pressure to the max

Another concern for teenagers has been the pressure to install the state-backed messenger MAX, which has been touted as an alternative to WhatsApp — whose traffic fell by 70–80% this week as part of a phased restriction on the service imposed by the watchdog — and Telegram.

Experts have described MAX as a convenient way for the authorities to collect user data in one place and say it is fairly vulnerable to hackers.

“Even if you ignore all the surveillance, MAX just isn’t any good. It has none of the chat functions, channels or stickers that Telegram has,” one user commented online.

Nadezhda says that her son was forced to download the messenger by his teachers. “I bought him a very simple Samsung. He installed MAX, registered where he needed to, turned off the phone and threw it into a drawer.”

“No one but my grandmother has installed MAX,” says Oksana from Moscow, a mother of two. “The kindergarten told us to install it, but everyone uses Telegram instead.”

Superpower propaganda

Since September, so-called Important Conversations classes have been held in kindergartens in 22 Russian regions, with teachers working from a specially devised textbook. According to its footnotes, each lesson is designed to foster “civic, patriotic and ethical” values.

Children are told that all countries, except Russia, are small. They are asked to imagine themselves as “sentinels on the Kremlin wall” and to “play at being soldiers”. Other chapters focus on friendship, “good deeds” and polite language.

Important Conversations have been part of the school curriculum for over three years. The classes focus mainly on patriotism and “service to the fatherland and responsibility for its fate”, though they also address less political topics such as responsible treatment of animals and conflict resolution.

One lesson for older pupils, titled “Russia — a country of winners”, marking Defender of the Fatherland Day on 23 February, focuses on what it calls the “heroes of the special military operation”, the Kremlin’s preferred term for the war in Ukraine.

“Russia has always defended its land and citizens from enemies and has always won,” the curriculum for grades 10 and 11 states, citing historical battles such as the Battle of Borodino during Napoleon’s invasion of Russia, the Second World War and the ongoing invasion of Ukraine as symbols of Russia’s “indomitable spirit”.

For first graders, the wording is simpler but the message is similar: “In the history of the fatherland, there have been many battles during which our ancestors had to defend their land. The enemy has never been able to defeat them”, the curriculum reads.

One Moscow-based teacher, speaking anonymously, said much depended on the approach taken within individual schools. Some teachers, he said, can turn Important Conversations classes into really useful discussions, without strictly following the guidelines. However, he added that a conflict of values inevitably arose between the Kremlin’s ideological propaganda and the more humanistic values taught in Russian literature classes.

Traditional values

Another highlight this year has been visits by Orthodox activists to schools and colleges. In St. Petersburg, a diocesan Centre for the Protection of Maternity regularly reports on meetings with pupils about chastity, traditional values and the importance of large families.

During one such meeting, schoolgirls learned that “contraception does not work” and were taught to “save themselves” for their husbands.

In the republic of Chuvashia, in the Volga region, Father Boris, an Orthodox priest, told schoolchildren that marriages break down because of premarital sex, and “love in a marriage is when one partner makes sacrifices for the other”.

In a village in the Nizhny Novgorod region, 14-year-old schoolgirls examined embryo models as part of a discussion on women’s place in the modern world.

The Sphere Foundation, a human rights group, surveyed teachers and social workers, and found increased pressure in schools around reproductive issues. “Some 68% of respondents reported an increase in activity by Orthodox representatives in schools and social institutions. Officially, these visits take place under the guise of spiritual and moral education, but the conversations focus on condemning abortion and sexuality.”

Harsher punishments

The state also continues to punish schoolchildren who express their political position or identity. In April, 15-year-old Sevastyan Sultanov, from Tatarstan, was given a curfew, forbidden from attending public events, and not allowed to leave town without first being given permission by the authorities for graffiti featuring slain opposition leader Alexey Navalny.

In September, a Moscow teenager who kissed another young man was accused of posing a threat “to public safety and morality” and charged with promoting what officials called “propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations”.

State television has meanwhile repeatedly broadcast reports about teenagers accused of sabotage or terrorism.

“Two schoolchildren from Yekaterinburg received instructions online to set fire to a train,” one programme said, describing similar cases in Stavropol, southern Russia, where teenagers allegedly threw an incendiary device at a veterans’ organisation for a promised payment of 50,000 rubles (€540).

Since the war began, at least 158 teenagers have been convicted of sabotage or terrorism-related offences, and that number is likely to grow. In late October, lawmakers in the State Duma unanimously backed lowering the age of criminal liability for such crimes from 16 to 14, opening the way for life sentences.

Only one deputy, a co-author of the bill, and member of the Communist Party, Yury Sinelshchikov, expressed any doubt. “If a person does not understand the essence of the charge, how should they be punished?” he asked.

Online, teenagers continue to respond with dark humour to announcements of fresh restrictions. “If they block Minecraft, I’ll chew through Roskomnadzor’s cable,” one comment reads.

“Are we allowed to breathe?” another asks.