How to profit from education in Russia

Illustration by Andrzej Zaręba

This largely depends on the people sitting on the board of the publishing houses and the level of support they enjoy from the regime. As a result, the ruling elite increasingly influences how the younger generation of Russians are educated, while the owners of the publishing houses enjoy exclusive publishing rights – a lucrative business in its own right.

Monopolising knowledge

Russian high school students tend to use history textbooks from the Prosveshcheniye publishing house. It is said their shareholders have over 70 per cent of the educational material market, even 90 per cent in some oblasts. According to Rospyechat – the Federal Agency of Prints and Mass Communication – Prosveshcheniye published 60.9 million textbooks in 2015. In comparison Vyentana-Graf published 9.8 million and Drofa, 7.8 million. The man behind the incredible rise of Prosveshcheniye is Arkady Rotenberg, an oligarch, sparring partner and friend of President Vladimir Putin. His ventures have received plenty of lucrative contracts, such as those granted during the preparations for the Winter Olympic Games in Sochi. Rotenberg is also a co-founder of the SMP Bank and Stroygazmontazh, a company that constructs gas pipelines and energy networks. In addition, the oligarch is the main shareholder of Giprotrans, which won the contract for building the bridge from Crimea to the Kerch Strait.

Prosveshcheniye’s gradual monopolisation of the market of educational textbooks began in 2011. At that time the government announced the sale of the publishing house as part of a privatisation plan. An open contest was skipped and in September 2011 Putin, then prime minister, signed a directive that made Gazprombank the institution responsible for finding a suitable buyer. Three months later a winner was declared. Prosveshcheniye was bought by Olma Media Group, a publishing house based in Moscow dealing with fantasy literature, for 71.5 million US dollars. At the time, Olma was a small publishing house with a 1.8 per cent share of the Russian publishing market.  One of the owners of Olma was Oleg Tkach, a member of the pro-Putin party United Russia and a member of the Federation Council from 2004. What is more, thanks to Olma, Putin published a book called Let’s Learn Judo with Vladimir Putin.

Meanwhile, Prosveshcheniye’s shareholders increased the amount of roubles in their pockets. In 2012 the publishing house was generating a profit close to 41 million US dollars and by 2013 as much as 57 million dollars. Two years after the sale, revenue had surpassed the price Prosveshcheniye was originally acquired for. Furthermore, just a few weeks after the sale of the publishing house, Olma sold it to a company registered in Cyprus for an unknown amount. The company then bought 99 per cent of Olma’s shares. This is how the owners of Prosveshcheniye became practically impossible to identify, as companies registered in Cyprus do not have the obligation to disclose the names of their shareholders. The tracking of registered transactions is also very difficult.

The media was beginning to notice the significant loan (54.2 million US dollars) offered by the SMP Bank (established and controlled by Arkady Rotenberg) to Olma. This is how the transaction of Prosveshcheniye was made possible. Just after it was finalised, Olma returned the money to the bank from funds it had received from Gazprombank – the same bank that was given the responsibility to find a buyer for Prosveshcheniye. Two years after the privatisation, on October 31st 2013, Rotenberg took over as chairman of the board of Prosveshcheniye creating a krisha. Literally translated as roof, in this case it means protection of the publishing house by the police, the FSB, ministry of interior, the prosecutors’ office, and local and federal authorities. In 2017 Rotenberg resigned as chairman of the board. He explained it was because of the sanctions list he was put on by the EU and the United States, and the negative influence they had on the operations of the publishing house. The oligarch is still co-operating with Prosveshcheniye, which keeps the krisha alive. Due to the fact that Olma was registered in Cyprus, we are unable to know if Rotenberg kept or sold his shares.

It is clear that relationships exist between Prosveshcheniye and the Russian education ministry; or, more specifically, between the current minister, Olga Vassilieva, and the co-owner of the publishing house, Vladimir Uzun. These contacts have led to several instances of fraud – one example is the digitalisation of the ministry’s financing of Prosveshcheniye’s interactive lessons intended for all school subjects.

Reaching the goal by all means

There are many examples of how Prosveshcheniye monopolised Russian publishing. In May 2016 the Moscow department of education wrote a letter to nearly 140 primary schools in the city, recommending that they procured textbooks and educational material from Proshvyeshchenya for grades one through four in the 2016/2017 school year. The employees of the publishing house claimed they had no knowledge of the letter. In July 2016 institutions affiliated with regional and municipal education received a letter with a recommendation made by the Third History and Social Science Teachers Congress to buy a textbook released by Prosveshcheniye. The textbook, edited by Anatoli Torkunov, was designed for grades one through six, with the letter claiming it was the most optimal version of national history teaching. In the Congress’s final report, no mention of Prosveshcheniye appears.

Promoting Prosveshcheniye is a way to fight competition. A good example is the frequent criticism by the regime and state media of another history textbook published by Drofa. In November 2017 Dmitri Kiselyov, the main Kremlin propagandist and broadcaster, referred to a speech made by the high school student, Nikolai Dyesyatnichenko, in the German Bundestag on German Memorial Day. Nikolai had studied the story of a German soldier who died after being captured by the Soviets after the battle of Stalingrad. He called for an end to conflicts around the world, highlighting the fact that there were many young people on the side of the Third Reich that did not want to sacrifice their lives in the war. The student soon became an anti-hero in Russia and was criticised for grieving over German soldiers who died in the Great Patriotic War.

Kiselyov argued that the student should not be scrutinised as his speech was influenced by the content of Drofa’s tenth grade textbook. He pointed out that the textbook had poor coverage of the Battle of Stalingrad, a mere one and a half pages. It begins with Stalin’s famous “Not a step back” order and a description of the barrier troops responsible for enforcing it. Kiselyov also claimed the writers of the textbook were too focused on the suffering (the cold and hunger) of the German units surrounding Stalingrad. He believed that Nikolai’s speech in the Bundestag was proof that “Russia needs a unified narrative regarding the Great Patriotic War, where it was deceivingly attacked by fascist Germany. … We won and liberated Europe from the brown pestilence.”

Kiselyov was wrong, however. Nikolai’s school was using a Prosveshcheniye textbook, the History of Russia from Antiquity to the 17th Century. Even if Kiselyov’s accusations were unfounded, the staff at Drofa claimed their history textbook was in line with the documents that outline the basis for history teaching in Russia. In December 2017 the same textbook came under fire from the ministry of education and science as it was forwarded to the Russian Academy of Sciences for additional expert review. The goal of this was to examine how the “return of Crimea to Russia” and the war in Ukraine were presented. The ministry was displeased about the following text on Ukraine’s revolution and the annexation of Crimea in 2014: “The revolution that began in Kyiv was a phenomenon in international politics. It pushed the Crimean Peninsula towards another direction.” The textbook, however, received an overall positive response from the Academy.

A revolution in the Russian education system

The year 2013 marked the beginning of a revolution in Russian education. Teaching was changed from concentric to linear. The number of textbooks in circulation was limited and the procedure of unifying the teaching of history (and other subjects) followed. After Putin declared there was a need to have a single history textbook, a process was set into motion to remove textbooks the regime viewed as unsuitable. There was competition to produce a new Russian textbook under the auspices of the Russian Historical Society. It is worth noting that the head of the society is the speaker of the Duma, Sergiei Narishkin. He was also head of a 28-member committee which prevents attempts at falsifying history and hurting Russian interests in the past.

The Historical Society is under the direct control of the regime. From the eight candidates that entered the competition, three publishing houses received a positive response from the society: Russkiyeslovo, Drofa and Prosveshcheniye, though only Drofa and Prosveshcheniye had its national history books of the 20th century accepted. This is why the authorities’ criticism is mainly directed towards Drofa.

It is also worth mentioning the context in which these changes are taking place, including the sacking of Dmitri Livanov, a former education minister, whose opinions often clashed with official Kremlin policy. He was replaced by Olga Vassilieva, who had a part in creating a Russian language textbook and was loyal to the Kremlin. Another issue was the scandal connected to the PhD of Vladimir Miedinsky, the minister of culture. In 2016 many researchers wanted to strip him of his doctorate due to plagiarism and references to non-existent publications. One year later it was decided that he would keep his degree, which angered part of the academic community (including members of the Russian Academy of Sciences) who call for less interference by the authorities.

Manipulating the next generation

The new textbook is a compressed version of history showing selected fragments of the past. The decision of what materials to include was dependent on both arbitrary selections of content and a need to present history in a way that students could easily absorb. In Russia a textbook is primarily a tool to shape the way the past is interpreted. This is why the regime has attempted to monopolise the market of educational materials, criticise Drofa and fill top educational positions with those most loyal to the Kremlin.

The market for educational materials should not be a battleground for historical thought or profit. It should be a space where both teachers and students can find quality content to inspire learning. Outside of school, young people get their knowledge about the past mostly from television, the internet, books (which often have the Kremlin’s approval) and sensationalist journalism. The authors are often treated as experts even if they have no academic credentials.

All of this leads to an absence of a reliable and accurate source of knowledge of the past. This, in turn, makes it easier to manipulate a younger generation of Russians. However, there is still hope that teachers will be able to inspire the influential development of historical conscience amongst students. Many of the teachers prepare classes based on their own knowledge and experience, while treating textbooks as a list of issues they need to discuss at different stages of their students’ education.

Translated by Daniel Gleichgewicht

Dagmara Moskwa is a research assistant at the Institute of Political Studies with the Polish Academy of Sciences. She is completing her PhD at the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań. Her research interests include memory studies, especially Russia’s contemporary historical policy.

Education in Russia, Prosveshcheniye, Russia