‘Some parents said they’d break my knees’: the teacher who exposed Putin’s primary school propaganda

Interview ‘Some parents said they’d break my knees’: the teacher who exposed Putin’s primary school propaganda Amelia Gentleman Grenade-throwing contests replaced PE and ‘denazification’ speeches became homework. Pavel Talankin’s undercover film about his school’s indoctrination drive won a Bafta and is tipped for an Oscar, but has left him in exile I n order to watch the Oscar-nominated documentary in which many of them have starring roles, pupils at Karabash School No 1 have had to source bootlegged copies, viewing the film in private, on their phones or their laptops. Last week’s Bafta best documentary win for Mr Nobody Against Putin has been studiously ignored by Russian state media, and the prize the film won at Sundance last year was also met with silence. Staff at the school and government officials in the Kremlin seem united in their desire to pretend that they know nothing about the film. But Pavel Talankin, school teacher, co-director and hero of the documentary, is hopeful that the film’s inclusion at the Oscars later this month will make more Russians aware of its existence. His footage shows his colleagues grappling with the rollout of a new government-mandated, patriotic education programme designed to mould primary schoolchildren into Putin enthusiasts and supporters of the war against Ukraine. The documentary reveals Russia’s potent propaganda machine in action. “I hope it will help these children in the future to understand that they were the victims of all this,” Talankin says. “This film is primarily aimed at Russians, showing them what is happening inside their schools now.” Talankin, whose role at the school was to coordinate and film school events and extracurricular activities, spent two-and-a-half years documenting the mass indoctrination drive. Footage of the classes had to be uploaded regularly to a government website as evidence that staff were fulfilling the education ministry’s required quota of patriotic teaching. He was also, at great ...