Friday, August 19, 2016

Russia's New Education Minister.

While the world's attention is focused elsewhere, President Putin made a step which potentially may have a strategic ramifications. He accepted "resignation" of Russia's Education Minister Dmitri Livanov and appointed to this position Olga Vasilieva.  I am going to abstain here from "analytical" speculations on what Livanov's appointment to the post of President's Envoy on trade and economic relations with Ukraine means--for that we have an army of "analysts" who will, as always, read into it much more than it is in reality, but having Vasilieva as Education Minister is a game changer. Livanov was an ultra-liberal creature who, together with a cabal of liberals in power, dealt a lot of damage to once superb system of education. Vasilieva is everything liberal "elites" hate and dread. 

Three words associated with this highly educated (Ph.D in history, also a graduate of Diplomatic Academy, widely published) woman are: Patriotism, Conservatism, Orthodoxy. Do you hear the skulls cracking in Moscow High School Of Economics? Vasilieva is an embodiment of what was being steadily withdrawn from Russia's education system--last vestiges of extremely high academic level of education, own educational tradition dating way back before any Bologna (rather, baloney) Process  existed: patriotism, focus on precise sciences and Russian literature and history, and, in general, educating people with the wholesome world view, with principles and knowledge. Here is one of Vasilieva's many quotes: 


"Our country is the only country in the world, which, after 1917, in 1991 survived second social-political crisis. As in post-revolutionary period before 1934, the time span between 1991 through 2002 was the time when there was no talk about patriotism, the very notion of patriotism, love to Fatherland, heroism was uprooted and did not exist in public consciousness."     

I can not emphasize enough the importance of references in this single phrase, especially for 1934. I can already imagine cohorts of liberal "journalists" screaming bloody murder and "back to Stalinism". But it is not about Stalinism, unless one considers a close match in world views by Stalin and Czar Alexander III (a man Vasilieva admires), who stated that Russia has only two allies--her Army and Navy, a coincidence. It is a great move by Putin and, hopefully, a long awaited relief from the idiocy of the imposed worst features of the Western education, which long ago stopped being such and transformed itself into indoctrination with the values which are in the foundation of today's troubles in US and, especially so--in Europe. As Vasilieva stated: "today's students are tomorrow's nation".  And the times when nations rise and non-nations fall are at hand. 
 

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