One morning this spring, Sarah Blesener, an American documentary photographer, got a chance to visit a school in the Moscow suburb of Dmitrov, where lessons in basic military training are available to students a few times a week. She was expecting to see kids in uniforms, saluting the flag and doing drills, much like the courses one might find in U.S. high schools that offer programs for cadets. Instead she found a classroom of students, some as young as 11, learning to assemble and load Kalashnikov assault rifles. Out in the schoolyard, a safety lesson focused on the proper use of biohazard suits in the event of nuclear or chemical fallout.
Her photo of one the students that day, who stood for a portrait in a gas mask and bulky rubber gloves, became the first in Blesener’s study of what Russians refer to as military-patriotic education. Through a series of speeches and official decrees, President Vladimir Putin and his government have recently made this curriculum the norm across the country, offering adolescents a range of instruction in ideology, religion and preparedness for war.
