Employees of Russia’s largest state corporations—Rostec, Gazprom, Russian Railways, Rosseti, Transneft, and another 42 enterprises—have completed a seven-day training course titled «Fundamentals of Russian Statehood» at the National Center «Russia.» More than 1,500 people attended the lectures of this propagandistic discipline. The program was organized on Kremlin instructions by RANEPA (the presidential administration’s main cadre-training school) and the All-Russian Popular Front.
The ideologized course «Fundamentals of Russian Statehood» was introduced for all first-year university students back in 2023. Its development was overseen by political strategist Andrey Polosin, a close associate of Sergey Kiriyenko, who heads the Kremlin’s domestic politics bloc. Polosin now serves as vice-rector at RANEPA.
Course participants are taught that Russia is a «state-civilization.» They receive the country’s history through a civilizational lens—one that most contemporary scholars regard as unscientific. According to this framework, various civilizations arise and vanish on Earth, following a life-cycle trajectory much like that of a living organism: birth, flourishing, decline, and death. History is no longer a single progressive march but a kaleidoscope of succeeding civilizations. One of the best-known proponents of this view is the Eurasianist historian Lev Gumilev, whose ideas have long resonated with Vladimir Putin. The president has repeatedly spoken of the «dying West» and the «Russian civilization on the march.»
Participants are also instilled with the notion that Russians are supposedly organically inclined toward self-sacrifice for the state and that collectivism inherently trumps individualism. The same spirit permeates the ideologized writings of another Kiriyenko ally—Alexander Kharichev, head of the Kremlin’s social monitoring directorate.
Through «Fundamentals of Russian Statehood,» Kiriyenko’s political team seeks to indoctrinate young people by embedding quasi-ideological tenets. Kharichev writes about «raising the person of the future,» who must «meet the task of preserving and developing our civilizational system.» The course is one of the key tools for such upbringing and citizen indoctrination.
Until recently, the program’s reach remained limited: it covered only first-year students from the 2023−2025 academic years. Senior students and, especially, adult Russians stayed outside its scope. Yet Kiriyenko has long positioned himself as an advocate of total state influence over anyone even marginally dependent on the authorities. After he took over the domestic politics bloc in 2016, «corporate mobilization» for elections expanded beyond public-sector workers to include employees of state corporations and pro-government businesses. Now a similar approach is being applied to «corporate indoctrination».
Gaps in the «patriotic» education of state-corporation employees are being filled through mass express courses. It is likely that in the near future the program will first reach middle and junior management, with lectures for rank-and-file staff organized directly in offices and at production sites. Judging by corporate practices (which are very close to Kiriyenko’s heart), the next step could be rolling out «Fundamentals» for civil servants and budget-sector employees.
The current scope of Kremlin indoctrination is already beginning, in many respects, to surpass that of the Soviet era. In the USSR, Marxism-Leninism courses mainly targeted university students. The Soviet authorities did not bother ordinary citizens with secondary education at their workplaces with lecture propaganda. The presidential administration’s political bloc is now reaching even this category. Formally, course participation is presented as voluntary—just as «corporate mobilization» for elections is framed as voluntary. Such a «volunteer» understands perfectly well that failing to heed the management’s «persistent request» is highly likely to close off career prospects and may even cost them their job. As long as people cling to their positions in state corporations, the audience for these propagandistic lectures will remain. However, the effect of such processing is likely to be even lower than among students. Seasoned professionals are unlikely to embrace talk of «self-sacrifice,» «collectivism,» and a «civilization on the march.»
A Veteran in the Central Election Commission
The Amur Region Legislative Assembly has nominated Anatoly Sysoyev, an assistant to the governor of Tver Region and Hero of Russia, for the Central Election Commission (CEC) under the so-called regional quota. Until now Sysoyev had no connection whatsoever to Amur Region: he was born in Tver, studied in Nizhny Novgorod, served in the Southern Military District as deputy chief of engineering troops for the 18th Combined Arms Army (i.e., senior officer ranks), and most recently worked as an adviser to the Tver governor.
The Amur quota slot in the CEC was originally intended for Artur Potapov, a war participant from Primorye. However, the Primorye governor decided to keep Potapov in the region, and another veteran was sent to the CEC instead.
One can conclude that the presidential administration’s domestic politics bloc is consistently trying to embed military quotas even into structures where such a practice seems out of place. The CEC is supposed to be staffed by professional lawyers and election-law specialists, whereas participants in the fighting in Ukraine are generally far removed from that field. By introducing such quotas, the political bloc appears to be seeking to please Vladimir Putin, who has repeatedly called military personnel the «new elite.»
The bloc’s tactic looks rather cunning: the media carry a steady stream of news about war participants being appointed to various positions, yet in reality most genuine military officers end up in relatively insignificant roles tied to youth policy, patriotic education, or work with other «veterans.» More influential posts go to seasoned bureaucrats or deputies who formally «went to the front.»
Had Potapov been nominated to the CEC, a different scenario would have played out. He is a career military man, but from 2018 to 2022 he served as a member of the Primorye Election Commission. In other words, he was not a stranger to the electoral system. But it was precisely that connection to a regional election commission that disrupted plans for his CEC nomination. Governors are forced to pay «tribute» to the Kremlin by promoting war participants to posts in their regions. Naturally, they prefer to announce appointments or nominate for elections people who were already part of the system even before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Such «hybrid» figures are scarce, however, which makes them a valuable resource. Regional and federal bureaucrats use them to meet formal KPIs on advancing the «new elite» while avoiding the admission of outright dilettantes into the management vertical. For example, Kursk Region head Alexander Khinshtein appointed «special military operation participant» Sergey Fofanov as his deputy for agriculture. Before deployment, Fofanov had been director of Neftflot JSC and deputy head of the Samara Region Forestry Agency.
The appointment of career officer Sysoyev to the CEC slightly deviates from this «hybrid» pattern. Yet it fits another logic: the Kremlin can offer real military personnel honorary posts with decent salaries but without genuine influence. Considering that Sysoyev was previously seen as a contender for the Tver governorship, his move to the CEC looks more like the granting of a sinecure.
Distributing military personnel to positions lacking serious authority and control over meaningful budgets risks de-professionalizing the work of agencies and structures that the Kremlin deems suitable «sacrifices» for such appointments. A single military appointee is unlikely to radically alter the CEC’s functioning for now, but if the military quota in the commission begins to grow, it could seriously disrupt its operations. Alternatively, the CEC will continue to be directly managed by people close to the political bloc, while the role of military members will be reduced to formally signing whatever documents are placed in their folders.
