February 23, 2026

Putin Wants His Childhood Back


Putin Wants His Childhood Back
Happy Soviet kids. The Russian Life files.

In January, the Ministry of Education announced plans to implement a decree regarding the mandatory assessment of student behavior in schools. And now TASS has reported that these assessments will be introduced starting September 1, 2026.

This is the final step in a ritual dance that began more than a year ago when the issue was raised at President Vladimir Putin's annual meeting with members of the Human Rights Council. “To be honest, I didn't even know that we lacked a grade for behavior,” Putin reportedly declared.

For those who lived through the USSR and the practice of grading behavior, this sort of legal action is very familiar: someone asks the leader about a problem, and his answer is vague and full of hints, but that's enough for the relevant departments and institutions to start rushing to present projects that bring this “collective” decision to life. Indeed, Putin suggested “discussing” the situation with “specialists, with the parent community” and then “making a balanced decision” together. After that, a trial system for assessing behavior was launched in several dozen schools across various regions of Russia, including Chechnya and the Russia-occupied region of Luhansk, Ukraine.

At the moment, the experiment is ongoing, and results are expected to be announced in April, although, of course, they are already clear. The only intrigue is what sort of grading scale will be introduced: several systems are being tested: a "pass" or "fail" system, a three-point scale, and a direct adaptation of the five-point system used in the pre-perestroika Soviet Union: "excellent," "good," "satisfactory," "unsatisfactory," and "very bad."

State media emphasized that Russia is not the only country to have such evaluation systems. Yet, it is obvious that, in the modern context, this decision is part of a triumphant return to the great past, and that such grades may be used to pressure children to adopt certain behavioral norms, as was the case in Soviet schools.

In this sense, Putin's remark, which set the process in motion, is comically characteristic. As if he had slept through everything that happened to the country after the collapse of the USSR and, suddenly waking up, asked: "Wait, is Ukraine an independent state now? Isn't calling the opposition 'enemies of the people' still in fashion? Are grades for behavior no longer given? No way, let’s bring everything back."

 

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