Under the title ‘Shame to the traitors!’, teachers at a school in occupied Donetsk oblast videoed a symbolic ‘execution’ of supposed ‘enemies of Russia’, otherwise known as critics of the regime of Vladimir Putin and, in some cases, of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine. The teachers were, in fact, merely aiming darts at the photos of these ‘enemies’, and the whole videoed spectacle is almost comically absurd. It certainly seemed, however, as though at least the teacher presenting the video was taking her role in fighting ‘enemies of Russia’ seriously.
The teachers believed that they were responding to an ‘initiative’ from Russia’s ruling ‘United Russia’ party calling for such ‘educational measures’ to mark Putin’s birthday on 7 October. They were presented with a list of alleged ‘traitors’. Most are known for their active opposition (from abroad) to the current Putin regime and, in the case of singer Alla Pugacheva for her public opposition to the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The list did not just, however, contain the following names: Mikhail Khodorkovsky; Ilya Yashin; Pyotr Verzilov; Mark Feygin, one of the lawyers who represented Ukrainian political prisoner Nadiya Savchenko; Maksym Kats; Aleksandr Nevzorov; Ilya Valamov; Yury Dud and Alla Pugacheva. There was also Konstantin Pridyvailo, a propagandist working for the state-controlled propaganda channel ‘RT’ [or Russia Today]. Quite unperturbed by this, the teachers did not exclude him from their ‘action’ They had been told to target him as an ‘enemy of Russia’, and obliged.
What they did not know was that there had been no ‘United Russia initiative’. This was a prank with a purpose by Vladislav Bokhan, a Belarusian now living in Poland. Bokhan is a former school history teacher from Minsk and has carried out many such human engineering experiments. These are, it seems, inspired by Umberto Eco’s List of the 14 common features of fascism, with Bokhan’s aim in each of these pranks being to ascertain how many of these features are found in what is referred to as ‘Russia’, but which clearly, in his mind, also covers occupied Ukrainian territory. The inclusion in his ‘instructions’ to school of a person who is, in fact, a propagandist for the current regime, was quite deliberate. In his video, posted on YouTube, Bokhan explains that he included Pridybailo “to show that the blind masses will not even check when there is an order, reducing attentiveness and responsibility.”While acknowledging that Donbas is occupied territory, Bokhan did not consider whether there could be different reactions at play in the servile manner in which these teachers from School No. 1 in occupied Starobilsk responded to something that they believed to be an order / instructions from the ruling United Russia party. This was on the eve of Putin’s birthday, a date that in previous years has been filled with revolting efforts to demonstrate sycophantic loyalty.
Starobilsk has been under Russian occupation since the end of February 2022, and it is likely that there are teachers at the school from parts of Donetsk oblast under occupation since 2014. This is a long time, especially given the determined efforts and vast amounts of money that Russia has channelled into indoctrinating children (and teachers) on all occupied Ukrainian territory. The level of repression on occupied territory is also significantly higher than in Russia.
Bokhan may, however, be right, with none of the above justifying the teachers’ collaboration nor waiving their responsibility for such actions.
Bokhan’s experiments all probe school staff, how willing they are to obey senseless, idiotic or positively terrifying orders. In 2024, several Russian schools, believing they were following instructions, burned ‘attributes of western culture’: not only books about the Lion King, but even photos of Nobel laureates. In November 2024, teachers were ‘instructed’ to carry out ‘patriotic measures’ with hats made out of aluminium foil. The number of teachers who did so is disturbing.
Bokhan notes that some Russians, including opposition politician (and former political prisoner) Ilya Yashin, claim that such slavish following of flawed orders is the fault of a bad regime. Once they come to power, they assert, things will change. Bokhan is clearly unconvinced. In one of the examples of his latest ‘traitor’ experiment, he does not show the results from one school in Yaroslav oblast. The slogan has a Nazi SS ring to it, he says, and notes that, yet again, the school ignored clear instructions that underage children must not take part. He believes that teachers want to engage children as this, they assume, shifts the weight of responsibility from them.
His latest experiment, and the result seen in occupied Starobilsk, was about convincing the teachers that these were instructions “in the name of the authorities” to intimidate and threaten such supposed ideological enemies “in the name of the people”.
Yes, these are darts, Bokhan says, but tomorrow they could become bullets, with these aimed at whichever ‘enemies of the people’ the regime should name.
