Who Sewed the Suit, or Valentina and Valentina

This article was prepared by the media project “Country and World — Sakharov Review” (the project's Telegram channel — “Country and World”).

It seems Rosstat will soon have to stop publishing data on household income differentiation. The Ministry of Education claims there are significant differences between rich and poor in Russian society. This follows from the officially presented initiative — unification of school uniforms, which looks quite intimidating — resembling the suits of the USSR Supreme Soviet deputies from the 1950s. The head of the ministry’s department, Alexander Reut, explains: “School uniforms carry important socio-psychological aspects. [They] remove psychological boundaries between children [from families] with different means, between children of different faiths. Therefore, we believe the importance of this issue cannot be overstated.”

Harry Potter and the Ministry of Education

It’s hard to overestimate the impact on the psyche of children and their parents of standardized clothing. Would parents really risk dressing their children like this? Those who have children, who take care of them, who see them off to school and meet them after school, know: modern clothing is so democratic that family “wealth” differences are hardly visible. At least these differences manifest in other ways, mostly in the division of students into prestigious and non-prestigious schools, private and public. Incidentally, in those very prestigious schools, the uniform is precisely standardized and distinguishes children from “good” families from the rest.

Perhaps the Ministry of Education is worried about the unfriendly Western cut of their clothing — often children look too good: like Harry Potter and Hermione Granger. As for religious differences, it’s unlikely that a boy or girl from Orthodox or Catholic families differ much, unless they are fundamentalists. Girls from Muslim families in Russia dress quite stylishly without flaunting their religious affiliation. Migrant children, however, have been practically excluded from school education by our party and government.

So this problem is entirely artificial. It is purely ideological: in authoritarian and totalitarian regimes, everything, including behavior, thoughts, knowledge, and clothing, must be uniform. Everything must be in uniform. It’s no coincidence that under Stalin, not only the military wore uniforms.

Moisture-wicking Fabric

Uniformity can sometimes be not too ugly, but not in the case of the Russian hybrid totalitarian model. The suits presented by the Ministry of Education have been worn for decades (and still are) by Valentinas – from Valentina Ivanovna (Matviyenko) to Valentina Vladimirovna (Tereshkova). And not only them, of course. The strict to the point of ugliness businesswomen’s “style” also implies a powerful teased hairdo the size of the head itself. And off she goes – a light stride from the hip, with a confident and decisive heel tap on the official parquet floor.

Lack of taste is a hallmark of authoritarian and totalitarian regimes. Taste in everything, from car models to clothing styles. And the passion for regulating everything is also quite natural in a state of absolute control.

It is important to maintain the impression – for themselves – of total submission of the surrounding world, divided into corporations. Submission with complete penetration into it.

For this, in particular, there are crude and homemade import-substituted messengers, which competent authorities have already criticized: presumably, it’s hard for them to eavesdrop on citizens’ conversations and monitor their correspondence in systems of such “sharashka” quality.

By the way, before Max (by the way, why not Ivan?) there was another messenger that schools were ordered to switch children and parents to. Those who do have children should remember, as it was quite recent. No one switched in our school: those who tried to enter the messenger failed, and the rest preferred not to leave the familiar (regardless of political views) WhatsApp. The president, however, suggested “choking” it. So they “choke” it. But it’s like insisting on removing the dollar from circulation – it will continue circulating, and perhaps even regain its niche as a reliable savings tool in a country of eternal import substitution.

Soviet-era school uniforms also unified everyone. But compared to the current depiction of unified school clothing models, like Medinsky-Torkunov textbooks, presented by the Ministry of Education to TASS, they were more refined and, dare I say, modern. At least in the days of my golden stagnation childhood, there was a patch on the sleeve of the blue boys’ uniform where you could conveniently draw any images and letters. And you could even partially erase and apply new writings.

In the blessed (as it now turns out) 2000s, when my younger son was in elementary school, there were also attempts at local unification. The recommended suit had one trait children really liked: if you ran and then fell to your knees, you could slide quite far, like on ice, across the school linoleum. Probably, the pants had all the properties now recommended by the Ministry of Education: the fabric was “breathable, moisture-wicking (probably the Ministry actually meant ‘water-repellent’), and hypoallergenic.”

By the way, the new school suit, which our dandies like Volodin or deputy Lugovoy would hardly wear, looks sewn from a completely different fabric – non-breathable, moisture-absorbing, and quite allergenic. Including just by its appearance.

Orwell’s Second Death

It seems no modern girl, even if she is the daughter of a state official, in her right mind and sound memory would dress in this dreadful jabot outfit presented by the Ministry of Education. (Not to mention that such a daughter often studies in a Swiss boarding school or another institution far from children of low “means.”)

And just imagine this spectacle: September 1st, on the school parade ground (there’s no other word for it, as they now even march there), hundreds of little standardized Valentinas Ivanovna and Valentinas Vladimirovna stand.

Orwell would die a second time – from envy.

State thinking has penetrated not only social fabric and textile standards, not only the sphere of assembling and disassembling guns and family disputes in the form of a surprising course in family studies that socialist utopians would envy. Now the state intends to decide how children of divorced parents should live. The initiative, supported by deputies from three factions, has been submitted to parliament.

The bill reveals utterly destructive ideas about child psychology, not to mention divorced parents. At the same time, deputies always refer to foreign experience. This, as Putin recently put it, is “reverse engineering,” or simply put – technology theft. The bill’s initiators refer to the experience of Israel (which is a political mistake), as well as China, UAE, Brazil, India, South Africa. These are friendly countries – so based on their experience, it’s safe to break children’s psyches.

The essence of the legislative initiative is the introduction of a special mechanism for “joint upbringing” of children: courts will have the right to appoint a schedule for alternating the child’s residence with father and mother. Alternating! According to a schedule! Imagine the child’s psyche breaking – whether very young or a teenager – if mom and dad tear them apart like this. Which school will he/she attend? Who will be their friends? How to react to the escapades of parents who hate each other? Here the judge is certainly not to blame, this is the matter of the parents themselves, the “Sunday” moms and dads, and in some cases – the children themselves, if they have entered or are entering the difficult teenage years. By the way, if the family is large – in the deeply Orthodox Russian establishment such divorces also happen…

They up there have some absolute insensitivity to what happens to people, what happens in society.

If this insensitivity manifests in geopolitical and political spheres, it inevitably spills over into regulating everyday human relationships. Including where such regulation is excessive or simply harmful. But the Russian state machine has embarked on this path and will not turn away from it.

There is one obstacle for the totalitarian machine. The state launched the reinstallation and reboot of neo-totalitarianism in a modernized and diverse society. And not all its members, even if forced to simulate support for everything the authorities invent for their convenience in managing their people, will comply with all these artificial prescriptions. Even Peter and Fevronia will not displace unfriendly valentines to Valentinas, and matryoshkas will not remove Labuba from the market. That’s how postmodernism works, and it is still penetrating the borders of Russia, which knows no limits.

We live in a dystopia, but private life still partly remains outside totalitarian coercion. That’s why totalitarianism is hybrid – with elements of authoritarianism, and dystopia remains only one of the parallel tracks of society’s existence.

However, the question from Arkady Raikin’s famous sketch from the blue boys’ uniform times: “Who Sewed the Suit?” remains unanswered. Maybe it’s time to send an inquiry to the Ministry of Education?