Russian Education and the Znanie [Knowledge] Society

Although there've been many opportunities to write something on his topic, I've yet to do so despite my background as an educator. Russians have always highly valued education, and for many years the Soviet educational system was one of the world's finest. That system somehow survived the Neoliberal War waged on Russia--known as The Rape--during the 1990s and got priority treatment from Russia's government during the last Yeltsin years and was carried forward into the Putin Era. Putin puts a premium on the value of education and sees it as the avenue for every Russian's reaching their potential as a person and a professional. That has resulted in numerous initiatives aimed at promoting every segment of the educational process, including student's home environments. In the past, I've provided emphasis to Putin's words related to education to impress on readers the sort of philosophy he has and promotes. Here's how the Kremlin website describes one of the projects Putin initiated:

The Presidential Decree on the establishment of the public and state educational organization "Russian Society "Knowledge" was signed in 2015. In the Address to the Federal Assembly in 2021, the head of state stated the need to restart the work of society on a modern digital platform.

This society is a direct learning adjunct aimed primarily at youth, but also at adults as life-long-learning is seen by Russians as essential. It's something I would have very happily participated in when I was growing up. I was once involved as an instructor in the adjunct learning program our college initiated, but it never got anything like the backing of the state or had the incredible variety of programs Znanie has developed. But enough from me. Today, Putin met with Director General of the Znanie Society Maxim Dreval and discussed the results of the organization's activities and projects. Mr. Dreval's been involved in developing educational platforms for over ten years and clearly enjoys what he's doing--his enthusiasm shines through his speech. What follows is a machine translation, errors and all, of their discussion at the Kremlin. What's clear to me is Russia's educational system is well beyond that of the Outlaw US Empire, which is where I reside, and the distance between the two is widening at a high pace. The key difference is Putin's direct involvement in the system and his social philosophy that guarantees no child will be left behind, unlike the situation here.

Vladimir Putin: Maxim Alekseevich, let's talk about the revived Znanie Society.

Michael Dreval: Yes.

Vladimir Putin: How long has it been functioning in this new capacity?

Maxim Dreval: It is symbolic that the year has passed since the reset, with your instructions.

Vladimir Putin: Are you satisfied with the results of the year's work?

Maxim Dreval: You know, to put it mildly, our wildest expectations were probably exceeded, and mainly the response of young people. We knew there was a request, but we had no idea that we would be able to reach more than 40 million people in a year. And you know, such difficult developing content about science, technology, about the history of our country, its culture, geography ...

Vladimir Putin: It turned out that this is a niche.

Maria Dreval: Yes, it has garnered more than 400 million views, that's just what we could count.

And now, for example, today the most popular topic is the topic of new opportunities, new horizons that are opening up in all areas. That is why we held such an action, and it now takes place regularly: thousands of experts, scientists, businessmen, cultural and art figures, statesmen spoke in schools, shared their knowledge with children, talked to them about new opportunities. After all, a time of change, a time of challenge, is always a time of new opportunities.

And, by the way, speaking about opportunities, we understand that it is very important to rely on history and its experience, lessons. Therefore, the topic of history has always been one of the key ones and remains one of the key ones.

Another project is peter's times, it is timed, of course, to the 350th anniversary of Peter I. And within the framework of it, a whole series of events will be held throughout the country in the parks "Russia is my history", and they will even see a series of lectures about Peter the Great, which we are filming together with your assistant Vladimir Rostislavovich Medinsky.

At the same time, it is very important that Znanie not only launches its lectures and events and tries to cover the whole country, but it is important that a very systematic work has been built with all ministries, with large companies, with universities, with public organizations. For example, now "Knowledge" appears at all major events that take place in the country. For example, at the St. Petersburg Forum there is a studio "Knowledge", at the Eastern Economic Forum. We hold joint themed marathons. For example, a marathon was held with Roscosmos on April 12 about space, with Rosatom on the topic of science and technology, and we regularly hold joint events with VK [VKontakte] about information technology.

Returning to the topic of history and new opportunities, a huge, already traditional, the largest, perhaps, educational marathon, which will be held this year in May, we also devoted to the topic of new opportunities, new horizons and the theme of Russia's role in the world. Taking this opportunity, I cannot but invite you, Mr President, to visit the Knowledge Marathon again and hold an open lesson for the children. It will be from May 17 to 19, for three days, across the country, outstanding speakers, would be very grateful if you could hold such an open lesson.

Vladimir Putin: Thank you very much for the invitation. I will definitely look at the schedule.

Michael Dreval: Thank you very much.

Returning to the topic of cooperation with ministries, there is one very illustrative interesting project. We have launched a competition of educational plays, the best of which "Knowledge" will stage together with a professional director and, moreover, will help school and student theater groups to realize them at home.

You know, we were inspired by 17-year-old Liza Kochetkova. She staged a play with the children about children's bullying. Looking at this performance, we felt and realized how even non-professional actors, children, were able to convey to everyone, very deeply convey a very important topic. And it became clear that such a format should definitely appear in the "Knowledge".

Another new format, which we were also pushed to by young people, is the game format, because young people have always wanted an entertaining format of education, a game format. And last year, as such an experiment, we conducted a quiz, an online quiz for the whole country. It became the largest in the history of Russia, even got into the book of records. Inspired by this result, we decided to organize a whole championship, which runs all year round, called it the "League of Knowledge". Now we are adding various other formats of competitions there and even thinking of introducing the final of such games on television in order to further stimulate the participants and once again show that knowledge is one of the key values in our country.

Naturally, the reboot would not have happened without our lecturers, they played a huge role in this work. Now there are more than 8,000 lecturers in Znanie, and we expect to increase their number to 15,000 this year. Mr President, it all started with 300 people. I am very grateful to them for their dedication and willingness to share knowledge.

We actively expanded the lecturing community, added primarily teachers, lecturers. But, you know, we saw that not only professional lecturers, but also people of various professions are ready to share knowledge. Moreover, young people also wanted real examples of the experience of professionals from various fields. We have launched the "League of Lecturers" competition, which allows us to find talented educators from all over the country. More than 10 thousand people have already taken part in it. So we found as lecturers and directors, and engineers, and programmers. For example, the semi-finalist was the military commissar, who, on the basis of archival materials, restores the stories of the exploits of the soldiers of the Great Patriotic War. A variety of lecturers come to us.

Vladimir Putin: On what basis did you hold this contest? What did the winner get?

Maxim Dreval: They spend six months, because twice a year there is a season of such a competition, they first perform online to an audience of different ages, they are evaluated by the guys, they are evaluated by our experts. Then they perform in the semi-finals in their region on the basis of our partner universities and various venues, and in the final they come to Moscow to perform in the main Moscow universities, they are also evaluated by experts and young people. It's a pretty complicated selection.

Vladimir Putin: How many people are in the final?

Mikhail Dreval: 100 finalists, 50 winners. And all of them receive our grant support, training, tools to create and promote educational content. And we think it's very important not only to find them and give them an audience, but to really help them grow. In general, in general, we see a lot of talented educators who, and this is now very important, want not only to share knowledge and speak, but also to create content that would be distributed on the Internet to a large audience. It seems to me that now this is especially important when there are so many fakes, when there is a lot of low-quality information.

Vladimir Putin: Of course.

Maxim Dreval: We are now trying to find a way to help more than fifty, more than a hundred such winners, including financially, so that they create more content and reach the audience. Now we are also looking for it, if you support it, we will search more actively, we will find such an opportunity.

Vladimir Putin: Of course, objective, important, in-depth information, and even beautifully and talentedly presented, is very much in demand, because it is impossible to use Wikipedia alone.

Michael Dreval: I absolutely agree.

Vladimir Putin: We know the quality of this information.

When there are talented people who are professionals whose opinion can be trusted, it is, of course, worth a lot. It's like an encyclopedia, only live.

Michael Dreval: I absolutely agree. And, by the way, in fact, within the framework of "Knowledge" such a knowledge base is formed, which in many respects becomes an alternative to Wikipedia. Only with reliable data and with very authoritative people.

By the way, such a request, too, when we formed a community of lecturers, a request from young people was for real examples of success stories of people who are proud of the country, the most outstanding people of our country. And this echoes what you said in your address at the first marathon of the Znanie Society, when you said that the first persons of companies, governors, members of the Government and the most prominent figures of all spheres of knowledge should become lecturers.

Here, of course, thank you very much, Mr President, for being actively involved in the work of Znanie, holding an open lesson in Vladivostok, and your example really inspired many people. I am glad that today the governors, members of the Government, and outstanding figures of all spheres have literally become lecturers of "Knowledge". I hope that this will become a good tradition for them, and those who have not yet had time to join will do it very soon.

By the way, it is important that all meetings with such unique people are always a dialogue, not a monologue. We see how important live communication is for children. Therefore, at all "Knowledge" events, children can ask questions, whether online or offline events.

Moreover, we give such an opportunity even at events that we do not hold. For example, at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, moderators asked experts questions that we collected from the guys in advance. That is, we give the children the opportunity to ask questions to leading experts in all forums of our country through Znanie. By the way, experts often share with us that it is sometimes more difficult to answer the questions of children than the questions of their colleagues. I understand them, and in fact, when I myself face the questions of the guys, I understand how sincere, how smart and talented they are. It's a sense of pride in our youth.

I can say even more that their questions essentially make them co-authors of the content that Knowledge creates. Because they send an expert, a lecturer, and [they] give exactly the knowledge that they need now.

Another interesting formation by our leading speakers is lectures-excursions. Last year we tried to combine a unique person with a unique place. For example, Dmitry Rogozin spoke about space and about the ambitious projects of Roscosmos at the Vostochny cosmodrome. Either the guys talked about music with Valery Gergiev at the Mariinsky Theater, or Dmitry Artyukhov talked about the Arctic on an icebreaker in the Kara Sea. More than 50 such different lectures-excursions have already passed, where the guys can meet live, and online, since all this is filmed and broadcast, all our young people can, in fact, plunge into this place with them ...

Vladimir Putin: It was as if they had been there.

Michael Dreval: Exactly. We just thought about how to surprise the guys again when we held the second marathon at the St. Petersburg Forum and transferred our viewers to unique places in St. Petersburg. We just happened to be in the Mariinka. It works very well, captivates young people. And it is very important for us not just to show them some video or content about a particular topic, but to really captivate them, so that this is the first of many touches, so that they get carried away with this topic, go to study it further.

By the way, the continuation of this format of lectures-excursions was the project "More than a journey", which also helps the children not only to visit different parts of our country, but also to learn more about the history of the region, about outstanding people from there, about the achievements of this region. It seems to me that it is very important for the children and for us, for the country as a whole, so that young people know the country, its achievements and outstanding people.

In general, during the year , "Knowledge" shot more than 600 hours of educational content. And this is quite complex, intellectual content. And in order to shoot more of it and cover the whole country, we launched nine studios in all federal districts. This allows us to reach interesting people, lecturers from all over the country and show the geography of different regions.

At the same time, since we want to give more opportunities to authors to create content themselves and help them, we are launching, together with the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Education, media laboratories in universities, which, in fact, become a platform where the author could, using the equipment, shoot his content, get mentoring from our team and, what is very important, get access to a huge library of content. who shoots "Knowledge" and which is passed on by partners to use it to create their own videos, their films. We provide them with this for free, the main thing is that they also shoot educational content on the basis of this.

And we want several dozen, maybe even hundreds, of such media laboratories to appear this year and next. I am sure that then there will be much more content and it will be created not only by "Knowledge", but also by a huge number of such enlighteners.

We even went into professional content – in the cinema, and launched a project called "Smart Cinema", within the framework of which there is a competition for documentary scripts. I hope that more than 30 new documentaries will appear this year.

We help novice documentarians, including with an educational program. And what is important, in addition to the grant support of partners, thanks to which films are made, we have enlisted the support of platforms and cinemas so that these films really find their audience.

Vladimir Putin: On the basis of what are you doing, where are you doing this?

Maria Dreval: The competition is taking place all over the country. The best come to Moscow, and we introduce them to the leading film studios. Novice documentarians go through a training program there and choose on the basis of which studio the shooting will take place. We have a good partner of ours, the Gorky Film Studio. They are always ready to help everyone with the filming of these documentaries. But teams can choose any studio, the main thing is that the script wins and the film is a documentary, educational. All these films are guaranteed to find their audience, because both online cinemas and offline cinemas are with us.

Vladimir Putin: Who is helping you to work with studios here?

Maxim Dreval: The Ministry of Culture, the Ministry of Education and the studios themselves also responded, and they did not even have to persuade them. In fact, for them it turned out to be very popular. And it is very important that many companies supported in terms of grants, these are commercial companies, for example, VK, with pleasure supported our initiative, this is Yandex, this is Sber and the Foundation of the Institute for Internet Development. A lot of organizations supported this initiative, because, firstly, many of them also own cinemas, and they are interested in the appearance of such works, and they are not alien to the idea of education. The heads of these companies are our lecturers.

Vladimir Putin: I see. What else needs to be done to support this project?

Maxim Dreval: Your participation always gives a very strong impetus as a lecturer.

The second most important, in my opinion, story where it is possible and necessary to expand is grant assistance to lecturers and educators to create content, and we are now looking for a tool to expand this grant support.

Another thought, rather even the request of the audience and our reflections on this matter, they often ask us why our content has not yet appeared on television? Maybe we should really think about the fact that films, game formats, lectures, content about geography, about the history of the country should appear more often on TV channels. If you support us, we will work with our colleagues from TV channels to ensure that television also has our educational content.

Vladimir Putin: We have reached an agreement.

Michael Dreval: Thank you very much.