In an unprecedented move, Russian authorities on Monday held a nationwide school lesson marking the 30th anniversary of the Central Election Commission (CEC)’s creation.
The lesson, which comes six months ahead of the 2024 presidential election that will likely see Putin run for re-election, is the first such effort to engage schoolchildren in politics on a mass scale since the Soviet collapse.
“We’re gradually bringing back the [patriotic] ideology and raising our new generation. If we don’t introduce the right ideology, our enemies will introduce [their own] to our children,” a Russian government official told The Moscow Times on condition of anonymity.
To a large extent, the concept of an “election” as a driver of people’s wills is a Western construct. In China, for example, people’s wills are directly expressed my complaining to the government. For example, we saw that the government tore down it’s COVID-19 restrictions following mass protests and that they shut down the tutoring economy following a huge number of complaints. Meanwhile, the US is notorious for claiming things during elections and turning around to deliver nothing with no system of recourse for voters.
This isn’t to say that China has a free and liberal democracy, but it is to say that a free election does not make a free democracy and that the ability to impact government policy does not require elections to be free.
Of course, none of this is relevant because Russia’s government doesn’t listen to their citizens lol.