Elite Russian private schools are trying to shield children from the war. But even the youngest students are starting to talk about it.
When Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Anna Zakharova was teaching world mythology to elementary students at an elite private school in the center of one of Russia’s largest cities. Unlike typical public schools, her school wasn’t required to teach the Education Ministry’s “patriotic” lesson series or hold events promoting national pride. Even so, the Kremlin’s pro-war talking points gradually began to seep into the conversations of these young and exceptionally privileged Russian children. Zakharova told the independent outlet Holod how it all unfolded and what she did to fight back. Meduza shares a translation of her account.
The names of the children in this story have been changed.
For the past three years, I taught at a private elementary school I’d rather not name. It’s a small, well-run, fairly expensive school in the city center, and the kids have every reason to love it. There aren’t any “Important Conversations” lessons or other aggressively patriotic events there. The school feels like a secluded world — a kind of fortress where the horrors of the outside world barely seep in. Life inside goes on — if not quite as it did before, then still relatively undisturbed. They don’t discuss the war with the students; instead, there’s a lot of focus on culture and the arts. There’s even a dedicated subject for this, loosely titled “Mythology,” which is what I taught.
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‘A crack in the fence’
Of course, we worry about the teenagers. We’re afraid for those who are anti-war or LGBTQ+, for those who can’t talk to their parents, who argue with classmates, who are scared to challenge teachers, who are held hostage by their families and schools. They have “Important Conversations” lessons, murderers visiting their classrooms, and their still-developing beliefs and values are being damaged in ways we’ll all have to face one day.
I didn’t think I needed to worry about my own students. I started teaching them in the gap between COVID-19 and the war, and in those first six months, I thought the worst that might happen to them was the school they’d attend for fifth grade — a place that would thrust them into a world they weren’t ready for.
In my last lesson with my fourth-graders in late May 2022, I told them the story of Prince Siddhartha — how he grew up in a golden palace, surrounded by young and beautiful servants, and how, through a crack in the fence, he glimpsed poverty, illness, and death, and how, in the end, he became the first Buddha.
By then, the war had already begun. I knew some of them might leave that summer. I read them a story recorded by the Teacher for Russia project, where a girl describes playing with her friend after school under their village’s solitary streetlight.
“I’m telling you all this, just you, because you’re fourth-graders, and you’re about to step out of your golden palace — that is, out of this school...”
“We get it.”
I don’t know if they did, but they looked at me with a hint of distrust.
‘How gods punish’
My very first first-graders: Lena, Anton, Kolya, Serezha, and ten others. It’s the middle of the second term, three months before the [full-scale] war begins.
Today, we’re discussing the goddess Leto’s children — Apollo and Artemis. Artemis, the huntress, is almost more popular with the girls than Athena, the protector of cities, while Apollo, with his endless romantic troubles, doesn’t spark much enthusiasm.
For the last ten minutes, I’ve been telling them about Niobe and her children. Like my students, there are fourteen of them — seven boys and seven girls.
Queen Niobe refuses to make offerings to Leto. She, who bore fourteen children, doesn’t want to bow to the mother of only two. But Leto’s children are gods, and gods can avenge an insult to their mother. Silver-bowed Apollo kills the boys, one by one. The huntress Artemis kills the girls. The youngest girl tries to hide in the folds of Niobe’s tunic, but Artemis kills her too.
The children sit before me in a semicircle, their faces lit by the projector’s glow. On the screen, a pale statue of Niobe shields her youngest daughter with her arms.
“What do you think — were Apollo and Artemis right?” I ask each of them, one by one, from left to right. If I’d had even one more year of experience in this (or any other) school, I might not have dared such an experiment.
“Yes, they were right.”
“Why?” I ask.
“Because they’re gods,” says one.
“Well, they’re right because she brought it on herself,” answers another.
“That’s how gods punish.”
“I don’t know; I think they’re right — they’re gods, after all.”
When I tell them, “You can disagree with the gods,” what I mean is: “You can disagree with me, with any other teacher, with any god — with anyone at all.”
‘Part of a pattern’
I have one lesson a week — 40 minutes to explore how Gilgamesh sought immortality or how Abraham nearly sacrificed his son. In truth, it’s woefully little. Naturally, we don’t discuss the war. I promise myself that if a child asks me about it, I’ll pause the lesson and answer. But they don’t ask. The oldest is 11, and I still feel I don’t need to worry about them.
In our extracurricular class, instead of medieval legends, we’re discussing The Lord of the Rings. Unlike regular lessons, this class doesn’t follow a set curriculum and is a smaller group — only those who want to come, come. The fourth-graders are reading Tolkien for the first time, while I’m rereading it. They often veer off the planned topics (Tristan, Isolde, King Arthur) to talk about the Shire or Mordor. As I join the discussion, I can’t help but feel its painful relevance, though I’m unsure if they sense it too.
Something shifts in December 2023. Or rather, that’s when I first notice it. At first, it’s just a feeling, like a faint, unpleasant smell or a constant, distant hum. I can’t catch all the details, but I hear — or maybe imagine — unsettling jokes among the older kids, random phrases from the younger ones that sound too grown-up.
The first time it happens is on a Wednesday, during the last class of the day. We’re in the playroom, cushions and poufs are scattered everywhere, and with five minutes left before we start, the boys are building a pillow fort. Serezha, sitting in the center, declares, “I’m a princess.”
Lyosha laughs. Pavlik, gathering his pillows, adds, “Lyosha, you’re a princess too,” and smiles.
Lyosha jumps up, rushes at Pavlik, and kicks hard into the cushions Pavlik is holding against his stomach. One falls. I bring Lyosha back to his cushions and the now-destroyed fort.
“Why did you do that?” I ask.
“He called me a princess.”
“We don’t respond to words with violence,” I say, starting to realize what upset him. “That’s no excuse.”
“What’s the big deal?” asks Pavlik. He doesn’t look offended and clearly just wants to sort things out.
“Well, what if I called you a girl?”
“So what if someone calls you a girl at school?” Pavlik asks rhetorically. “Besides, Anna sometimes says things like that too,” he adds, nodding in my direction and making an imaginary crown with his fingers. “’Imagine I’m the Pope, and you’re a peasant,’ for example.”
It’s true I often do this when explaining something complex. I assign the kids and myself parts to play; it’s easier for them to understand. It’s a strange outburst. Really, why is it so frightening to be called a princess?
Over time, this incident becomes part of a pattern — a series of unexpectedly aggressive reactions to offhand remarks. I don’t know Lyosha’s father, but I can imagine him teaching his son how boys should look and behave, and I have nothing to counter this imaginary person with. I see Lyosha once a week, and only to tell him about King Arthur or the Crusades.
‘We’ll bomb them all’
A couple of weeks later, the same boys settle onto the cushions. The first slide of my presentation is black, with a single white sentence in the center: “The only good they brought was that apricots ended up on European tables.”
“So, what do you think we’re going to talk about today?” I ask.
“Egyptians?” suggests Pavlik.
The fourth-grade class had guessed “Arabs or Japanese,” so I’m not exactly surprised. “Don’t you think that sounds a bit prejudiced?” I ask. This had worked with my previous group, but not here. They keep going:
“It must be about some Middle Eastern people.”
“Guys, listen to what you’re saying, please,” I plead.
“Are we talking about Jews?”
“Okay, stop. If you don’t see the issue, let’s try this: ‘The only good the Russians brought is…’”
I can’t even finish before Lyosha jumps up, his face flushed with anger: “Yeah, well, we’ll bomb them all if we have to!”
A few weeks later, in a similar situation, it’s Pavlik who shouts, “Guys, we’re Russian!” But unlike Lyosha, he finds it hilarious.
‘For Russia!’
I’m discussing the Hundred Years’ War with the fourth-graders.
“So, England wasn’t enough for this Edward?” Dima gestures at the map. “It already had everything — look, the whole south of France was England’s too. So he was just greedy, right?”
I smile. “Seems like it. That’s how it goes sometimes. Just imagine, he never even found out how the war ended. And then, after that, there was another war, an internal, almost civil war, that lasted 30 years.
Dima frowns, staring intently at the map again. “And what was Russia up to?” I don’t even have time to answer before he adds, “If only Russia had just conquered everyone back then. That’d be cool!”
Now, I’m at a loss for words. A few of the kids shout, “For our side!” and “For Russia!”
‘Ukraine won’t even exist’
“Who won the Hundred Years’ War?”
This time, it’s a second-grade lesson.
“England!”
“France!”
“France!”
“Ukraine!” yells Kostya, who loves to blurt out things like this. I know he isn’t trying to disrupt; he just wants to say something funny.
One of his classmates fires right back: “The word ‘Ukraine’ won’t even exist!”
In a normal situation, a teacher should pause the lesson and have a real conversation with the kids. A long one, not like what I did. All I managed to say was that in my class, we’d never speak that way about any country, that it’s simply unacceptable. I think I was so shaken by the fact that a second-grader could say something like that, I couldn’t find better words. So, I quickly steered everyone back to the 15th century, to England, France, and their kings.
But that’s not enough. We adults now speak in coded language. We know how to ask careful questions and interpret careful answers, to mention something offhand, to give a knowing smile and say “before things went bad,” to spot “our people” by the look on their faces. Children don’t know how to do that.
‘Our side’
In this school, first-graders learn the myths and legends of Ancient Greece. We end with the Trojan War and Odysseus’s journey. There’s Agamemnon insulting Achilles, Achilles losing Patroclus, and finally, the battle between Achilles and Hector.
“But our side won, right?” Ksyusha asks.
“Our side?”
“The Greeks.”
“Did I mention how Agamemnon nearly sacrificed his own daughter just to go to war? Or how Odysseus threw Hector’s little son off the walls of Troy?” I tell them about Hector and his family, about King Priam. I don’t have Homer’s text in front of me, but I try, as faithfully as I can, to recreate the scene where Priam begs Achilles for his eldest son’s body. But it’s really something else I want to say, about something else. I know I’m crossing into territory that might not be appropriate for first-graders.
“They’re people, just like us,” Tyoma says suddenly. “It’s not their fault they were in Troy.”
Tyoma is a quiet, reserved child, and I can’t be sure he fully grasps what he’s saying. So often, I’ve heard children bring disturbing words from home, and so often, I’ve hoped they don’t truly understand their meaning. But now, I very much hope that Tyoma does understand.
My first-graders know who Aesop is, but that doesn’t mean they speak his language. I don’t work at that school anymore, so I can’t give advice on this, not even to myself. Still, I should have been direct with them. We all need to be direct with them.
Because war touches everyone. Even the youngest, the most sheltered, the most privileged — even those in private school, those homeschooled, those living in other countries. If you have children, talk to them about this war. They already know it’s happening; they’ve grown used to it. Remind them that it’s not normal.
One day — maybe far in the future — we’ll all have to return to normal, to rebuild, to remember what a world without war can be. But for those who started first, second, or third grade this year, there will be nothing to remember. No matter how secure our lives or our children’s lives may seem, the war reaches them, too. Even the happiest child in the best of schools can’t help but know there’s a war — but they might not understand that it shouldn’t be happening.