Students, parents, and teachers want ‘Russophobe’ novelist pulled from Russia’s national graduation exam

Russia held the Russian-language portion of its Unified State Exam (EGE) on June 4, and complaints about the materials began circulating almost immediately — from students, parents, and teachers alike. Among those who aired them publicly was Yekaterina Mizulina, head of the Safe Internet League, who posted the complaints on her Telegram channel.

One task required students to select the answer choice in which the stressed vowel was correctly marked. In one of the answer choices, the word appeared in print as “pozvalаА” (imagine writing “calledD” — a doubled final character that obscured which vowel was stressed). Several graduates said the typo cost them time as they tried to work out which answer was correct.

Complaints also arose from claims that the essay topics drawn from texts by Oleg Kuvayev, Vladimir Sanin, and Alexander Ilichevsky did not match the content of those works.

Those who wrote to Mizulina were also outraged that the exam included a work by Ilichevsky, whom they described as a “Russophobe”: “an author who condemns Russia and its history.” Ilichevsky, a winner of the Russian Booker and Big Book prizes, has lived in Israel for more than 10 years. He publicly condemned the annexation of Crimea in 2014 and signed an open anti-war letter in 2022.

Russia’s federal education oversight agency, Rosobrnadzor, acknowledged a typo in a question on stressed vowels. The agency said the stressed letter was still marked. The typo, it added, “did not prevent successful completion of the task.”

“The claims that the texts and topics did not match in the task using texts by O.M. Kuvayev and V.M. Sanin were not confirmed,” the agency said on its VK page. Rosobrnadzor declined to comment on the inclusion of Ilichevsky’s text.