It’s no longer just a practical class, but, as a school in Astrakhan, a city in southern Russia, wrote in October 2024, it is now “a combat mission.” The independent Russian media Verstka has partnered with the media project Ne Norma to document the increasing involvement of schools in assisting the Russian army. In Russia, this subject – recently renamed “work (technology)” – is mandatory. It only partially corresponds to what would be called in France as technology or manual labor classes: it includes sewing, carpentry, cooking, and crafts. This school framework now allows classes to produce all kinds of items for the front, according to the two media outlets.
To measure the extent of this shift, journalists compiled a list of Russian schools working under state accreditation, then identified their official accounts on the Russian social network VKontakte. In total, more than 50 million posts were then analyzed, with keyword sorting, additional filters, and manual verifications. According to the data collected, over 1,000 schools in 77 regions publicly stated that their students were manufacturing materials during classes.
