Russian parliament looks like it won't mandate weekly performances of the national anthem in schools, after all

A Duma committee has withheld its support for draft legislation that would have made it mandatory for schoolchildren to attend performances of the Russian national anthem every week.

The bill was introduced in June this year by Maxim Shingarkin, a member of the right-wing, misleadingly-named Liberal Democratic Party.

Adopting the proposed changes in federal constitutional law on the national anthem would contribute to Russia's patriotic education, Shingarkin argued.

Interfax

• Current Russian law requires schools to play the national anthem only on the first day of classes at the beginning of the school year.
• Some regions in Russia require schools to play the national anthem more often than once a year. In Kostroma and elsewhere, the anthem is played daily; in Chechnya, it’s played one a month; and in Ingushetia, students listen once a week.
• In February 2015, the Ministry of Education announced its support for schools in Kaluga, where students hear the national anthem every morning.
• American schoolchildren will likely find Russia’s anthem proposal to be familiar. In the United States, all states except four (Hawaii, Iowa, Vermont, and Wyoming) give time for the “Pledge of Allegiance” to be recited as part of the school day. US officials abandoned an early version of the salute that accompanies this pledge (with hand outstretched toward the flag, palm down, and ended with the palm up) after it was popularized by the Nazis.