The face of the Holiness of the Mother of God

The appointment of Olga Vasilyeva head of the Ministry of Education and Science was announced in the best Putin traditions - suddenly, in the middle of the day on Friday. And this is bad news.

Vasilieva is known in narrow circles not only as a representative of the Russian Orthodox Church in the circle of secular researchers of religion, but also as a professional patriot who was responsible for the program of patriotic education as the deputy head of the administration of the Presidential Administration for Public Projects.

Such its positioning satisfies the interests of both Putin and Medvedev. The president is preoccupied with the issue of "patriotic" in his understanding of teaching the latest history at school. However, the development of a single history textbook meets the almost unanimous resistance of the professional community. Vasilieva is a member of the Council for Preparation of Programs on the course "Patriotic History" at the Ministry of Education and Science. In recent years, she spoke with a number of public lectures that fit well in the Putin model of the perception of history. In this model, the "ambiguous" investigator of the NKVD beats a good prisoner, but the most important lesson that the schoolboy Petya must endure from this scene, is that both, in spite of what, are the patriots of his country. Vasilieva mastered this genre one of the first, back in 2003 .

As for the prime minister, he is influenced by his churchy wife. And she is closely friends with Patriarch Cyril, pushing the idea of ​​the "positive consequences" of the massive influence of Orthodoxy on the brain of schoolchildren.

Accordingly, the only task that can be entrusted to Medvedev to such a person in the Ministry of Education and Science is the "Orthodoxy" of the secondary education system. Formally, this "Orthodoxy" has been going on for 17 years, since the creation of the Coordination Council on the interaction of the Ministry of Education and the Moscow Patriarchate. Back in 2012, the Russian Orthodox Church achieved the inclusion in the school curriculum for the 4th grade of the component "Fundamentals of religious cultures and secular ethics." It was conceived that the parents would choose from this component the only fully developed and promoted object - the "Fundamentals of Orthodox Culture". However, in practice, most of the parents do not want “Orthodox culture” for their children and choose other objects from the list, primarily “secular ethics”, and their teachers, as a rule, support this. Teachers themselves can adhere to a variety of views, however, the general hostility of the secondary education system to the "penetration of priests into school" to politicians who insisted on the introduction of the OPC, and even more so the Russian Orthodox Church could not be overcome.

Former Minister Dmitry Livanov negatively reacted to all the ROC attempts to increase his influence at school and universities (now the requirement to introduce OPC in all classes of high school, and not in one, as it is now) and was not a frantic preacher of patriotic ideas. And this reflected the prevailing mood of the entire pedagogical system.

It is clear that Vasilieva is appointed in order to change the situation. However, how much is it possible?

Here you can recall those aspects of the biography of Olga Yuryevna that remained outside the official certificates. Once it was considered "progressive" and even, as they say, showed sympathy for Catholicism. But one of her familiar years ago described to me Vasiliev as follows: "She is generally a good person, understands everything, and understands correctly. However, at some point it was necessary to make a choice. And she chose to be friends not with the holy throne, but with the patriarchy."

Vasiliev, therefore, is a bright representative of the new Putin elite. Personal beliefs are one thing, and a career is another. Here, the paper tiger will grind artificial fangs and puff out the cheeks, following the general line of the party.

As a historian of relations between the Russian Orthodox Church with the Soviet state, Vasiliev did not show anything special and, moreover, became more and more engaged over the years. The nature of her administrative activity was manifested at the Department of Religious Science of the Russian Academy of Public Administration, which she headed after several years of work at the Institute of Russian History of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The department was the heir to the Institute of Scientific Atheism under the Central Committee of the CPSU and was at risk of closing. Vasilyeva renamed her to the department of state-confessional relations and achieved her active contacts with Western religious institutions. But the company of elderly teachers remained in the case for several years, and Vasilieva herself became a popular teacher at the provincials, who made up the bulk of the RAGS students (now RANEPAS).

The most famous public act of that time was the organization of retraining courses for young bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church, which in a short time taught the basics of jurisprudence and management. What was the benefit of this is actually unknown. However, the undertaking was loud - such educational initiatives were generally noticed by the authorities who were in power, who often ached from the wild amateur performances of the former Pateshniki, which suddenly became managers of the spiritual life of the Orthodox communities of entire regions.

Similarly, Vasilyeva’s career was built in the presidential administration, where she fell in the second half of the 2000s. It was known about its increase in the religious scholar, but outside her name Vasilyeva did not sound, although the names of other desperate professional patriots from AP often got into the press. One way or another, the next career step was taken.

I feel bad that the next Putin commissar, appointed to a high state post, will be able to really do something against the current ministerial bureaucracy or even more so against a professional community, the interests of which should seem to be at the top.

It is enough to recall Vladimir Medinsky, who was set to lead the Ministry of Culture with similar goals. It was the same as Vasiliev, the “temporary man” - without experience in serious administrative work, without a team, without the support of a professional community, but with great ambitions in the part of “patriotic education”.

And what in the end? A group of his close employees is already sitting - and it is still unknown that they will say about their boss. He himself got into a large "antipatriotic" scandal with a memorial board to Marshal Mannerheim. In the press, his name does not kick only the lazy. Few doubt that with a post -graceful shaking of the government (if not earlier), his name disappears from the list of ministers. And most importantly - did the Ministry of Culture become or the institutions subordinate to it over the years of its reign are “more patriotic”? The continuous series of scandals around is not at all “patriotic” performances and exhibitions shows that this task was impossible.

The career of Minister Livanov ended in failure - he went to war at the Academy of Sciences and achieved temporary victories, which ended with premature resignation.

I can assume that the fate of Olga Vasilyeva as a minister is unlikely to work out well. Her close connection with the leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church is now the worst recommendation for the teaching environment, no matter how she reassured the teachers, promising them "care". Therefore, "Medinsky in a skirt" has two prospects.

Or be a "lady, pleasant in all respects", which she was as a head of the police department in the RANEPA. That is, having formed a flock of admirers in grooves beside themselves, to engage in insignificant renaming, inspections and public lectures with loud patriotic and Orthodox rhetoric, and to knock out an increase in salaries and benefits for teachers. Or try to implement the "party of the party." Then Vasilyeva is destined to get bogged down in the fight against their own apparatus, to fight off critical publications and petitions about the resignation, to build a cottage in the Crimea and be largely substituted in front of Putin by kindly smiling employees.