Hello! This is Verstka journalist Dana Kornienko. Yesterday we published a piece about special...

Hello! This is Verstka journalist Dana Kornienko. Yesterday, we published a piece about special classes where 12-year-old schoolgirls are being raised to become future “traditional” wives and mothers.

I had dreamed of writing about this programme, which has begun to expand, ever since it was launched. At last, I managed to speak to parents who decided that preparation for the role of a tradwife was exactly what their daughters, having finished fourth grade, needed.

I write a lot about the modern Russian school system, and honestly, it is hard to surprise me. I think it is hard to surprise you, too. Priests lecturing children about the harm of sex before marriage, mock weddings in “Family Studies,” camouflage nets in craft classes—we have already seen all of this together.

But I am willing to bet you have not yet read any major pieces about special classes in state schools where only girls in identical dresses sit at their desks. Where there are initiations and “honour celebrations.” Where praying in church is part of the school curriculum.

Why, instead of going home after class and living their best teenage lives, are these girls forced to stay at school, listen about Saint Matrona, and write down a recipe for egg emulsion in their notebooks? Incidentally, without knowing the recipe, they may fail the final assessment.

As is usually the case with such initiatives centred on patriarchal values, this project was devised and is promoted by a successful woman. For some reason, her social-media accounts have no photographs of her family, but plenty of reports on career achievements.

You can read about it on the Verstka website (with a VPN): (or via the mirror).

And when you reach the end, you will find out how the story of fifth-grader Natasha, whom her mother decided to turn into a “noble young lady,” ended.

😘 Subscribe to @svobodnieslova and donate — we work thanks to you

Verstka

Russian tradwives: how special classes work, where schoolgirls are taught to be “noble young ladies”

Hundreds of girls in ordinary Russian schools are studying under a special programme to become “caring wives and mothers”