Russian Kids Web - 01.21.2004

Kremlin denies propaganda role in "democracy for kids" website

AFP / Johnson's Russia List

MOSCOW (AFP) - A young boy skateboards into the Russian president's office, sits next to the head of state and shakes him by the hand.

The cartoon fantasy forms the opening sequence of a Kremlin website, inaugurated by President Vladimir Putin on Monday and designed to instruct the country's future voters in the ways of democracy.

Three youthful figures -- the blond Alyusha Muromtsev, the bespectacled Dobrinya Nikitin and the redhead Alyonushka Popovich, who leaves her doll on the president's desk -- then guide their Internet audience, aged eight to 14, through the site.

The Kremlin denies that it has any ulterior motive in propagating these "lessons in democracy," even if they come just two months before a presidential election that Putin is seen as likely to win by a huge margin.

The object is "not propaganda for the person of the president" but to help children "find their way and to make sensible choices when deciding their profession and their opinion," Putin said, presenting the site at an inauguration ceremony.

The young surfers are asked such questions as: "Adults in the home and on television are not afraid to express different points of view, to have political debates, with some saying that things are going well and others not. Is this democracy?"

If the surfer answers "Yes", he or she is rewarded with the response "That's right". The opposite answer draws the response "No, that's wrong."

This was one of several examples that brought wry grins to the faces of reporters at the site's presentation, given that no Russian television channel can honestly claim to be independent and that the two main channels provide nonstop coverage of Putin's every move, invariably with a positive slant.

"We aim to give children a lesson in democracy, to teach them to be real citizens, to behave well, to form a society," said Grigory Oster, a popular children's writer and author of the site's textual content.

Kremlin spokesman Alexei Gromov dismissed the suggestion that the site was designed for Putin's benefit or that of any other president, and Oster stressed that its designers "deliberately left out a biography -- it is the president's site, not that of Vladimir Putin."

On the other hand, alongside the "lessons in democracy," the site's young users are invited to leaf through a family album presenting Putin with his dog and the three cartoon characters.

Another image shows Putin engaged in judo, while a yellowing photograph portrays him as a well-behaved school-child, wholly consistent with the personality cult that has been created around Putin over the four years that have passed since he was first elected.

The menu includes a long list of questions "that the president himself has answered," the Kremlin's press service said.

These include: "Who pays the president's wages?" and "Who is the most important, your mother or the president?" The answer to the latter question "is, of course, your mother," Oster was at pains to emphasise.

Gromov noted that the site -- which touches on Russian history but makes no mention whatsoever of the Soviet era -- "will not be used in schools."

To allow this, he said, "would expose us to the accusation of using administrative resources" -- a reference to the practice, widely observed during last month's parliamentary elections, in which candidates employed in the state's service use the state apparatus to boost their chances of re-election.

Putin is expected to be re-elected easily in a presidential election scheduled for March 14.