SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
After Russia's full-scale invasion, two professors at one of Ukraine's top universities launched a different kind of Russian studies program. The usual courses in Russian literature and poetry have been replaced with subjects like analyzing Kremlin propaganda. As the saying goes, in times of war, you must know your enemy. NPR's Eleanor Beardsley tells us more.
MAKSYM YAKOVLEV: (Speaking Ukrainian).
ELEANOR BEARDSLEY, BYLINE: Political scientist Maksym Yakovlev, teaching one of his online classes, says Ukrainians were stunned by Russia's full-scale invasion. They thought they knew their Russian neighbors and former countrymen.
YAKOVLEV: Ukraine was part of the Russian empire. Later, on the next version of the Russian empire, which was the Soviet Union, we were integrated in that. And we have to admit that we were, like, kind of privileged compared to other ethnic groups. Once you would give up your Ukrainian identity, then you had a very good chance of getting a good position in the Russian empire, later in the Soviet empire.
BEARDSLEY: Colleague Anton Suslov agrees that Ukrainians did not realize what Russians had become since their separation in 1991.
ANTON SUSLOV: But Russians also did the same mistake. They also thought they understood Ukrainians. That is also one of the reasons why we decided to launch such a program, to truly understand Russians without biases and prejudices.
BEARDSLEY: Students won't be reading Tolstoy or Pushkin, but they will be steeped in subjects like Russian soft power and Moscow's disinformation operations or Yakovlev's favorite...
YAKOVLEV: Anatomy of Russian elites. I like this medical metaphor because, like, when in class, you do something, like, you really dissect and you go deeper into the tissue of Russian elites.
BEARDSLEY: The prestigious Mohyla Academy was founded in 1615. In the 21st century, it became a hotbed of Ukrainian pro-democracy activism during the 2004 Orange Revolution and then in the Maidan Revolution in 2014. Yakovlev says some of the faculty resisted the program.
YAKOVLEV: A couple of serious people, whom I respect, suggested that they change the name from Russian to anti-Russian studies.
BEARDSLEY: He says a few even suspected the two academics might be Russian agents. Still, Yakovlev doesn't like calling the program enemy studies.
YAKOVLEV: But it is our reality now. We're now fighting the Russian aggression. But there are things that have been there for centuries. Russia is still an empire, and imperial thinking is at the very core of Russian identity.
BEARDSLEY: Suslov's course on Russian-occupied territories is one of the most popular, delving deeply into totalitarian oppression and war crimes. He says for many of his students it's personal.
SUSLOV: Students of my class, they are either from the occupied territories or they have relatives there. That is why they had quite strong motivation.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Non-English language spoken).
BEARDSLEY: Future Russian studies graduate Oleksandr Pasikun (ph) is studying in a cafe. He says he is interested in working for Ukrainian intelligence one day. The 20-year-old is originally from Luhansk, the eastern oblast bordering Donetsk that's been occupied by Russia for more than 10 years.
OLEKSANDR PASIKUN: It's pretty obvious that this is, like, the biggest geopolitical threat to our country right now and probably will be for decades to come.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Non-English language spoken).
BEARDSLEY: His classmate Oleksandra Romanova (ph) doesn't want to be a spy, but she is interested in why Russian propaganda is so effective.
OLEKSANDRA ROMANOVA: I wanted to understand the deep roots of where it started, when it started, how it's controlled.
BEARDSLEY: Though these students were born after the collapse of the Soviet Union and came of age before the current war, they say Russian propaganda still made them feel inferior.
PASIKUN: Ukrainian was definitely seen as more the village language, the language of the more simple people. And if you wanted to, like, have a career, if you wanted to not be looked down upon, you had to switch to Russian.
BEARDSLEY: While both grew up in Russian-speaking households, like most Ukrainians, they've now switched and speak Ukrainian. But that doesn't stop them from studying the country that has now become the enemy. It's about knowledge, they say, but also survival.
Eleanor Beardsley, NPR News, Kyiv. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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