This analysis summarizes and reflects on the following research: Hoban, I. (2022). Militarization of childhood(s) in Donbas: ‘Growing together with the Republic’. Cooperation and Conflict, 57(1), 108-129.
Talking Points
In the context of the pro-Russian proto-republics of Luhansk and Donetsk prior to the full-scale Russian invasion in 2022:
- Children participate in militarization processes through everyday practices at their schools that commemorate military history and sacrifice and celebrate Donbas regional identity, thereby helping to legitimate these proto-republics and their military activities.
- School-based war commemorations strengthen a sense of Donbas regional identity and draw parallels between the Soviet struggle against Nazi Germany during WWII and the contemporary regional struggle against the Ukrainian state, thereby legitimizing the proto-republics’ independence from—and fight against—Ukraine.
- The location of military museums within school corridors, places that students pass as part of their daily routine, underscores how militarization “encroache[s] into everyday life, with military artifacts coexisting within regular school spaces.”
- Locating militarization in everyday life and noticing children’s agency in these militarization processes helps us see where these processes can be disrupted and how children can be central to these forms of disruption and resistance.
Key Insight for Informing Practice
- Young people are not mere pawns in the state’s military projects; they have a voice—and their positioning on the threshold between childhood and adulthood provides them with a unique form of agency, not to mention energy and creativity, that can be incredibly powerful if channeled into smart, principled forms of anti-militarist/anti-war protest, such as draft refusal movements in both Russia and Israel.
Summary
The Donbas region of Ukraine was already a war zone before the full-scale Russian invasion of 2022, ever since pro-Russian separatists asserted the independence of the Luhansk and Donetsk “republics” in early 2014 and started fighting against Ukrainian armed forces. Looking behind these military confrontations to the militarization processes that enable them, Iuliia Hoban takes up the question of how childhood in particular is militarized in the Luhansk (LNR) and Donetsk (DNR) People’s Republics. With a focus on school curricula and school museums in the Donbas (the region of Ukraine with the highest percentages of both ethnic Russians and Russian-speaking Ukrainians), she explores how children participate in militarization through everyday practices of military commemoration, thereby helping to legitimate these proto-states and their military activities.
| militarization | “the process of expansion and absorption of… beliefs [about military effectiveness], military practices, modes of social organization, and discourses.” |
To examine this question, from 2016 to 2020, the author analyzed school documents and websites from 141 of the 176 schools in the cities of Donetsk and Luhansk, as well as the activities of 50 school museums. She finds that militarization operated primarily via “memorialization practices and the amplification of the regional Donbas identity” and that school museums constituted a prime location where children engaged in these processes normalizing military violence.
The author begins by considering how children become involved in these militarization processes. In particular, she highlights how school curricula weave together “war memory” and “regional identity” in the commemorations that children participate in. Prominent in these commemorations is a focus on the memory of World War II as the occasion of a Soviet “heroic victory” over Nazi Germany. This emphasis shapes militarization in the region and is used instrumentally to become a “source of legitimation” in current conflicts. According to the author, it is a strategic move on the part of regional authorities to inculcate a sense of duty and pride and a “respect for military service” in students. Parallels are drawn between WWII and the contemporary military struggle against Ukraine by blurring Soviet and LNR/DNR imagery during commemorations of liberation from Nazi control and by honoring in a single ceremony the sacrifices of those who fought in both conflicts. These war commemorations also strengthen a sense of regional identity, as the emphasis on WWII allows authorities to align Ukraine with Nazi Germany, thereby legitimizing the proto-republics’ independence from—and fight against—Ukraine. Regional identity is further strengthened through lessons on the history, politics, natural features, and economic power of the region; the commemoration of regional war heroes; and school visits by DNR/LNR dignitaries.
Children play an active role in many of these commemorative activities, for instance, by tending to “memorable places and military burial sites”; researching particular branches of the military; solemnly safeguarding patriotic items passed from school to school; and taking part in performances, including “war songs and drill marches,” among others. These performances can be highly gendered, with boys playing the roles of “defenders”/”protectors”/soldiers and girls playing the roles of the “protected” or those caring for others, thereby contributing to a common justification for war: the protection of women and other “innocents.” As such, militarization is not just something that happens to children but rather something in which they engage.
The author then turns to school museums, which become important spaces in which these forms of military commemoration play out, along with other events like lessons and meetings with veterans. Often called “Rooms of Military Glory,” these school museums commonly memorialize WWII and the Soviet War in Afghanistan, highlighting a military leader or unit linked to the local area or even to the particular school. More recently, since 2015, these museums have also begun to memorialize very recent local victims and heroes of the war in the Donbas, especially school alumni, again drawing a parallel between the two wars and deriving meaning from the former to legitimize the latter. Furthermore, the location of these museums within school corridors, places that students pass as part of their daily routine, underscores how militarization “encroache[s] into everyday life, with military artifacts coexisting within regular school spaces.” Here, too, students take on an active role in maintaining these school museums, including through engagement in museum clubs and volunteering as tour guides.
Through her examination of military commemoration and regional identity cultivation through school curricula and school museums, the author reveals just how embedded militarization processes are in “practices of daily life” like “museum visits, parades, laying flowers at memorials, school exhibits,” both legitimizing these proto-states and normalizing military violence. At the same time, she shows how integral children are to these processes, not just as objects but also as agents of militarization. Locating militarization in everyday life and noticing children’s agency in these militarization processes helps us see where these processes can be disrupted and how children can be central to these forms of disruption and resistance.
Informing Practice
On the one hand, a military display in a school museum or a student procession commemorating local soldiers who served in WWII may seem fairly harmless—traditions that hold meaning for community members or are so normalized that they hardly register. On the other, their inconspicuousness can be understood as part of their power—the way military norms and values regularly insinuate themselves into our daily lives, shaping our identities and structuring the forms of action we see as necessary or even honorable when we face conflicts. The fact that political or military leaders orchestrate such efforts (whether visits by military officials to schools as in the LNR and DNR or military air shows in the U.S.) is evidence that they see value in them, that they serve some purpose.
Seeing these seemingly innocuous military commemorations and performances as instruments of state (or proto-state) power is the first step. Without the groundwork they and other forms of militarization—from movies that glorify military violence to the proliferation of camouflage in children’s clothing to the common presence of military recruiters at career and college fairs in high school gyms—lay, the mobilization of a population for war would be a much more difficult task. The next step, after noticing, is coming into our agency and realizing that each militarized moment of our daily lives is also a potential site of resistance—a chance to disrupt the smooth operation of militarist ideology. Of course, this is easier said than done, as our lives are already deeply shaped by militarism and we (and our families and friends) therefore find meaning in practices that also ultimately enable war. How do we honor a grandfather’s or aunt’s or brother’s military sacrifice while simultaneously critiquing the war they were forced to serve in? How do we acknowledge that our kid loves playing pirates or Star Wars while simultaneously prodding them to question the uncomplicated good vs. evil narratives at the core of so many movies and books and games, as well as the unproblematic assumption that a final violent battle is required to decide who wins?
Although each of us must decide for ourselves what authentic resistance to militarization looks like in our particular contexts, the efforts of the Feminist Anti-War Resistance or Get Lost (in Russia) or Mesarvot (in Israel) provide some examples of the forms this disruption can take even in the context of active warfare. In the highly repressive context of Russia, anti-war activists find creative ways to express dissent and to counter the dominant narrative that praises and justifies the war in Ukraine. For instance, Sasha Skochilenko switched supermarket price tags for small anti-war messages about the war. (She is now in prison.) Alexandra Arkhipova organized an online art exhibit of anti-war graffiti and public art collected and submitted by Russians from around the country. An organization called Get Lost helps would-be Russia soldiers evade the draft and leave the country. In Israel, some young people who would otherwise be drafted into the Israel Defense Force (IDF) refuse to serve—a choice that results, especially in the context of Israel’s post-October 7 military assault on Gaza, in both prison time and social ostracism for these “refuseniks” in what is a highly militarized society. It is worth noting that many of these forms of anti-militarist/anti-war resistance are carried out by young people—the same age or slightly older than those participating in the military commemorations and museums in their schools in the Donbas, highlighted in this research. These young people are not mere pawns in the state’s military projects; they have a voice—and their positioning on the threshold between childhood and adulthood provides them with a unique form of agency, not to mention energy and creativity, that can be incredibly powerful if channeled into smart, principled forms of anti-militarist/anti-war protest. [MW]
Continued Reading/Listening
Chae, L.-A. (2023). Talking to children about war. Journal of Pacifism and Nonviolence, 1(1), 52-64. https://brill.com/view/journals/jpn/1/1/article-p52_004.xml (open access)
Hamza, A. (2024, January 6). Israel ‘refuseniks’: ‘I will never justify what Israel is doing in Gaza’. France 24. Retrieved May 9, 2024, from https://www.france24.com/en/middle-east/20240106-israel-s-refuseniks-i-will-never-justify-what-israel-is-doing-in-gaza
Dergacheva, D. (2022, November 16). ‘We were born in a situation of hellish urgency’: How the Russian feminist anti-war resistance movement works. GlobalVoices. Retrieved May 9, 2024, from https://globalvoices.org/2022/11/16/we-were-born-in-a-situation-of-hellish-urgency-how-the-russian-feminist-anti-war-resistance-movement-works/
Golubeva, A., & Vock, I. (2023, November 16). Ukraine war: Russian artist Sasha Skochilenko jailed for anti-war messages. BBC. Retrieved May 9, 2024, from https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-67437171
Arkhipova, A. (2023). Russian anonymous street art against war 2022/23—A virtual exhibition. Retrieved May 9, 2024, from https://nowobble.net/
Warner, G. (2022, April 15). The scarf and the snuffbox: An interview with Alexandra Arkhipova. Rough Translation, NPR. Retrieved May 9, 2024, from https://www.npr.org/transcripts/1092873168
Organizations
Get Lost (in Russia): https://iditelesom.org/en/
Mesarvot (in Israel): https://wri-irg.org/en/node/26632
National Network Opposing the Militarization of Youth (U.S.): http://nnomy.org
Key Words: militarization, children, education, school, military commemoration, museums, Donbas, Ukraine, Russia, Luhansk, Donetsk
Photo credit: Mirek Pruchnicki
