As a gift on my tenth birthday, I got the whole Harry Potter series of books and a beautiful picture of Hogwarts, making me a HP fan for years. I even remember being jealous of my best friend, when her older sister brought her an actual Hedwig from the Harry Potter Museum in London.

My friends and I, we got the chance to read Stephen King and Neil Gaiman’s novels, cry at Tony Stark’s death in Avengers: Endgame, learn by heart Elsa’s song from Frozen, and see the first Inside Out on the big screen with popcorn and Coca-Cola. On weekends, we would watch the Disney channel on TV. If we wanted to switch, we would just press a button and turn on a Russian movie.

I had a great childhood.

I was raised on both international and Russian art. I was lucky to travel, to study in foreign schools, learn foreign languages, and pass Cambridge (English-language) and DELF (French-language) exams. My generation had a chance to explore different countries, read international books and watch American movies.

It is well known that propaganda focuses on the easiest target: children, since they are flexible and suggestible. Influencing a grown-up, or even a teenager, requires a lot more work, due to the fact that they have a formed opinion on the world around them.

I recently saw a video of a group of second-graders dancing at a school show to a song about the war. No war in particular, just a man singing about saving his country. It may seem nice and patriotic, but it is hard to believe that an eight-year old kid can truly understand the meaning of murder or even the concept of war.

Moreover, if their opinion is going to be founded specifically on Russian books, films and music, what will they believe in the future?

History always repeats itself. In the Soviet Union, many songs, books and films were banned, specifically those that questioned the regime – for example, George Orwell’s Animal Farm and 1984.

That way the regime made the population, especially the youth, believe that their system was the best.

Nowadays, Russian kids see solely one opinion on political events. They are raised on books, school programmes and songs that falsify Russia’s history and distort reality. Erasing a big chunk of culture and education will not help; it is like Nazis burning books. And we all know what that led to.

Is this what the international community stands for?

A dictatorship washes out all the culture, it does not praise individuality. But it helps raise an army with no opinion other than what they have been told on the TV or at school.

Eventually, today’s children will become the masses that are cheering in 1984 for whatever war they are having. With Eurasia or Eastasia, it doesn’t matter. They know that their country is good, all the others – bad. They are loyal to the system since it is the only one they know.

Do the kids, who are not supposed to be charged for their parents’ or politicians’ actions, need to be found guilty and deprived of access to the things that can help them stand up and actually change the situation?

Isn’t it more logical to nudge Russia in a more democratic direction by giving its kids the chance to explore the world?