LETTER FROM MOSCOW
Have you ever heard of Saint Stepan and Saint Svetlana? Teachers at schools number 3 and number 41 in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatka, in Russia's Far East, had never heard of these two figures either, allegedly canonized by the country's Orthodox Church in February this year. But that didn't stop them from devout reflection before the duly framed icons of the two venerable figures... without noticing that "Saint Svetlana" looked very like Svetlana Snejko, a Belarusian judge, and that "Saint Stepan" was none other than Stepan Bandera, the Ukrainian nationalist leader reviled by Moscow.
Believing themselves to be responding to a request from the "Russian Historical Society," at the end of February, the teachers at these two schools fell into the latest trap set by Vladislav Bokhan, a Belarusian performer who has made a specialty of these highly political hoaxes. The 31-year-old artist, hunted by Alexander Lukashenko's regime and now a refugee in Poland, has seized upon the mythical figure of Bandera before.
In October 2023, believing themselves in communication with the local branch of the ruling United Russia party, teachers in the Kaluga region took to the stage to celebrate the birthday of Russian President Vladimir Putin, complete with portraits and printed quotations from Ukrainian far-right leader and one-time Nazi collaborator Bandera, who died in 1959.
"He's supposed to be their biggest enemy, but they don't even know who he is, what he looks like," Bokhan laughed. "And, of course, none of them thought to open Google. The only thing that counts is obeying orders." Some of the schools involved in this latest action even went the extra mile by filming themselves and their pupils declaiming poems in honor of Putin: "Our president is forever young" in front of the photos of Bandera.
Bokhan made his mark with an even bolder move in June 2022, tricking a school in Klin, on the outskirts of Moscow, again under the name of the United Russia party, which theoretically has no authority whatsoever over teachers. The latter had to show their dedication to their workplace by highlighting the slogans "Work makes you free" and "One people, one nation, one leader" – both associated with Nazi Germany.
Some were quick to print these words on a Russian flag background, while others posed, smiling and shovel in hand, in the schoolyard, a reminder of the "voluntary" work that teachers and other civil servants carry out to make up for the failings of the state.
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