Everyone says the frost came early this year— and that another kind of freeze is on the way here. Not the weather, the schools. A new amendment to the Sakha Republic’s constitution will stop public education after the ninth grade. Officially, it’s about “efficiency.” People call it what it is: the quiet end of equality.
Sakha Republic
Yakutia, or the Sakha Republic, is a territory of the Russian Federation, with its coastline along the Arctic Ocean, in the northeastern corner of Asia.
кринж
This is a Cyrillic transliteration of the English “cringe”.What’s funny is who’s angry about it. The Communists. The same ones who, in Soviet times, trusted film projectors and slogans to teach the nation. Their speeches sound dated these days, painfully so, yet people now call them кринж —in the good way. Cringe, but real. Sincere. In Il Tumen (the regional parliament) one deputy said the change “undermines social guarantees, attacks universal education, and prepares a workforce of cheap, semi-educated labour for extractive companies.” It went viral—mocked, quoted and quietly agreed with.
