The documentary Mr. Nobody Against Putin provides unique insights into how Russian society is responding to the Ukraine war.
One of the great unknowns about the war in Ukraine is the attitude of the Russian public toward the conflict. Given the harsh punishments for people who criticize the war, opinion polls cannot be trusted to fully reflect people’s genuine opinions. The consensus view among sociologists is that a small minority of Russians oppose the war, a slightly larger minority enthusiastically support the war, and the majority passively go along with what the state is doing. This past year saw an increased interest in a peaceful resolution of the conflict – though that is predicated on Russia’s core goals being recognized.
So far, the regime has tried to hide the costs of the war from the public: concealing the true death toll, avoiding full-scale mobilization of conscripts, and trying to keep the economy stable to give the appearance that life continues as usual. That leaves open the question of whether the “Putin consensus” will break down at some point in the future if the costs of the war start to hit home to ordinary Russians.
Mr. Nobody Against Putin is a recent documentary that provides unique insights into how Russian society is responding to the war. It draws on video footage taken by Pavel Talankin, a 34-year-old teacher in the small mining town of Karabash in the Ural mountains of central Russia. The film, a joint Danish-Czech production, has been shown at festivals since January 2025 and has been nominated for an Oscar.
Talankin was the videographer in Karabash School No. 1, and after the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 he was charged with recording the school’s compliance with increasingly strident central directives requiring teachers to incorporate patriotic education into their lessons.
Talankin explained in a subsequent interview that he realized he was turning from an observer into a participant, actively helping the state brainwash the children and prepare them for participation in the war. His initial reaction was to submit his resignation, but then he got into contact through Instagram with David Borenstein, an American director based in Copenhagen, who encouraged him to stay on and document what was happening.
Talankin shows the school as a caring and inclusive community. He clearly loves the students, who congregate in his office during breaks, playing games and listening to music. As the film progresses there is a growing contrast between the carefree and joyful lives of the students and the increasingly grim lectures they are subject to in the classroom. The anxiety is increasingly etched in the faces of the students, who range in age from five to 17.
Most of the teachers read out assigned texts: one of them stumbles over pronouncing the words “demilitarization” and “denazification.” History teacher Pavel Abdulmanov does not need a prepared script. He warns the students about the Western enemy, and tells them if they don’t like their motherland they should leave. He mocks the French who, he said, are now paying 150 euros to fill their gas tanks. Interviewed by Talankin in the film, Abdulmanov explains that his favorite historical figure is Lavrenti Beria, the head of Stalin’s secret police. He is later declared teacher of the year by the district council, with a new apartment as the prize.
Much of the material focuses on reliving World War II, what Russians call the “Great Patriotic War.” Students dress up in World War II uniforms to take part in parades on Victory Day (9 May) and other occasions. By the second year of the war, they are being taught how to strip weapons and taking part in grenade-throwing contests. The school is visited by soldiers from the private military group Wagner, who pass around dummy landmines and explain what to do if your foot is blown off.
Talankin intersperses footage from the school and around town with monologues to the camera in his office or cramped apartment in which he reflects on his growing despair and sense of powerlessness. His mother is the school librarian, and she does not share his political views. At one point he tapes Xs on the school’s windows, as a discreet protest against the proliferation of the patriotic “Z” emblem (which stands for Victory – Za pobedu).
He talks to people at a patriotic car rally organized by the authorities, and socializes with some of his recent students who have been drafted or signed contracts to go to the front. By the end of the film, we learn that several of them have been killed, including the brother of Masha, one of his favorite students. Talankin includes audio of the mother’s anguish at the funeral of his friend Artem Volkov, who died in the siege of Bakhmut.
Apart from Abdulmanov, none of the people he shows seem to be ideologically motivated, they are simply carried along by what the authorities (the school, the media) are telling them they should be doing.
In an interview with the BBC on 15 January, Talankin says, “You were asking about the effect of propaganda, and I can tell you, 100 percent, it does work.”
For the film’s producer, Helle Faber, it’s a film “about love, it’s a film about loving the place that you come from, loving your students, and seeing all this getting destroyed by something that comes from outside.”
We cannot tell from this film to what extent there is opposition to the war among ordinary Russians. In the interview noted above, Talankin explains that he carefully edited out any critical comments by participants that could have landed them in trouble. Harsh jail sentences – five years or more – have been handed out to people who criticize the conduct of the Russian army in what is still officially called the “special military operation” in Ukraine.
In June 2024, at the end of the school year, Talankin gave away his pets and belongings, packed up his hard drives and flew to Istanbul. He has now been granted political asylum in the Czech Republic.
In an interview with The New York Times Talankin explained, “Sooner or later, people will ask themselves, ‘What’s going on with the Russians? Why are they all so angry and aggressive again?’ And here’s the answer, because they go to school and are told that killing is normal. Dying for the motherland is really cool.”
The film is a unique document showing life in an authoritarian regime girding itself for war. George Orwell could not imagine that Winston Smith would be able to turn the camera on the regime and smuggle his analysis to the outside world. We have nothing like it from the Nazi era: the closest source that comes to mind is Victor Klemperer’s diary, I Will Bear Witness. It is reminiscent of the 2015 documentary Under the Sun, made by Vitaly Mansky, a Russian director who has lived abroad since 2014, who was hired to go to North Korea to make a propaganda film about a schoolgirl’s preparations for Kim Yong Il’s birthday. Mansky secretly recorded unauthorized material.
Mr. Nobody includes a telling quote from Vladimir Putin, who in December 2023 echoed Otto von Bismarck’s observation that “wars are not won by generals, but by schoolteachers and parish priests.” The comment reminded me of the opening sequence of the classic antiwar movie All Quiet on the Western Front, based on the novel by Erich Maria Remarque (the original 1930 version, not the recent remake). The film opens with a German schoolteacher cajoling his students to join the army, because “it is sweet and noble to die for your country.”
Mr. Nobody juxtaposes scenes of normal people going about their life with state-sponsored indoctrination: uniforms, parades, and the invocation of a thousand years of history. Talankin said that he was in part inspired by the classic Soviet documentary Ordinary Fascism, made by Mikhail Romm in 1965, which has a similar structure. Given that condemning Nazism is central to the Russian state’s current patriotic education campaign, the analogy is particularly apt.
Romm combed through millions of feet of captured footage to convey the insanity of the Nazi regime. The film contains gruesome scenes of atrocities, the Warsaw ghetto, and the extermination camps. But alongside the Hitler speeches and military parades, there are clips of ordinary Germans going about their lives: children playing, adults dancing. One part of the film recognizes the minority of brave Germans who tried to resist, to say no.
In a 2015 interview Romm’s scriptwriter Maya Turovskaya explained that “We were not only asking questions about Nazi Germany, but about our own country as well.”
Peter Rutland is a professor of government at Wesleyan University and a regular contributor to Transitions.
