Two original Russian-language acts. Decree No. 809 (11 pages) approves the Foundations of State Policy for the Preservation and Strengthening of Traditional Russian Spiritual and Moral Values. Order No. 808 (104 pages, registered with the Ministry of Justice on 11 February 2026 under No. 85296) amends the federal educational programmes to insert the work programme for the new compulsory subject "Spiritual and Moral Culture of Russia", built explicitly on the decree.
Decree No. 809 is the ideological charter that Russian schooling now implements. Paragraph 5 lists the "traditional values": life, dignity, human rights and freedoms, patriotism, civic consciousness, service to the Fatherland and responsibility for its fate, high moral ideals, a strong family, creative labour, the priority of the spiritual over the material, humanism, mercy, justice, collectivism, mutual assistance and mutual respect, historical memory and the continuity of generations, and the unity of the peoples of Russia. Order No. 808 turns that list into a timetable. It inserts the federal work programme for "Spiritual and Moral Culture of Russia" into the basic general education programme, in force for grade 5 from 1 September 2026 and for grades 6 and 7 from 2027. The programme states that its "semantic core" is the traditional values of Decree No. 809, maps each content line to the decree's list, and defines its aim as forming those values "through the study of the life path" of Russian figures including "military personnel, including heroes of the special military operation". Because the federal programmes apply in full in the occupied territories, the course will be taught in every occupation school. The two acts are cited in TOT Insights research on the militarisation of education and on the institutional pathway that draws children in occupied Ukraine into Russian identity.
If the document does not display in your browser, click here to open the PDF directly.
Decree No. 809
Paragraph 4. Traditional values are defined as moral guidelines that form the world view of Russian citizens, passed from generation to generation and underlying "all-Russian civic identity and the unified cultural space of the country".
Paragraph 5. The list of values reproduced in the summary above.
Paragraphs 13 to 17. Threats: the activity of "unfriendly states", extremist and terrorist organisations, and the spread of "destructive ideology" including the cult of selfishness, denial of patriotism and "the destruction of the traditional family".
Paragraphs 18 to 22. Tasks for the state, including in education, culture, youth policy and the information sphere; the decree is the reference point for later curriculum orders.
Order No. 808
Inserted paragraphs and Table 241. The federal work programme "Spiritual and Moral Culture of Russia" for grades 5 to 7: aims, content by grade, planned results and hours. The programme declares that "the semantic core ... is traditional Russian spiritual and moral values (Decree of the President of the Russian Federation of 9 November 2022 No. 809)".
Entry into force. Grade 5 from 1 September 2026; grades 6 and 7 from 1 September 2027.
Content. Units on the Fatherland, family, labour, faith and culture, historical memory and "defenders of the Fatherland", with biographies including participants in the "special military operation" as exemplars.
Analytical note
The order completes a sequence: the decree fixes the values, Order No. 370 of 2023 wrote them into the federal upbringing programme, and Order No. 808 makes them a compulsory subject. In occupied Ukraine the course arrives in schools already stripped of Ukrainian language and history, so that the only civic identity on the timetable is the one the decree defines.