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My lessons to return to Russian classrooms: report

MOSCOW: Military lessons, a curriculum mainstay of the Soviet-era regimes of Leonid Brezhnev and Mikhail Gorbacheve, are set to return to Russian school timetables under a presidential decree, the Izvestia daily reported on Saturday.

The "initial military preparation" courses were in the past a stepping stone towards creating "Soviet man" the paper said.

"The measure is probably aimed at the Western public," Izvestia reported. "With the mobilisation of the reserve corps and the reactivation of the industro-military sector, it will show the West that Russia is in the process of transforming itself into the sort of militaristic monster of the type seen in the ex-USSR."

The paper doubted the effectiveness of the military courses, and said that offering work to veterans could be behind the move.

The government decree, signed by Boris Yeltsin on December 31 Ñ the day he resigned as president Ñ was published in the official journal on January 13, the paper said. AFP