Ex-Minister of Russia was Slammed for Fake Quote by Pro-Government Belarusian TV Host Azarenok

On September 8, during the program “Word and Deed” on CTV, Grigory Azarenok, TV presenter, discussed the perceived harms of online education, digitalization, and the liberalization of education. In his monologue, he appeared to misquote former Russian Education Minister Andrei Fursenko:

“A long time ago, Russian Education Minister Fursenko said bluntly: ‘The Soviet school educated a person-creator. This was wrong, stupid. We must educate a competent consumer.’ Have you educated them, gentlemen? Where are these competent consumers? At Upper Lars? And the Soviet men-creators? They are defending their homeland in the Special Military Operation.”

The BIC team found a response from former Minister Fursenko. He called the quote attributed to him a fabrication, asserting that his words and the context had been distorted.

“First of all, I did not say that at all, and secondly, it was in a completely different context. But the reporters decided that my thoughts would be much more interesting in their interpretation. And now this fake and the myths about the Unified State Exam will haunt me for the rest of my days.”

Fursenko explained then: “In fact, during the meeting with young people, the conversation shifted to the idea that in Soviet times, when success was equated with becoming an outstanding designer, inventor, or some kind of creator. If a person could skillfully use the ideas and knowledge of others, they were considered to have not succeeded or achieved anything remarkable. I said this is absolutely wrong because such a framing of the issue makes millions of people unhappy. Do you know what happened in Chernobyl? The people who operated the station thought they needed to prove their knowledge and understanding, so they decided to conduct experiments at the nuclear power plant instead of performing their work competently.”