RUSSIAN KIDS LEARN PUTIN ROCKS. The Bush years have sucked, but at least American text books aren’t edited by the current administration. According to the Washington Post, Russian history and social studies text books “reflect the themes dominating official political discourse here: that Putin restored Russian strength and built what the Kremlin calls a ‘sovereign democracy’ despite American efforts to isolate the country.”

The books say the American empire may be nearing a “final collapse” and that the Ukrainian Orange Revolution snatched a fair victory out of the hands of Russian forces in the country. Stalin is lauded as “the most successful leader of the U.S.S.R.”

Creepy.

–Dana Goldstein

Dana Goldstein, a former associate editor and writer at the Prospect, comes from a family of public-school educators. She received the Spencer Fellowship in Education Journalism, a Schwarz Fellowship at the New America Foundation, and a Puffin Foundation Writing Fellowship at the Nation Institute. Her journalism is regularly featured in Slate, The Atlantic, The Nation, The Daily Beast, and other publications, and she is a staff writer at the Marshall Project.