2023-08-09 15:12:00
“The section of the 70s, 80s, 90s, zero years has been completely revised, cardinally rewritten, and a section has been added from 2014 to the present day, including the SVO,” Vladimir Medinsky, aide to the President of the Russian Federation, said at a press conference at the agency ” Interfax”, presenting a new textbook. The former Minister of Culture became one of the authors of the textbook, along with MGIMO rector Anatoly Torkunov and scientific director of the Institute of World History of the Russian Academy of Sciences Alexander Chubaryan.
Interestingly, the history textbooks used in schools until today already had sections on Crimea, sanctions, and other recent events. So, for example, in the textbook by the authors Danilov, Torkunov, Khlevnyuk for grades 10-11, in the section on the history of Russia in 2012-2020, the “reunification of Crimea with Russia” is described as a reaction to the coming to power in Kiev of “radical nationalists”, the subsequent sanctions are briefly mentioned and a 2020 constitutional amendment referendum.
What is the new history textbook about?
Updated unified history textbooks for grades 10-11 will be used in all schools from September 1. During 2024, new history textbooks for grades 5-9 will be prepared, which will be created by the same team of authors. In the new “Medinsky textbook”, the section of modernity is supplemented by the events in the Donbass, the Minsk agreements and ends with the NWO. The authors of the textbook, relying on the main thesis (“The fix idea of the West was the destabilization of the situation inside Russia”), paragraph by paragraph build a logical chain of events that justify Russia’s invasion of Ukraine: the disintegration of Yugoslavia (“the scenario … of the dismemberment of Russia has already been worked out by NATO on the example of Yugoslavia “), events in Georgia (“the pro-American Saakashvili regime attacked South Ossetia, associated with Russia by centuries of friendship and common history”), the demolition of Soviet memorials in Eastern Europe, the “revival of Nazism” in the Baltic countries, and finally the emergence of “Ukrainian neo-Nazism.” This, according to the authors, is “embittered national, linguistic, cultural violence of an aggressive minority over the majority.” The textbook also enlightens that the goal of any cooperation with Ukraine of the countries of Europe and the USA is “not a strong Ukraine, but a weak Russia”, and the current power of the Ukrainian “junta” was established thanks to the “bloody armed rebellion” of 2014. The authors of the textbook refer to Ukraine’s desire to join NATO as the last point on the way to NMD and resort to propaganda pathos: “It would probably be the end of civilization. This could not be allowed.”
The authors call the goal of the SVO “the protection of the Donbass and the proactive security of Russia.” The latest history in the textbook ends with information about “fakes”, “foreign agents” and an extensive paragraph about the “heroes of the NWO”.
According to Medinsky, the new textbook “drastically fewer numbers, dates, dry statistics, more stories about people, more about specific real events.”
Indeed, the language in which the manual is written is fundamentally different from that adopted in the educational environment. This is not a scientific speech striving for a dry language of facts, but rather an excited agitation that no longer refers to historical realities, but to emotions and feelings. Increasingly, in the new textbook one can find instead of “Russia”, “citizens of Russia” and “Russians” – “we” and “our country”. The authors do not state the facts, but appeal and call (“You are already adults, dear high school students!”, “Do not miss this chance. Today Russia is truly a country of opportunities”).
Name, status and business
Konstantin Pakhalyuk, a Russian-Israeli historian and political scientist, Ph.D. in political sciences, who himself took part in the creation of historical textbooks before the war, told DW that school textbooks are a big and very profitable business. “Monopolistic trends in the textbook market began in the mid-2010s,” says expert Pakhalyuk. better, the other is worse. Now they are promising that Russia will have a unified history textbook. Launching a line of textbooks is not so easy. Each line has its own approach, the order of presentation of the material, its own teaching aids, and it is inconvenient for teachers to break the line in the middle of the educational process and switch to another textbook. When the line just enters the market, then teachers usually start working with it from the 5th-6th grade, respectively, when it comes to the graduation class, it will take several years. ”
“Medinsky’s line of textbooks began to be created at the end of the 2010s. You need to understand that textbooks are a business, big money. It is clear that textbooks were not written by Medinsky, his role as an editor is rather formal. His name is a high-ranking person – an assistant to the president, Minister of Culture – helped and helps to promote these textbooks on the market. This is a Russian specificity, when high-status people who are not related to school education, officials, try to get in there and, frankly, they are invited there by the market, – notes Pakhalyuk. – It would seem that a textbook is just a textbook, where some things about history are told in convenient language (depending on age).Why make a political question out of this?The answer is simple: money and status.In fact, textbooks are largely shaped by those people who are indicated by the editors at the end of the book, in the imprint… That is, there is a formal editor, there are authors, and a bunch of people who work on the text.Authorship is more about responsibility for the text. If we take Medinsky’s ruler, then almost all authors have written textbooks before, these are completely standard and normal teaching materials. I wrote a paragraph about the First World War in one of the textbooks. But after the editorial revision, my work turned into a patriotic agitation, and I had to defend a number of points with a scandal.
Ideology and propaganda
Historians have not been surprised for a long time by the ideologization of textbooks. They consider it nonsense of this publication that the events of today have become the subject of historical science.
“History textbooks are a priori ideologized. If we take the section about the Battle of Kulikovo, it will also be presented as an incredible battle of the liberated Russians against the Tatar-Mongols. In fact, everything was completely different – this is one of the episodes of the civil war in the Golden Horde, where Russians were on the side of the legitimate authorities of the Horde against the usurper Mamai,” says historian Sergei Chernyshev, ex-head of the Novosibirsk “Novokolledzh”.
“This approach, when modern events are entered into history books, is not a common practice. It is criticized by many historians. Modernity is not the task of history. It can be part of civic education, as in Germany, or social science, in Russia. Most historians will say, that a history textbook should end in 1945. Maximum – 1991. There should be a historical distance.Maybe that’s why the authorities want to combine history and modernity, so that the latter seems simple and stable as history.The desire to include today’s events in textbooks indicates the desire of the authorities to erase the line between history as propaganda,” says historian Konstantin Pakhalyuk. “But the question is not only this. Far from today and not yesterday, there was a willingness to see the past as the history of a predominantly state, as the development of its forms, territories, as the history of some supposedly stable cultural entities. In this picture of the world, it seems to a person that he does not decide anything, that history is made by officials and authorities, and he remains to obey. Today, more than ever, the authorities are interested in generating historical illusions: let people live by them. In my opinion, this impoverishes and distorts history, since the vision of history as processes belonging to people and society is thrown out.
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