Books | Only one history textbook is now accepted in Russia, and it offers a special interpretation of the events in Ukraine

Academic year At the beginning of 2023–24, a new history textbook was published in Russia.

The history textbook for 16-17-year-olds is called History of Russia from 1945 to the beginning of the 21st century. The former head of the presidential administration was the chairman of the editorial board Vladimir Medinsky.

The book is intended for middle school 11th graders who aspire to university. There are apparently no other approved textbooks for this age group.

The new work covers the years 1945–2023, and 100 of its 400 pages concern Vladimir Putin through, the last 40 “military special operations” in Ukraine.

The book is skillfully written: some of its content is acceptable to all researchers. However, some important points have been left out, and some are traditional Russian propaganda.

of the Soviet system the freer phase in history teaching that came with the collapse practically ended in 2014, i.e. the occupation of Crimea.

The previous history textbook for this age group was published in 2017. Before that, the country's Ministry of Education banned three textbooks that had introduced Stalin's crimes and alliance with Nazi Germany.

Russian the federation published the most open textbooks from the point of view of Western researchers right at the beginning of the 21st century. In terms of the cultural aspects, openness still continues, but in terms of the economy and politics, there has been a solid return to the Soviet era.

The goal of the history curriculum is to foster Russian national identity. Other countries are presented as corrupt and a threat to Russia.

In terms of the economy, capitalism is not so much condemned, which also works in Russia, but it is given to understand that especially small states suffer from the US-led system and envy the Russians for their success.

Russian students in Moscow in 2021. Schoolchildren aspiring to university are presented with one “truth” about Russian history. Picture: Arthur Bondar for HS

Fresh textbook according to “the nations of the world thanked the Red Army” for defeating Nazism in World War II. The importance of US aid has been lost.

According to the book, the period of independence of the Baltic countries in 1918–40 was “undeveloped”. The Red Army “liberated” them, but the destruction of the forest brothers who support Estonian independence and the Banderovites of Ukraine took time, the book says.

“Iron Curtain” is written in quotation marks in the work, as well as “people's democracies”.

The Paris Peace Agreement of 1947 is mentioned: Petsamo was taken from Finland (Karelia had already been taken in 1944), but the country remained independent.

The socialist camp (as well as Finland) refused post-war Marshall aid, but according to the book, Western Europe became dependent on the United States because of it. It goes without saying that the express purpose of the aid was to stop communism.

Death of Stalin in March 1953 and his confidant, the head of the secret police Lavrenti Berian execution in December of the same year, Khrushchev the revelations of 1956 and the release of political prisoners are clearly told.

In his declassified speech, Khrushchev denounced Stalin's personal cult, which was quite different from the collective leadership of socialism. Even the most loyal could not be sure of their lives, instead they were sent to the gulag, or concentration camp, and sentenced to death in show trials for anti-party activities and working as agents of the West, especially during the great terror of 1937–38.

On the other hand, even Khrushchev did not mention the Ukrainian famine caused by Stalin, in which almost five million Ukrainians died. Khrushchev himself was Stalin's chief executioner in Ukraine during the Terror.

Khrushchev also donated Crimea to the Ukrainian Soviet Republic in 1954 without asking anyone. The book claims that “historical justice was realized only in 2014” – that is, with the help of the occupation of Crimea.

Book not a whiff of the 1957 explosion at a nuclear material processing plant near Chelyabinsk, nor of the unnatural plan to divert the rivers of Siberia to the south.

Space technology gets the value it deserves: the Sputnik satellite flew in 1957 and Gagarin was the first person in space in 1961.

As a direct cultural scandal, the book considers that Boris Pasternak was not allowed to go collect the Nobel Prize for Literature for his 1958 novel Doctor Zhivagobut he was expelled from the writers' union.

The textbook praises the 1957 Moscow Youth Festival for internationalism, but does not tell about the foreign influences, jazz, jeans and nylon stockings received by the Central Committee's horrified youth.

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Freedom of speech produced “destructive and hateful information”.

To Hungary went, according to the book, in 1956 to give brotherly help to the government, because “Western spies and internal opposition” were going to overthrow the system. For the same reason, troops invaded Czechoslovakia in 1968.

The book considers the withdrawal of military forces from Central Europe in 1989 during perestroika Gorbachev as a mistake. However, just now a typical statement of the president contradicting the textbook came out: “The Soviet Union made a mistake by occupying Hungary and Czechoslovakia,” said Putin in his speech in Vladivostok on September 12.

“It is not right to do anything in foreign policy that harms other nations,” said Putin, who last year started a war of aggression against Ukraine!

According to the text, the Soviet troops showed “incredible courage and heroism” in Afghanistan between 1979 and 1989. They retreated “orderly”, although in reality they suffered a severe defeat.

According to the book, freedom of speech produced “destructive and hateful information”. The world chess champions 1957–85 are skillfully mentioned To Anatoli Karpov until, but Garry Kasparov has been excluded because he opposes the Putin regime and the war and currently lives in Croatia.

Baltic independence in 1990–91 comes up in the book.

The coup attempts in 1991 and 1993 are reported and, in Putin's words, the collapse of the Soviet Union is considered “the greatest geopolitical disaster of the century”.

The 1990s also saw two wars in Chechnya. The book accuses the other of starting the terrorist bombings in Moscow, and considers the bombings of Yugoslavia to be NATO's fault, but is silent about the bloodshed of his brother's Serbs.

According to the textbook, NATO expansion is only a manifestation of the US desire to dominate. The text does not mention that the countries of Central and Eastern Europe joined NATO of their own free will as soon as they were freed from Soviet rule.

Finland's accession to NATO is frowned upon because the country has been “historically neutral” and gained its independence from the Bolsheviks in 1918.

The text does not say that Lenin wanted Finland to rejoin the Soviet Union soon, and Stalin tried this with armed forces in 1939–40 without success. Hitler's and Stalin's agreement of 1939 with its division of interests is considered by Medinski as a “distortion of history”.

Schoolchildren learned how to handle weapons in Rostov-on-Don in 2005. Picture: Guy Martin

According to the book Russian TV stations were taken over by the state “to prevent harm to the country”.

According to propaganda, the annexation of Crimea and the occupation of the republics of eastern Ukraine in 2014 was solely due to the neo-Nazis' persecution of Russian-speakers. “Ukrainians shoot civilians, we don't.”

The atrocities of the Russians in Butcha, Irpin and Mariupol are completely blacked out, while according to the book, the human shields used by Ukraine are “unique in world history”.

The final sentence of the book is descriptive: The departure of foreign companies has made Russia a “fantastic land of opportunities”.

In his dissertation, the author discussed history textbooks of the Soviet Union and the Russian Federation from 1948–2008.

Correction 2.1. 12:39 p.m.: In 1957, a nuclear power plant did not explode near Chelyabinsk, as the text erroneously stated earlier, but the explosion occurred at a nuclear material processing facility.

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