RUSSIAN HISTORY OF THE 21ST CENTURY IN SCHOOL TEXTBOOKS

Abstract

The article analyzes how the problems of Russian history of the 21st century are presented in modern school textbooks on the history of Russia. The relevance of the studied problem is determined primarily by the importance of history textbooks for constructing memory policies. At the same time, attention is paid to insufficient coverage of the 2000s transformations in modern historiography. The representation of the last twenty years in Russian history textbooks is analyzed in comparison with expert assessments of economists, sociologists, and political scientists. The authors conclude that Russian history of the 21st century appears on the pages of officially approved textbooks as a consistent, ongoing process of the development of a state that is gaining power. The textbooks contain very similar interpretations of the last two decades compared to the history of the 1990s, where one can find different interpretations of events made by the same authors. In addition, in textbooks one can find a lot of borrowings from official and propaganda rhetoric. In relation to the events of the 1990s and earlier, the authors of the textbooks under study selected alternative points of view, and subsequent events are assessed by them unambiguously. It can be stated that in the studied textbooks, the history of the last twenty years reflects the goals of historical science only to a small extent. It corresponds to the goals of historical policy to a greater extent. This conclusion becomes more obvious in the framework of the studies of Russian scholars, which, regardless of their views, cannot be described as an apology for the actions of political leaders.