Kebak Tatyana A.,

Candidate of Historical Sciences, Novosibirsk State Pedagogical University, Novosibirsk, Russia, e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

 

 

The Great Patriotic War as Depicted in the Modern University Textbooks

 

 DOI: 10.31518/2618-9100-2020-3-14

 The article is focused on the representations of the Great Patriotic War in high school textbooks on Russian history which were published by Moscow publishing houses in the last twenty years. Based on the analysis of the textbooks, the author highlighted the main debatable questions, topics, the options of their interpretation by the compilers and described the authors of the high school textbooks. One of the debatable questions was the role of USSR in the foreign policy of late 1930s – early 1940s (the description and estimation of the agreements and secret protocols with Germany and the following accession of the neighboring states, spreading the idea of “the returning of lost territories” of former Russian Empire). Another debatable issue is the USSR’s readiness for the war, the reasons of defeats in the first months of war, the cost and sequences of hostility of 1941–1945. The author concludes that the high school textbooks give space to more plural opinions that the school textbooks when describing the events of the Great Patriotic War. It is noted that some textbooks tend to describe the Great Patriotic War as the key event of the 20th century for the contemporary Russia, which could unite the country and needs to be protected from the falsification and “black myths”. The noted trend perfectly fits the modern discourse of power of the last decade.

Publishing: 29/06/2020

Original article >


How to cite: Kebak T.A. The Great Patriotic War as Depicted in the Modern University Textbooks // Historical Courier, 2020, No. 3 (11), pp. 145–151. [Available online:] http://istkurier.ru/data/2020/ISTKURIER-2020-3-14.pdf

Links: Issue 3 2020

Keywords: Great Patriotic War; Russian history of the 20th century; high school history textbook