Kaplan on Socialism in Schoolbooks

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The Vicissitudes of Socialismin Russian History Textbooks

VERAKAPLAN

The article examines the changes in both the meaning and the role of the con-cept of socialism in post-Soviet historical discourse through the particular prismof the writing of history textbooks. Reinhardt Kosellecks ideas on the nature ofmodern historical concepts and Jerzy Topolskis model of historical narrative serveas analytical devices for exploring methodological aspects of the subject and forsurveying Russian history textbooks. The article claims that the changes undergoneby the concept of socialism, which was one of the fundamental Soviet axioms ofhistorical discourse, served as the basis for developing a new theoretical languagethat became characteristic of post-Soviet historical writing.

The twentieth-century fin de sicle marked a watershed in Russian historicalstudies. The rejection of Marxism, which had long supplied the theoretical

basis for Soviet historical scholarship, brought about a profound shift in

the conceptual frameworks that were to inform post-Soviet historiography.As a consequence, fundamental Soviet axioms of historical discourse such

as class, socialism and capitalism were replaced in the 1990s by

rediscovered versions of civilization, nation and ethnicity. Thesechanges served as the basis for developinga new theoretical language that

would become characteristic of post-Soviet historical writing.

This article addresses the vicissitudes that overtook one of the key

concepts of Soviet history, namely, the concept of socialism. My intent isto examine how both the meaning of this concept and its role in the post-

Soviet historical narrative changed. Methodologically, this problem can be

located in the context of conceptual history. Its major currents have been

the Begriffsgeschichte, which focuses on semantic structures of historicalconcepts 1 and the Cambridge School which deals with the history of


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political discourses2or, as one of its leading figures, Quentin Skinner,formulated it, with the history of the uses of concepts.3Since the 1990s,

Russian scholars have joined the field with a body of works on questions

of conceptual borrowing and the interplay between autochtonous andadopted concepts.4The subject of Soviet conceptual language also became

an issue of cultural and, to a lesser extent, historical and linguistic studies.5

From the perspective of conceptual history, the short span of time

defined as the post-Soviet period is extremely significant, since it hasbeen characterized by an enormous acceleration in political and intellectual

processes and the ensuing modification of the basic concepts of Soviet

political culture. It is still an open question, however, whether these two

decades might be regarded as the beginning of a distinctive Russian Sat-telzeit, a time when political and social concepts have been reformulated

within a short period of rapid change.6

The aim of this article is to trace the changes in the concept thatserved as one of the basic notions in Soviet political discourse and, in

this capacity, also in the Soviet historical narrative.While these changes

can be examined through different aspects of historical discourse, I willapproach the issue through a very particular prism, the writing of history

textbooks.7 This choice requires some explanation. In general terms,

textbooks can be distinguished from other texts in a variety of ways. The

first distinct trait of the textbook is its anonymity. As education studieshave observed, textbooks are often perceived to be collective products

with an independent existence unconnected to any individual authors.8In

this respect textbooks serve as a vehicle for conveying social and culturalmessages and thereby play an important role as instruments of socializa-

tion. Textbooks introduce new generations to the existing social order,

presenting versions of culture that suit the dominant political ideology. In

the case of history textbooks, this usually means presenting a most basic,simplified and consensual narrative of the past.

The political and educational reforms instituted in Russia during the

1990s, however, brought about a sharp divergence from this common pat-tern. Not only did the highly structured and insistently consensual Soviet

narrative fall apart, but the notion of creating history textbooks that told

differing, and even contending, narratives was promoted. New publish-ing policies led to a dramatic diversification of the textbook corpus. And d f f


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Vicissitudes of Socialism

of study. At the same time, the central political, social and cultural signifi-

cance of the history textbook became even more obvious. In light of the

deep crisis in historical scholarship that overcame Russia with the demise

of the Soviet Union, a new and rather paradoxical situation developed.In the early 1990s history textbooks emerged as a sort of popular tribune

where new historiographical ideas and conceptualizations were tried out.

Textbooks lost, at least in part, one of their defining traits, their anonym-ity. They now became identified with their authors while also maintaining

their authority, which helped, inter alia, to promote new scholarly agendas

during this period of fluctuation and change.Moreover, from the late 1980s and continuing throughout the

1990s, discussion and debate over the content of history textbooksdeveloped into the principal channel of communication between society

at large and the academic community. The textbooks continued to per-form this function into the new century as well. At this point, however,

the state sought to reestablish its hegemony over the field, that is, both

over the debates and over the actual content of the texts. This effort hadconsiderable effect. Since the middle of the present decade it is possible to

discern a tendency to turn history textbooks once again into anonymous

vehicles of a state-approved narrative. At the same time, however, thisstate-sponsored narrative remains more sophisticated and less closed offto interpretation than it was during the Soviet era.

THE ROLE OF SOCIALISM IN THE HISTORICAL PARADIGM OFSOCIOECONOMIC FORMATION

What made the concept of socialism so important to Soviet historical stud-

ies? The Soviet perspective on history was teleological: history was seen asa steady movement toward a communist future, one in which each stage

was defined as a distinct socioeconomic formation. Class struggle was

presented as the force driving this historical progress. The formulationor

discoveryof objective laws that allegedly regulated the movement of his-tory was suggestive of how history was perceived to be a linear, invariant

and irreversible process. The goal-oriented character of this perspectiveemphasized the temporal dimension of history.


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This same perspective presented modern history as an ontological

opposition between capitalism and socialism. The latter, allegedly born

of and then triumphing over the former, was considered to be the more

progressive formation. On the one hand, the capitalist world was portrayedas a formidable entity and a cause of suspicion and mistrust inasmuch as

it constituted a threat to socialism. On the other hand, capitalism was

also recognized to be a positive cultural source because it stimulatedprogress. This model identified capitalism with the West. This did not

mean, however, that socialism, although juxtaposed to the capitalist West,

represented the East. In fact, there was no place for the East at all in thismodel. The Third World, rather, was a separate arena of struggle between

socialism and capitalism.This approach put socialism at its center. Like revolution, socialism

had a metahistorical character: itwas one of those notions that ReinhartKoselleck, the leading figure of the Begriffsgeschichte,defined as a col-

lective singular,a flexible general concept representing a multitude of

possible variations and concrete forms of socialism, much as Kosellecksrevolution appeared to unite within itself the course of all individual

revolutions.9Being perceived as a phase in the transition from capitalism

to communism, socialism was open to and oriented toward the future. TheSoviet conception of socialism was, thus, consistent with other modernconcepts of movement, such as republicanism, democracy and lib-

eralism, all of which, as Koselleck argued in his seminal essay, served the

purpose of theoretically anticipating future historical movement and prac-tically influencing it.10Their common denominator was the element of

promise, anticipation and expectation; in terms of Kosellecks well-known

formulation, they were oriented to the horizon of expectations, not to

the space of experience.11In the same essay Koselleck also addresseda situation in which the temporal structure of these concepts changes:

If corresponding political designs were realized, then, once generated

by a revolution, the old expectations worked themselves out on the

basis of new experience. This is true for republicanism, democracyand liberalism to the extent that history permits us to judge. Presum-

ably this will also be true for socialism, and for communism as well,

if its arrival is ever announced.12


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No one quite foresaw that it would be the end of socialismrather than

the arrival of communismthat would one day be announced.

With socialisms removal from the horizon of expectation to the

space of experiencein its abrupt transformation from the dynamicconcept of movement into a static phenomenon of the pastRussian

historians found themselves facing a unique situation. In order to liberate

themselves from a failed socialism it became necessary to reconceptualizeRussian history, to search for other avenues of development that might

not have been successfully realized in the past but could be achieved in

the present. A new perception of history evolved in the late 1980s andearly 1990s which shifted the emphasis from the temporal to the spatial,

and from diachronic to synchronic dimensions of historical experience.This essential shift provoked another basic change: history ceased to be

invariant and irreversible and became endowed with alternatives, withopportunities to return from the allegedly mistaken to the correct path

of development. Last, but not least, this new historical perspective also

contained a comparative component, particularly between Russia and theWest, which became characteristic of historical writing during the transi-

tional decade of the 1990s. These changes in scholarly perspective required

corresponding adjustments in the language of historical scholarship. Atthe same time, it proved to be impossible to wholly purge those conceptsthat had lost their relevance from the historical discourse.

The problem essentially lay in how social and political changes are

incorporated into a new discourse.13 Social transformation does notautomatically bring about change in discursive practice. Rather, the new

reality is generally interpreted through categories inherited from the old

one. A new discourse then takes shape through the interaction between

novel conditions, the discursive legacy and the subsequent conceptualtransvaluation of that legacy.14This means that the old concepts change

their meaning before new ones emerge. These changes, moreover, entail

a modification of the whole structure of historical narrative. While theliterature on historical narrative is immense,15the model of the latter pro-

posed by Jerzy Topolski would seem to be most effective for understanding

this connection. Topolski suggested a distinction between the vertical and

horizontal structure of the historical narrative. From the vertical perspec-tive, he discerned three substructures (or levels) of narrative: information,

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also as theoretico-ideological substructure. The latter, Topolski claims,

influences both the content of information and the mode of rhetoric. From

the horizontal perspective, he conceives the narrative structure as consisting

of smaller narrative wholes (histories), which combine to create ever morecomplex, larger narratives. By becoming part of these more complex

narratives, Topolski argues, every single statement acquires more and

more meaning. He defines this process as binding with content. Heascribes the most significant role in this process to general concepts, which

implement the binding function. Therefore changes in the meaning of

general concepts invariably lead to changes in the narrative as a whole.16What is more, as a version of the Marxist narrative, Soviet history

possessed the character of a grand, or master narrative, the kind ofstory that underlies, assigns legitimacy to and explains the particular choices

a culture prescribes as possible courses of action.17A master narrativeprovides coherence by obscuring the conflicts that arise in the course of a

societys history. It functions as a framework for all other cultural narratives,

giving the latter their specific meaning. In the Soviet case, these othercultural narratives were national ones, with Russian history playing the

dominant role. The history of the Soviet Union was actually the history

of the Russian state interspersed with fragments of the histories of othernationalities. A surrealistic vertical balance of class and nationalperspectives of history was achieved once factors conducive to state power

were treated as positive contributions to historical progress, and the Soviet

Unions status as a superpower was clear proof of the advantages of thesocialist system. At the horizontal level, however, a permanent tension

was in play between the history of the USSR and the various national

histories. This tension was particularly noticeable in the history classroom.

Courses on national history had been taught in Soviet schools since thelate 1950s,18but Russia was the only Soviet republic where such a course

was not offered, a paradox that offers striking proof of its predominant

national status.Although school curricula prescribed a fixed (and limited) amount

of hours devoted to national history in the framework of the course on

the history of the USSR, in practice the number of teaching hours that

were allocated to courses on the history of the particular republics rosesteadily at the expense of the history of the Soviet Union as a whole.19

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became part and parcel of evolving national narratives. Until 1991, efforts

were made to find a new, multicultural framework that would allow for

the coexistence of these various narratives. After 1991, when the USSR

ceased to exist and was replaced by fifteen separate nation-states, the goalof writing national histories became paramount. Although these histories

constituted distinct narratives in their own right, some of the problems

encountered by post-Soviet historians in writing them were shared byall. Most common were the difficulties encountered when describing the

period previously known as the socialist one. Revising the definition of

socialism, which had previously served, in Toploskis term, as a bindingconcept, was an essential step before nation-based historical narratives

could be disseminated.

THE CONCEPT OF SOCIALISM IN POST-SOVIET TEXTBOOKS

The first attempts to critically reassess the concept of socialism were

undertaken in the second half of the 1980s, as part of the political and

educational debates that developed during the period ofperestroika (the

economic and political reforms adopted by Mikhail Gorbachev). Althoughat this time socialism still retained its character asa binding concept, certain

changes in focus were already evident. Thus, socialism now became closelytied to questions of social justice, to issues concerning alternative paths in

the development of socialism and to the human costs of building social-

ism. Several years later, in 199091, public discussion already included

talk about breaking the cycle of socialism and about the necessity offinding ways out of socialism.20This was the context for deep changes

in the field of history teaching. Between 1986 and 1988, in response to

public demands to tell what was often referred to as the heretofore hid-den truth, and to fill in the numerous blank spots in Soviet history, initial

steps were undertaken to improve the extant textbooks. These improve-

ments consisted of new data, mainly on the Soviet period of history,

including conspicuous information on its previously omitted heroes andvillains. And yet, therevised textbooks became obsolete the moment they

were published because they lagged behind the pace of political change.This crisis reached a climax in 1988, when the nationwide matriculationi hi l d d h h h d b l d


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between the formal educational curriculum and what was now common

public knowledge. In response to the need for sweeping changes in the

history curriculum, the journal Prepodavanie istorii v shkole(The teaching

of history in school) initiated a broad set of discussions in 198990 thatwere devoted to formulating new conceptions for teaching history. The

most radical and, in hindsight, most influential proposal was that originat-

ing in the Temporary Scientific Research Group Shkola(School), anadhoc institution established by the State Committee on Education. This

research group sought to develop a program for restructuring secondary

education as a whole, with particular attention to the history curriculum.21Shkolas conception challenged the very foundation of Marxist his-

tory, namely, the theory of socioeconomic formations, which the authorscharacterized as an ossified scheme according to which the masses of

the people obey rigid sociological laws and move inexorably along thepath of progress to a predetermined goal.22Signaling a dramatic step

away from the Marxist perception of history, Shkolas proposal placed the

human being, instead of historical laws, as the object of historical investi-gation, thereby pulling the rug out from under the concept of socialism.

In the course of further debate over history teaching it was suggested

that socialism be considered as a historical experiment that, like everyexperiment, was fraught with the risk of failure, or, alternatively, as aromantic dream and political utopia.23

Another blow to the concept of socialism was delivered in the ongo-

ing debates over how best to incorporate the histories of the various Sovietrepublics into the history of the USSR. This issue was initially discussed

at the All-Union Conference on the Problem of History Teaching, which

was held in Tallinn in February 1988.24From 1988 until the end of 1991

the issue continually resurfaced in disputes over history education, beingraised each time by representatives of the national republics. They pro-

posed that the history of the peoples of the USSR be taught instead of

the history of the so-called new historical community, that is, the Sovietpeople (sovetskii narod).25This meant much more than merely allocating

additional class time to the history of the national republics. It required a

radical revision of the comprehensive course on the history of the USSR.

Some proposed that programs and textbooks devoted to the history ofthe USSR be respectively tailored to the different national republics. The

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of neighboring states rather than just Soviet states. This entailed learning

about the history of cultural centers in the region. Thus, Scandinavian

history would be studied in Estonia, and Indian and Chinese history

would be learned in Uzbekistan.26The authors of the Shkola concep-tion tabled one of the most ambitious proposals at the time when they

suggested that the histories of the respective national republics from the

period prior to their integration into the Russian state should be taughtin the context of world history rather than Soviet history.27At the same

time, Estonian educators, who were the most consistent supporters of

innovation, advocated a different solution. They proposed that a generalcourse in world history be introduced that would consist of both world

and Soviet history. This suggestion contained the notion of an overarch-ing history course in whose framework Russian history and the history of

national republics could be integrated in equal fashion. The concept ofsocialism, which underscored the antagonism between the Soviet Union

and capitalist states, became inadequate and ineffective for this suggested

explanatory model. The notion of civilization was perceived as an aptsubstitute which could perform a binding function in the newly proposed

curriculum far more successfully (see below).

The search for a universal framework was not the only new trend thatfound expression in discussions about history teaching. In contrast to theuniversalistic spirit prevalent in the late 1980s, a strong particularism took

hold in Russia in the early 1990s. This was especially pronounced dur-

ing the brief period from June 1990 until December 1991, when Russiaremained within the Soviet Union but had already declared its sovereignty

de jure. In light of the new historical reality, Russian educators stressed

the need for generating continuity in relation to Russias prerevolutionary

period, and for establishing a genetic link to an age when Russia ratherthan the USSR functioned as the sovereign entity.28This initiative was

driven by the desire to play down as much as possible the significance of

the socialist period in the nations history.The desire to reduce the place of socialism in Russias historical nar-

rative became even more pronounced in the wake of the dismemberment

of the Soviet Union and the rise of an independent Russia. The curricula

of the 1990s referred to socialism principally as a political ideologyrather than as a period in the countrys modern history, as it had previ-

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a multiplicity of socialisms. These included state socialism, barrack

socialism, totalitarian socialism and the Stalinist model of socialism.29

New textbooks written in the mid-1990s further contributed to socialisms

declining position in the historical narrative. Different authors, however,chose different discursive strategies in pursuing this goal.

Three textbooks among those that were sanctioned by the Ministry

of Education in the mid-1990s provide clear examples of how the his-tory of socialism was rewritten. Two of these texts had almost identical

titles, namely, The History of the Motherland and Motherland History.

The other was entitled The History of Russia, the 20th Century. All threewere published in 199495.30MotherlandHistory,written by Moscow

historian and educator Igor I. Dolutskii, is the most interesting of thesebooks and might be defined as a transitional text. Socialism remained a

key concept in Dolutskiis narrative. He described it as a social ideal, asocial theory and a social system. The texts principal aim was to raise

questions concerning the society that took shape in the Soviet Union in

the 1920s and 1930s and to ask whether it was indeed a socialist one. Ifso, then was socialism a system of mass repression and forced labor? And

if not, then what was that systems relationship to the socialist ideal?31

Dolutskii did not provide a single, correct answer to these questions.He presented, instead, diverging opinions, each buttressed by extensivehistorical documentation, and he sought to give the floor to the voices

of the past in creating the conditions that would guide pupils in their

search for their own independent answers.At the same time, Dolutskii focused on several methodological aspects

of the problem. First, he demonstrated that socialism was not synonymous

with Bolshevism. He did so by introducing his readers to various branches

of the socialist movement and presenting distinct images of socialism, thusrevealing a history of ongoing polemics between socialist factions and par-

ties.32He also subverted the linear logic that purportedly characterized

the transition from capitalism to socialism. The peasants longing for a freelife on free land, the soldiers desirefor peace, the workers aspiration to

control their factories, and the non-Russian nations choice of self-deter-

mination (including separation from Russia)and everyones common

inclination to support Soviet powerdid not, according to Dolutskii,necessarily connote a desire for socialism, at least of the kind aspired to

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the beginning of the twentieth century, he argued, was anti-capitalist and

anti-bourgeois but was not necessarily socialist. This was the texts most

important hypothesis. In creating a dichotomy between capitalism and

anti-capitalism rather than between capitalism and socialism, Dolutskii ledhis readers to ask a fateful question: If there was no place for socialism in

Russian history, then what was to be done with the widespread convic-

tion that socialism had been builtin Russia, not to mention the fact thata whole period of Russian history had been exclusively understood by

contemporaries through the lens of socialism?

Dolutskiis answer reflected the political realities of the 1990s. Heargued that decades had had to pass before the mistaken character of

the theoretical assumption about the worlds readiness for socialismbecame apparent.34From this point, the author began to approach the

question of socialism from two temporal perspectives. In the historicaltime of the 1920s and 1930s the struggle for socialism remained the

central axis around which modern history revolved. In the real time of

the author himself, that is, from the perspective of the early 1990s, themurderous results of the misinterpretation of socialist theory became the

key question. According to this view, the Bolsheviks aspiration to build an

economic basis for socialism had resulted in forced nationalization and thedestruction of the economy. Attempts to carry out a just redistribution ofland had resulted in peasant riots in the villages. The initial willingness to

employ violence as a means of building socialism had gradually turned

power into a supreme value and transformed the socialist ideal into a toolin the struggle for power.

The depiction of the gap between the idea and practice of social-

ism took on a tragic form in Dolutskiis textbook. Examples abound.

The deputy minister of the interior under Stalin, Leonid Zakovskii, wasquoted as boasting of his ability even to force Marx to confess that he

worked for Bismarck,35while communists interred in Stalins camps were

presented as having derived strength from the notion that they were stillbuilding socialism. The wives of the enemies of the people imprisoned

in the camps had established socialist competitions in order to implement

the five-year plans economic tasks, and sung songs glorifying the Soviet

system on their way back to the barracks from their forced labor. RealSoviet practice, according to Dolutskiis interpretation, was absurd and

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held out the possibility of another, alternative socialism whose parameters

matched those of the founding fathers of Marxism and whose prophets

were Mensheviks rather than Bolsheviks, Iulii Martov rather than Vladimir

Lenin. This socialism would be based on the freedom of the individualand was located in the future rather than in past socialist practice. This

dynamic openness toward the future is what preserved socialism as a

meaningful concept in Dolutskiis narrative. He distanced himself fromthe Soviet concept of socialism, which he deconstructed, while offering

a reconsideration of socialism from a contemporary perspective. At the

same time, Dolutskii was reluctant to propose a new definition of social-ism. His socialism, rather, remained open to interpretation. This is what

distinguished his texts from the two others, which presented a less complex,and more self-contained, version of socialism. The latter also discussed

socialism in terms of the nation or the state rather than of society.The textbook written by history teachers Irina A. Zharova and Liud-

mila A. Mishina, The History of the Motherland, constitutes an interesting

attempt to reconsider socialism through the prism of a national and cul-tural approach.36For these authors, the concept of socialism principally

connotes a utopian ideal. They practically exclude socialism from the

actual world of economics and politics. Instead, they apply concepts ofmodernization and totalitarianism in describing political and economicdevelopments. In Zharova and Mishinas text, socialism refers to the

sphere of mass consciousness and psychology. This perspective guided

them in formulating their principal historical problem: what happenedto the socialist ideal developed in Western culture once it was transferred

to the Russian context? In the opinion of the authors, Western socialist

ideals became assimilated to traditional Russian notions of equality and

authoritarianism, a hybridization that then molded Soviet society. Thatis to say, the conjunction of Western socialist utopianism with traditional

Russian ideals of equality gave birth to an egalitarian mass psychology that

served as the anchor for the development of a totalitarian regime in Rus-sia. This view was developed even further by L. S. Semennikova, author

of a textbook for institutions of higher education, who claimedthat the

socialist idea was the most critical factor in allowing individuals to adapt

to totalitarian society for it made ones life meaningful despite the harshpolitical repression.37


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This approach was rejected by those who interpreted socialism in

the context of Russian statehood, such as the authors of the third text-

book, Valerii P. Ostrovskii and Aleksei I. Utkin, whose History of Russia,

the 20th Century presented socialism as an ideology that had gener-atedboth a revolutionary movement and a totalitarian state. The most

important characteristic of socialist doctrine according to this approach

was its radicalism, its readiness for armed action, and even its terroristinclinations. Ostrovskii and Utkin emphasized that socialism had been

imported to Russia from the West, but, at the same time, they rejected

the view that the Russian national mentality was inherently receptive tosocialist ideas. Indeed, they were reluctant to discuss the cultural aspects

of socialism altogether since they presented it as a political rather than acultural phenomenon. Socialists, and in particular the socialist left, or, in

other words, the Bolsheviks, were described in the text as crafty politi-cians who had manipulated the popular mood and successfully exploited

the political system of Tsarist Russia in order to destabilize it. The Soviet

state, depicted as the embodiment of the socialist idea, emerges here as arigid political and economic mechanism. The authors explanation of its

structure and its modes of functioning also seems mechanical. Viewing

the Soviet state as based on the destruction of the market and on economicovercentralization, Ostrovskii and Utkin argue that the mass mobilizationof forced labor consequently became unavoidable. Such mobilization, in

turn, was not possible without implementing techniques of total planning

and total control, which included the control of thought. Socialism thusbecomes synonymous with totalitarianism.38

According to this textbook, socialism offered no alternative versions.

But while proving that totalitarian socialism was unavoidable, the authors

also argued that this regime was destined to collapse at a certain point.Totalitarian socialism, they maintained, was effective for state develop-

ment during a period of industrialization. But socialist ideology had been

unable to bind society together during the Great Patriotic War (WorldWar II). Instead, traditional patriotic values had become the means for

uniting the state and society during the crisis of the war. As a result of

the moderation of totalitarianism during Nikita Khrushchevs reign,

the regime lost its mobilizing raison dtre. Between the 1960s and the1980s, socialism gradually exhausted its last resource, namely, the ability


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to satisfy the minimal needs of the population. It then lost its attraction

for foreign supporters and was no less than doomed.

THE EMERGENCE OF THE CIVILIZATION PARADIGM:AVARIETY OF INTERPRETIVE MODELS OR A NEW HEGEMONY?

History textbooks of the late 1990s adopted various combinations of thesenew definitions of socialism that had been introduced by the first genera-

tion of post-Soviet texts. In being stripped of its binding status, socialism

was gradually incorporated into the new paradigm of civilization that

supplanted the theory of socioeconomic formation. In contrast to thenotion of formation and its essentially temporal character, the concept of

civilization embraced such spatial dimensions of history as territory and

geographical environment. Moreover, the civilization-oriented approachput an emphasis on cultural norms, values and ideals while ascribing less

significance to the economic and political aspects of history. Igor Ionov,

who is one of the leading adherents of the theory of civilizations in post-

Soviet historical scholarship, defined the peculiarity of the civilization

paradigm in the introduction to his textbook on the history of Russiancivilization. According to Ionov, the traditional attitude to power and law

is more important for the history of civilization than is the actual form ofthe state (which is susceptible to change). Likewise, attitudes toward work

and property are more important than any particular form of economics

(which might assume any number of forms).39Ionov also coauthored

with Valerii Khachaturian a thorough scholarly study on the theory ofcivilization; in a fashion typical of post-Soviet practices in historical stud-

ies, the textbook preceded the scholarly publication.40

Significantly, the concept of civilization served as the basis of twodistinct historical narratives in the new textbooks. The first, which was

typical of textbooks devoted to world history, interpreted history as a steady

development of world civilization through the growth and expansion of

Western universalism. According to this approach, liberal democracy andmarket economics are the two institutions that give Western civilization its

universal character.

41

Totalitarian regimes that practice a planned economyare identified by this narrative with socialism and the East. West and Eastl d f i li d i li i l


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while the actual distinction was largely based on political and economic

factors. This resulted, first of all, in an obvious conflict between mental

and physical geographies, since, on the basis of this approach, Australia

and Japan belonged to the West and Cuba to the East.42At the sametime, these criteria made the concept of world civilization an essentially

inclusive one. According to this model, the East moved closer to the

West if its political regimes became more democratic and its economiesmore market-oriented. Proceeding from this assumption, world history

textbooks devote serious discussion to the elevation of the rest of the

world to the level of Western civilization.43This process is defined asmodernization by which a policy of qualitative changes is adopted for

structuring society around the experience of advanced countries, thatis, the experience of the West. Modernization signified progress, which

had been an important value in Soviet texts as well. Now, however, post-Soviet schoolbooks detached progress from socialism and aligned it with a

universal path to the West. This move revised the history of Russia in the

twentieth century, transforming it from a history of socialism into a historyof efforts (some unfinished, others misguided) to modernize the country.

Together with this narrative of world civilization, however, another

interpretive model evolved which focused on local civilizations and wasfound most commonly in textbooks of Russian history. Ionovs textbookon Russian civilization presents the most developed expression of this

model. It depicts Russia as having a distinctive civilization, situated as it is

between Europe and Asia, between the world of progress and moderniza-tion, on the one hand, and the world of tradition, in which progress has

no value and the boundaries separating past and future are often vague,

on the other. Ionov based his definitions of traditionalism and modern-

ization on distinct perceptions of time. Traditional culture, he claimed,was oriented toward the past rather than the future, toward unshakable,

stable values rather than peoples needs and interests, toward belief and

imitation rather than the logic of proof, toward collective and externalmodes of control rather than individuality and personal self-control. By

contrast, modernization signified for him not only the development of

an industrial society but a process by which tradition was overcome and

culture was reorientated toward change.

44

This juxtaposition of traditionalism and modernization as symbi-

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a hybrid of diverse historical periods and Asian and European paths ofdevelopment. In turning the course of Russian history into an ongoing

choice between alternative civilizations, Ionov proposed a distinctive

interpretation of Russias choice of socialism. As he presented thishistory, Russian governments had continually sought to reorient the

country toward the West from the eighteenth century, making Russia a

European state by the early twentieth century. By then Russia not only

enjoyed the status of a great European power but was emerging as anagent of European civilization in Asia. This state development, how-

ever, created distinctive social and cultural problems. While the nobility

acquired European education and European values, Asian traits continued

to dominate the common peoples attitude to power, law and property.Moreover, the stronger the European influence over the Russian economy

and the countrys culture became, the stronger too was resistance to this

influence. The Russian populace celebrated the values of collectivism andegalitarianism as a counter to Western values of individualism and private

property. Such social and cultural conflicts provoked by this interaction

between traditionalism and modernization resulted in a profound crisisthat was signified by the events of October 1917. The Bolshevik revolution

reinstated the separation of Russia from Europe. Instead of continuing in

its role as an intermediary between East and West, Russia chose to cre-

ate its own civilization, one that rested on egalitarian values. Buildingsocialism was depicted by Ionov as anti-modern, that is, as a program for

strengthening the archaic elements of traditional Russian culture and as a

victory of Asian self-isolation. Post-Soviet Russias rejection of socialismappeared, in this perspective, as a path for overcoming the crisis of Russian

civilization and returning to Europe.46

Paradoxically, their differences notwithstanding, this variety of nar-

ratives remained in relatively peaceful coexistence until the early 2000sdue to the multiplicity of textbooks that were used in secondary schools.

Discrepancies in the representation of historical events that stemmed from

this multiplicity triggered some public controversy about the unpredict-ability of the national past,47but generally this situation was perceived as

the inevitable cost of the pluralism of interpretations during the first half

of 1990s. Moreover, this variety was compatible with both the politicalsituation of the early 1990s and the new educational philosophy, whichb d l h d l h k h h


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books. History textbooks, according to this new didactic approach, were

supposed to be polyconceptual in order to present rival interpretations

of historical events, and they should include plenty of facts in order to

give the teacher an abundance of materials to work with. Yet eventuallythis information overload (informatsionnaia izbytochnost) of the new

textbooks and their overly sophisticated structure led to criticism by

teachers, who found them too complicated. Furthermore, the diversityof textbooks became criticized by parents and, in hindsight, by pupils.

Significantly, a public opinion survey conducted later, in 2007, among

those who had studied in schools in the late Soviet period as well as inpost-Soviet times, found that more than half of the respondents (52 per-

cent) considered the conditions typical of Soviet schools, where there hadbeen the same textbook for all, preferable to the post-Soviet educational

situation where the teacher was given an opportunity to choose amongtextbooks. Only 24 percent of former pupils approved of a multiplicity

of textbooks, while basically, about 30 percent of respondents suggested

that there should have been only one history textbook, which, however,should have presented a variety of opinions; 56 percent of respondents

claimed that the state authorities were supposed to control the content

of history textbooks.48Against the backdrop of this disappointment with diversification in

history teaching, a tendency toward a counter-reformation in history

education evolved in the late 1990s. Since 1997/98 the Ministry of

Education has tightened its grip over history teaching. The establishmentof a compulsory minimum content of education for secondary schools

was an important step in this process, since it provided the Ministry of

Education with an excellent benchmark to use in shaping the content of

history textbooks.49The next and very significant step was the publicationin March 2000 of a draft conception of history education in the institu-

tions of general education of the Russian Federation.50For the first time

the progress of educational reform was severely criticized in this docu-ment. Differentiation of history education, once thought to be the main

achievement of educational reform, was considered questionable, at best.

Numerous theoretical approaches that had replaced vulgar Marxism, the

authors of the conception observed, had failed to create a comprehensivetheoretical framework for history teaching. Frequent shifts in theoretical

h bl d f i i li i i i f i


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Vera Kaplan

tive to an absolutely negative assessment of the same event. Moreover,

they claimed that the diversity of programs and textbooks had led to the

absence of any standardized criteria for further textbook development, and

they demanded that limits be set on such diversity. The publication of thedraft led to an outcry among well-known experts on history education,

and this conception never became an official document.51

However, subsequent developments made it clear that the counter-reformist steps in history education were proceeding in line with the new

educational policy being implemented at the beginning of the millennium.

This policy was characterized, in the words of a popular slogan of the time,by the return of the state to the sphere of education. Generally this meant

that decisions and practical moves were undertaken at the governmental,not ministerial, level. Thus, in August 2001 the government of the Rus-

sian Federation held a special meeting devoted to the issue of modernRussian history textbooks. Both the report of the Ministry of Education

and the keynote remarks delivered by Prime Minister Mikhail Kasianov

included direct attacks on the diversity in interpretations of national his-tory.52Similar criticisms were subsequently expressed in President Vladimir

Putins political speeches.53In 2003 Dolutskiis textbook was removed

from the federal set of recommended texts, a step commonly seen aspolitically motivated.54Changes in the procedure of state authorizationof texts were introduced in 2005 and they effectively brought about a

decline in the variety of textbooks.55An important development in this

process occurred in 2007, with the publication of a new textbook actu-ally commissioned by the office of the president. It was intended to serve

as a handbook for history teachers. The authors of this text (who were

not explicitly identified) worked under the supervision of A. V. Filippov,

whose name was then largely unknown to either historians or educators.Indeed, Filippov has no background in historical scholarship or pedagogy,

but he had represented the National Laboratory of Foreign Policy, which

was affiliated with the office of the president.56The new textbook, entitled The Modern History of Russia, was

devoted to the period 19452006, which included the most politically

explosive years in contemporary Russian history.57It marked a significant

departure from the first generation of post-Soviet textbooks for, in con-trast to the texts of the 1990s, which sought to minimize the significance

f h S i i d f R i hi Fili b k d f h


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importance of the Soviet era and emphasized continuity, not only between

prerevolutionary and post-Soviet Russia, but also between the history of

the USSR and contemporary post-Soviet history. The text also shifted

the focus back from social and cultural to political aspects of modernRussian history, while closely examining Soviet foreign policy. As a result,

the nature of Russian statehood and the countrys geopolitical interests

reoccupied a central place in the historical narrative. Relegitimating theSoviet period did not mean, however, returning to Soviet perceptions of

socialism. This textbook not only continued to present the post-Soviet

de-emphasis on socialism but carried such a program even farther as itdeconstructed socialism as a meaningful idiom. The notion of socialism

was now turned into a pseudo-concept, one that had served principallyas a cover for actual developments while being shorn of any significance

in its own right.Filippovs text thus presented socialist ideology as a kindof red religion with its own creed and martyrs dating from the first

decade of Soviet power. Religious terminology was also used in explain-

ing Gorbachevsperestroikaas a communist Reformation and MarxistProtestantism.58The authors explained how socialist ideology, as a form

of faith, had been mobilized as a stimulus for increasing economic growth

during the reigns of Stalin and Khrushchev. Under the rubric of theconception of developed socialism it had then served as camouflage forLeonid Brezhnevs politics of stability that came at the expense of growth.59

The socialist state, the authors claimed, was merely a version of

traditional Russian statehood, whose political characteristics had alreadybeen molded during the Muscovite (fifteenth to seventeenth centuries)

and imperial (eighteenth to early twentieth centuries) periods of Russian

history. These characteristics included the centralization of power and

resources and rigid administrative control that resulted in the omnipotentstatus of the head of state, who was able to bend all other political forces

to his will.60The new textbook presented these characteristics as born

of Russias huge size and harsh climate, implicitly assigning ideology amarginal role in the history of the state. According to this same logic,

the world system (or alliance) of socialist states was depicted as a sphere

of Soviet geopolitical interests, while the Union of the Soviet Socialist

Republics itself was presented as a euphemism for the Russian Empire.

61

Significantly, while using the array of those elements that have been char-

i i f h i ili i di h h f h b k h


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Vera Kaplan

idiom of Russian Empire, not Russian civilization, for depicting the place

of the Soviet period in the chain of Russian history.

While ascribing no meaning to socialism as a theoretical concept, the

authors of this textbook use socialism as a defining term for a late phase ofSoviet history, delineating the period 196485 as one of developed social-

ism. The new textbook thus resumes a practice that had been customary

during those same decades, but does so now with an ironic implication.62In being transformed from a metahistorical concept of movement into

an auxiliary term of periodization, socialism concluded its role as a basic

concept in the narrative of Russian history.

CONCLUSION

The change in the notion of socialism in post-Soviet Russian history text-books vividly demonstrates that theoretical concepts that serve as analytical

devices for examining historical events are themselves historical in nature

and, as such, are susceptible to change. In the case of the concept of social-

ism these changes were dramatic indeed and, at some point, engendered

the aspiration to produce a new kind of historical discourse endowed withalternative, essentially comparative paradigms, free from domination by

one particular conceptual model. An examination of post-Soviet historytextbooks, however, has shown that this aspiration has not been realized.

The notion of socioeconomic formation that assigned a central role to

the concept of socialism was replaced by the no less dominant notion of

civilization, which provided a conceptual framework for a universalisticnarrative of world civilization and particularistic narratives of local

civilizations. The concept of socialism, whose meaning was changed

and whose role was reduced dramatically in the post-Soviet historicaldiscourse, was stripped of its binding function and turned into a subor-

dinate element within an evolving civilizational narrative presented and

disseminated by contemporary Russian history textbooks. The gradual

dismantling of socialism as a central concept of the historical narrativeresulted in a proliferation of notions of nation and state. Significantly, the

revitalization of the idea of statehood as the main motif of Russian historyled, at some point, to the definition of the Soviet period of history as ai l i h h i f h R i E i Th


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tion why and how the concept of civilization provided fertile ground for

the reemergence of a statist and nationalist narrative of Russian history

deserves special investigation.

NOTES

I am grateful to Michael Confino and the anonymous readers of my article for

their useful comments and insightful criticism.

1. Otto Brunner, Werner Conze and Reinhart Koselleck, eds., Geschichtliche

Grundbegriffe: Historisches Lexikon zur politisch-sozialen Sprache in Deutschland(Stuttgurt: E. Klett, J.G. Cotta, 19721993), vols. 18; Reinhart Koselleck, Futures

Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time, trans. Keith Tribe (Cambridge, MA,

and London: The MIT Press, 1985); idem., The Practice of Conceptual History:

Timing History, Spacing Concepts (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002).

2. Quentin Skinner, The Foundation of Modern Political Thought, vols. 12

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978); John Pocock, Politics, Lan-

guage and Time: Essays on Political Thought and History (London: Methuen,

1972); James Tully, ed., Meaning and Context: Quentin Skinner and His Critics

(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988); Terence Ball, James Farr and Rus-

sell L. Hanson, eds., Political Innovation and Conceptual Change(Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1989). For a comparison between Begriffsgeschichte

and the Cambridge Schools methodological approaches, see Melvin Richter,

Reconstructing the History of Political Languages: Pocock, Skinner, and the

Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe, History and Theory 29, no. 1 (February 1990):

3870; idem, The History of Political and Social Concepts: A Critical Introduction

(New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995); and Hartmut Lehman and

Melvil Richter, eds., The Meaning of Historical Terms and Concepts: New Studieson Begriffsgeschichte(Washington, DC: German Historical Institute, 1996). I am

grateful to Reut Harari for drawing my attention to the useful literature on the

Cambridge School.

3. Skinner explained his approach as following: To understand a concept, it

is necessary to grasp not merely the meaning of the term used to express it, but

also the range of things that can be done with it. This is why, in spite of the long

continuities that have undoubtedly marked our inherited patterns of thought, I

remain unrepentant in my belief that there can be no histories of concepts but

only the histories of their uses in argument. See Quentin Skinner, Reply to My

Critics in Tully ed Meaning and Context 283


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Vera Kaplan

4. M. V. Ilin, Politicheskii diskurs: Slova i smysly (Political discourse: Words

and meanings), Polis, no. 1 (1994): 12740; Idem., Slova i smysly: Opyt opisaniia

kliuchevykh politicheskikh poniatii (Words and meanings: An attempt to delineate

key political concepts) (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 1997); Oleg Kharkhordin, ed.,Poniatie gosudarstva v chetyrekh iazykakh(The concept of state in four languages)

(St. Petersburg: EUSP Press and Letnii sad, 2002); D. R. Khapaeva, Gertsogi

respubliki v epokhu perevodov: Gumanitarnye nauki i revoliutsiia poniatii(Dukes

of the republic in the age of translations: The humanities and the conceptual

revolution) (Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2005); N. E. Koposov, ed.,

Istoricheskie poniatiia i politicheskie ideivRossii XIVXX veka(Historical concepts

and political ideas in Russia in the 14th20th centuries) (St. Petersburg: EUSP

Press: Aleteiia, 2006).

5. The list of relevant literature includes Mikhail Epstein, Relativistic Patternsin Totalitarian Thinking: An Inquiry into the Language of Soviet Ideology, Kennan

Institute for Advanced Russian Studies, Occasional Paper, no. 243 (Washington:

The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, 1991); Michael S. Gor-

ham, Speaking in Soviet Tongues: Language Culture and the Politics of Voice in

Revolutionary Russia(DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2003); G. Ch.

Guseinov, D.S.P.: Sovetskie ideologemy v russkom diskurse 1990-kh(Soviet ideolo-

gems in the Russian discourse of the 1990s) (Moscow: Tri kvadrata, 2004); D. M.

Feldman, Terminologiia vlasti: Sovetskie politicheskie terminy v istoriko-kulturnomkontekste(Terminology of power: Soviet political terms in historical and cultural

context) (Moscow: Rossiskii gosudarstvennyi gumanitarnyi universitet, 2006).6. Sattelzeitwas the central term in Begriffsgeschichte; Reinhart Koselleck, its

leading theoretician, used this term to describe the period of time from approxi-

mately the mid-eighteenth to the midnineteenth century when, he argued,

distinctively modern political and social concepts were reformulated or created.

See Richter, Reconstructing the History of Political Languages,4445.

7. Post-Soviet history teaching in general, and the question of history

textbooks in particular, have been studied since the early 1990s. The following

publications offer a general impression of the main research problems addressed in

these studies: Klas-Gran Karlsson, History Teaching in Twentieth Century Russia

and the Soviet Union: Classicism and Its Alternative in Ben Eklof, ed., School and

Society in Tsarist and Soviet Russia(London: St. Martins Press, 1993), 204223;

Catherine Merridale, Redesigning History in Contemporary Russia,Journal of

Contemporary History38, no. 1 (2003): 1328; Joseph Zajda and Rea Zajda, The

Politics of Rewriting History: New History Textbooks and Curriculum Materials

in Russia, International Review of Education49, no. 34 (2003): 36384; VeraKaplan, History Teaching in Post-Soviet Russia: Coping with Antithetical Tradi-


23/29


in Post-Soviet Russia Legacies and Prospects(London and New York: Frank Cass,

2005), 24771; Alexander Shevyrev, Rewriting the National Past: New Images

of Russia in History Textbooks of the 1990s, in ibid., 27290; and Igor Ionov,

New Trends in Historical Scholarship and the Teaching of History in RussiasSchools, in ibid., 291308.

8. Elena Lisovskaya and Vyacheslav Karpov, New Ideologies in Postcom-

munist Russian Textbooks, Comparative Education Review43, no. 4 (1999):

52243.

9. Reinhart Koselleck, Historical Criteria of the Modern Concept of Revolu-

tion, in idem, Futures Past, 40, 4647.

10. Reinhart Koselleck, Semantic Remarks on the Mutation of Historical

Experience: Space of Experience and Horizon of Expectation, in ibid., 287.

11. Ibid., 286.12. Ibid., 288.

13. The term discourse is used here in its instrumental meaning: as a

language in use that reflects social, epistemological and rhetorical practices. See

Victor E. Taylor and Charles E. Winquist, Encyclopedia of Postmodernism(London

and New York: Routledge, 2001), 101.

14. Miguel A. Cabrera, On Language, Culture, and Social Action, History

and Theory40, no. 4 (December 2001): 82101.

15. The writings of Hayden White and Frank Ankersmit provided the ground-ing for studies on historical narrative. See Hayden White, Tropics of Discourse:

Essay in Cultural Criticism(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985);

idem, The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representa-

tion (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987); F. R.

Ankersmit, Narrative Logic: A Semantic Analysis of the Historians Language(The

Hague: M. Nijhoff, 1983); History and Tropology: The Rise and Fall of Metaphor

(Berkeley, 1994); idem, Historical Representation(Stanford: Stanford University

Press, 2002). For a survey of Whites and Ankersmits theories of narrative, see

Chris Lorenz, Can Histories be True? Narrativism, Positivism and the Metaphori-

cal Turn, History and Theory 37, no. 3 (October 1998): 30929. A distinctive

semiotic approach to historical narrative was suggested by Yuri M. Lotman in

Universe of the Mind: A Semiotic Theory of Culture (London: I.B.Tauris, 1990).

16. Jerzy Topolski, The Role of Logic and Aesthetics in Constructing Narrative

Wholes in Historiography, History and Theory38, no. 2 (May 1999): 2012.

17. The term grand narrative was introduced by Jean-Franois Lyotard in

his The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge(Minneapolis: University of

Minnesota Press, 1984). On the concept in general, see Beatrice Skordilis entryon grand narrative in Taylor and Winquist, Encyclopedia of Postmodernism,


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Vera Kaplan

18. Aleksandr Kolodin, Ot gosudarstvennoi mifologii k realnomu znaniiu

(From state mythology to real knowledge), interview with Deputy Minister of

Education V. K. Batsyn, Narodnoe obrazovanie, no. 6 (1995): 10.

19. The issue was first openly raised as early as 1987 when Voprosy istoriipub-lished the results of an analysis of textbooks from the Soviet republics. See Voprosy

istorii, no. 12 (1987): 92. As a result of an increase in the teaching hours allocated

to national history, the course on national history in Moldavia, for example,

received 102 instead of ten hours allowed by the state curriculum. See Kolodin,

Ot gosudarstvennoi mifologii k realnomu znaniiu, 11.

20. See the roundtable discussion of March 28, 1990, Istoricheskaia nauka i

shkolnoe istoricheskoe obrazovanie (Historical scholarship and historical educa-

tion in the schools),Prepodavanie istorii v shkole,no. 4 (1990): 13.

21. The authors of this concept included scholars from Moscow State Univer-sity (M. A. Boitsov, M. A. Maslin, A. P. Shevyrev) as well as schoolteachers (I. E.

Ukolova, T. V. Chernikova, T. N. Eidelman). A. P. Shevyrev headed the group

on history education. See Prepodavanie istorii v shkole, no. 6 (1989): 76.

22. Kontseptsiia istoricheskogo obrazovaniia v srednei shkole (The concep-

tion of historical education in secondary school), ibid., 52.

24. Kolodin, Ot gosudarstvennoi mifologii k realnomu znaniiu, 10.

25. Roundtable discussion, December 2, 1988, Prepodavanie istorii v shkole,

no. 2 (1989): 77.26. Ibid., 80, 88.

27. Kontseptsiia istoricheskogo obrazovaniia, 84.

28. E. E. Viazemskii and B. V. Khavkin, O prepodavanii istorii v shkolakh

(On teaching history in schools), Novaia i noveishaia istoriia,no. 3 (1991): 225.

29. O prepodavanii kursov istorii i obshchestvoznaniia v obshcheobrazovatelnykh

uchrezhdeniiakh Rossiiskoi Federatsii v 1994/1995 uchebnom godu: Bazovye

komponenty soderzhaniia kursov obshchestvoznaniia, otechestvennoi i vseobshchei

istorii (On teaching courses in history and the social sciences in institutions of

general education in the Russian Federation in the 1994/95 school year: Basic

components of the courses on social sciences, national and world history), Prepo-

davanie istorii v shkole, no. 7 (1994): 25.

30. I. I. Dolutskii, Otechestvennaia istoriia, XX vek, Chast 1: Uchebnik dlia X

klassa srednei shkoly(Motherland history, the 20th century, Part I: A textbook for

the 10th grade of the middle school) (Moscow: Mnemozina, 1994); L. N. Zharova

and I. A. Mishina, Istoriia Otechestva, 19001940(The history of the Motherland,

19001940) (St. Petersburg: Khardford, 1995); V. P. Ostrovskii and A. I. Utkin,

Istoriia Rossii, XX vek(The history of Russia, the 20th century) (Moscow: Drofa,1995). The Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation published a Federal


25/29


Set of Textbooks Recommended for Primary and Secondary Schoolsfor each school

year.

31. Dolutskii, Otechestvennaia istoriia, 417.

32. The program of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, cited in the textbook,depicted socialism as a self-governing union of producers associations based on

the equality of its members. This view is contrary to that championed by the Social

Democrats, who saw socialism as a society based on the public ownership of the

means of production where exploitation would be impossible and class division

would finally disappear. As Dolutskii noted, Stalin wrote about socialism in 1905

as a promised land while Lenin, in 1917, claimed that socialism was anything

but a state capitalist monopoly since it desired to serve all of the people, and

therefore was not a capitalist monopoly. See Dolutskii, Otechestvennaia istoriia,

61, 63, 127, 162.33. Ibid., 170.

34. Ibid., 83.

35. Ibid., 372.

36. Zharova and Mishina, Istoriia Otechestva.

37. L. I.. Semennikova, Rossiia v mirovom soobshchestve tsivilizatsii: Uchebnoe

posobie dlia vysshikh i srednikh spetsialnykh uchebnykh zavedenii(Russia in the world

union of civilizations: A teaching aid for higher and middle special educational

institutions) (Briansk: Kursiv, 1996), 38081.38. Ostrovskii and Utkin, Istoriia Rossii, XX vek.

39. I. N. Ionov, Rossiiskaia tsivilizatsiia, IXnachalo XX veka: Uchebnik dlia

111 klassov obshcheobrazovatelnykh uchrezhdenii(Russian civilization from the

ninth to the early twentieth century: A textbook for the 1st11th grades of general

educational institutions) (Moscow: Prosveshchenie, 1998), 5. For the civilizational

approach, see also Victor Shnirelman, Stigmatized by History or by Historians?

The Peoples of Russia in School History Textbooks, in this issue, 11316 below.

40. I. N. Ionov and V. M. Khachaturian, Teoriia tsivilizatsii ot antichnosti do

kontsa XIX veka (A theory of civilizations from antiquity until the end of the

nineteenth century) (St. Petersburg: Aleteiia, 2002).

41. O. S. Soroko-Tsupa et al., Mir v dvadtsatom veke(The world in the twen-

tieth century) (Moscow: Prosveshchenie, 1996), 56; A. A. Kreder, Noveishaia

istoriia, XX vek (Modern history: The twentieth century), 2 vols. (Moscow: Tsentr

gumanitarnogo obrazovaniia, 1995), 2:17274.

42. Kreder, Noveishaia istoriia, XX vek, 2:43.

43. Soroko-Tsupa et al., Mir v dvadtsatom veke, 5.

44. Ionov, Rossiiskaia tsivilizatsiia, 125, 31314.45. I borrow the term counterconcepts from Koselleck, in his discussion of


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Vera Kaplan

ceptual oppositions such as the mutually exclusive pair Hellenes and Barbarians,

the reciprocically related pair Christians and Heathens, and the most general

and inclusive pair Mensch and Unmensch, bermensch and Untermensch).

See Reinhart Koselleck, The Historical-Political Semantics of Asymmetric Coun-terconcepts in idem., Futures Past,15996, 16465.

46. Ionov, Rossiiskaia tsivilizatsiia,1619, 3056.

47. The term our unpredictable pastthe title of a book byIu. A. Poliakov,

Nashe nepredskazuemoe proshloe: Polemicheskie zametki(Our unpredictable past:

Polemical essays) (Moscow: AIRO-XX 1995)became extremely popular in both

the mass media and among historians.

48. Peter Bavin, Shkolnye uchebniki po istoriikakimi im byt? (School

textbooks in historywhat should they look like?)(Report on a public opinion

survey conducted on July, 19, 2007), Fond Obshchestvennoe mnenie,http://bd.fom.ru/report/map/d072906 (accessed April 12, 2009).

49. See Prikaz ot 30.06.99 #56 Ob utverzhdenii obiazatelnogo minimuma

soderzhaniia srednego (polnogo) obshchego obrazovaniia: Obrazovatelnaia oblast

obshchestvoznanie (Directive of 30.06.99 #56 On confirmation of the compul-

sory minimum of the content of education for secondary schools: Educational

field social sciences), Prepodavanie istorii v shkole, no. 7 (1999): 2426.

50. Proekt kontseptsii istoricheskogo obrazovaniia v obshcheobrazovatelnykh

uchrezhdeniiakh Rossiiskoi Federatsii (A draft conception of history education inthe institutions of general education of the Russian Federation), Istoriia(History),

supplement to Pervoe sentiabria, no. 8 (2000), available at http://his.1september.

ru/2000/no08.htm (accessed April 13, 2009).

51. Obsuzhdenie kontseptsii istoricheskogo obrazovaniia v Moskovskoi asso-

tsiatsii prepodavatelei istorii (kratkii otchet), 15 marta 2000 (Discussion on the

conception of historical education in the Moscow association of history teachers

[brief report], March 15, 2000),Prepodavanie istorii v shkoleno. 4 (2000): 4143.

52. Anton Sveshnikov, Borba vokrug shkolnykh uchebnikov istorii v post-

sovetskoi Rossii: Osnovnye tendentsii i rezultaty (The struggle over school

history textbooks in post-Soviet Russia: Main tendencies and results), Neprikosno-

vennyi zapas36, no. 4 (2004), http://magazines.russ.ru/nz/2004/4/sv10-pr.

html#_ftn1 (accessed April 13, 2009); Kaplan, History Teaching in Post-Soviet

Russia, 26364.

53. Mikhail Moshkin, Kratkii kurs VVP: Vladimir Putin khochet popast v

obektivnye uchebniki istorii (Short course of the VVP: Vladimir Putin wants to

appear in objective history textbooks), Vremia novostei, June 22, 2007.

54. Olga Zakharova, Uchebnik istorii: Pravitelstvo v kachestve tsenzora?(History textbook: Government as censor?), Litseiskoe i gimnazicheskoe obrazovanie,


27/29


55. Mona Platonova, Po kakim uchebnikam uchatsia i budut uchitsia nashi

deti (From what textbooks our children are learning and will learn), Vecherniaia

Moskva, December 21, 2006

56. Anna Kachurovskaia, Istoricheskii pripadok (The paroxysm of history),Vlast, July 16, 2007.

57. A. V. Filippov et al., Noveishaia istoriia Rossii, 19452006 gg.: Kniga dlia

uchitelei(The modern history of Russia, 19452006: Teachers handbook) (Mos-

cow: Prosveshchenie, 2007). This textbook is also available on-line: http://www.

prosv.ru/umk/istoriya/0.html. I cite from the electronic version.

58. Ibid.,http://www.prosv.ru/umk/istoriya/1.html#n8; http://www.prosv.

ru/umk/istoriya/4.html#n7 (accessed April 13, 2009).

59. Ibid., http://www.prosv.ru/umk/istoriya/2.html#n8; http://www.prosv.

ru/umk/istoriya/3.html#n8 (accessed April 13, 2009).60. Ibid.,http://www.prosv.ru/umk/istoriya/1.html#n8.

61. Ibid.

62. Ibid., http://www.prosv.ru/umk/istoriya/3.html#n3 (accessed April 13,

2009).


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Contributors

MICHAELCONFINOis Professor Emeritus of History at Tel Aviv Universityand a member of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities. His pub-

lications include Domaines et seigneurs en Russie vers la fin du XVIIIe sicle:tude de structures agraires et de mentalits conomiques(Paris: Institutdtudes Slaves, 1963); Daughter of a Revolutionary: Natalie Herzen andthe Bakunin-Nechayev Circle (Alcove Press, 1974); and Socit et mentalitscollectives en Russie sous lAncien Rgime (Paris: Institut dtudes Slaves,1991). ([email protected])

GABRIELGORODETSKY is the incumbent of the Rubin Chair for Russian

Studies at Tel Aviv University and a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford.His publications include The Precarious Truce: Anglo-Soviet Relations,19241927(Cambridge University Press, 1977; revised reprint in paper-back, 2009); Stafford Cripps Mission to Moscow, 19401942(CambridgeUniversity Press, 1984; revised reprint in paperback, 2002); Grand Delu-sion: Stalin and the German Invasion of Russia (Yale University Press,1999); and Stafford Cripps in Moscow, 19401942: Diaries and Papers(Vallentine Mitchell, 2007). ([email protected])

VERAKAPLANis a lecturer in the Department of History, Tel Aviv Uni-versity, and a research associate at the universitys Cummings Centerfor Russian and East European Studies. She has co-edited two volumes,The Teaching of History in Contemporary Russia: Trends and Perspectives(with Pinchas Agmon and Liubov Ermolaeva) (The Cummings Centerfor Russian and East European Studies, 1999) and Educational Reformin Post-Soviet Russia(with Ben Eklof and Larry Holmes) (Frank Cass,

2005). ([email protected])


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