Russia’s Unilateral Rewrite: Manipulating History Textbooks to Serve Propaganda

It’s like returning to the darkest hours of the Soviet period: Russia is rewriting its history textbooks. In less than a month, at the start of the new school year, Russian Terminale students will now study a revised and corrected version of history. Entire sections of textbooks will be modified, especially those relating to Ukraine.

It’s a black and white story: a dialectic reminiscent of the Soviet period. On the bad side, Ukraine: an ultra-nationalist country, where any dispute is suppressed, where the army does not defend its people. On the nice side, Russia: nation of heroes, with an army that never shoots civilians.

History teacher, Alexander left his country last June. He read this new manual: “We can see that it is not written by history teachers. In reality it is a unilateral presentation of the facts, ready-to-use“, he describes.

A propaganda story

Already since the beginning of the war, teachers had been provided “appropriate teaching materials” to talk about the special operation. For Alexandre, these new manuals denigrate the profession of teacher: “It’s as if I were changing professions, they no longer bring their expertise. Clearly, we force students to become propagandists“says the professor.

“It is impossible to rewrite history according to someone’s geopolitical interests.” These remarks had however been made in November 2014 by a certain Vladimir Putin, in front of history teachers.

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