History Teaching, Textbooks and Historical Memory in Russia

An exploration into how following the reversal of valences of Soviet self images and images of the other under Gorbachev, the Russian state has experimented widely in the sphere of history education with the aim of constructing a specific national identity through historical discourse. My research draws on fieldwork in Russian secondary schools in Saint Petersburg, and interviews with both students and teachers, to draw conclusions as to how successful post-Soviet politicians have been in creating, and ‘controlling’, narratives for contentious historical issues that are both unitary, whilst simultaneously avoiding messiness. My thesis argues that in post-Soviet Russia school children struggle to create coherent historical narratives about Russia's Soviet past, and that simultaneously there has been a chronic failure to construct a national identity, something which is largely a result of the failure of the political elite in Russia to acknowledge and accept its totalitarian past.