At the start of the new school year, which in Russia is scheduled every year on September 1, students in 10th and 11th grade will be provided with a new history textbook. Entitled History of Russia, from 1945 to the Beginning of the 21st Century, the book develops a highly biased vision of the most recent events, giving pride of place to the narrative shaped in recent years by the Kremlin. A symbolic detail: The cover features a photograph of the Crimean bridge, inaugurated in May 2018 by President Vladimir Putin, four years after the annexation of the Ukrainian peninsula.
Hastily written in five months, the new textbook, with its strong propaganda overtones, speaks volumes about the authorities' desire to maintain control over the narrative of the war in Ukraine presented to young Russians as the accomplishment of a historical mission. For the first time, an entire chapter is devoted to the "special military operation," followed by another on "Russia, the land of heroes," which relates the exploits of the military on the battlefield.
These two chapters on the Russian invasion of Ukraine were added to the program to win over the minds of teenagers in their final year of high school, i.e., the 16, 17 and 18 age group, who, after finishing their studies, are likely to be called up for military service and sent to the front. Under the conscription law, men aged 18 to 30 are drafted each year in two waves, one in autumn, the other in spring.
The textbook tends to portray the war in a positive light, with the idea that its outbreak was intended to prevent a far greater catastrophe. Secondary school pupils will now learn that Putin averted the end of civilization by sending his tanks and missiles into Ukraine. "If Kyiv had joined NATO and provoked military conflict in Crimea and the Donbas, then, on the basis of the Alliance Charter, Russia would have found itself immediately at war with all the members of the bloc. That might have been the end of human civilization. That could not be permitted."
The dominant line of reasoning throughout the book is that Russia is the victim of a plot hatched by the West, led by the USA and NATO to prevent Russia's might from asserting itself, the latter having always sought to destabilize the country from within. According to the authors, Medinski and Anatoli Torkounov, this represents an "idée fixe" for them.
Consequently, the West's goal of dislocating Russia seeks to be achieved via Ukraine, which is used as a "battering ram" to break Russia's borders. "In Ukraine, successive generations, from the early 1990s onwards, have been brought up to hate Russia, thanks to neo-Nazi ideas," according to the chapter devoted to the "special operation," without any factual elements to support the claim.
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