AUTHOR: Vitalii YAREMCHUK, Vitalii TELVAK, Vitalii MASNENKO, Viktoria TELVAK
Danubius, XLII, Galati, 2024, pp. 179-203.
Abstract
The study explores the formation of the Ukrainian history character in Russian school textbooks during the period of V. Putin’s presidency until 2021, that is the social, political, intellectual circumstances, organizational and normative factors of this process. We bring to light the consideration of “Ukrainian” topics in Russian textbooks creation that was subordinated to the logic of the state-imperial narrative of Russian history. Respectively, from one hand, Ukrainians and an individual Ukrainian history, until the 15th century did not exist for the authors of school textbooks. From another, on the pages of these school texts, Russian students are convinced that significant events of Russian history took place on the territory of modern Ukraine, thereby forcing them to believe that modern Russia has a historical right to them. And finally, although Ukrainians are recognized as a separate ethnic group in school books published until 2021, their territorial map of the past is fragmentary and largely distorted.
After the beginning of the large-scale armed invasion of Russia in Ukraine in February 2022, there is fast unconditional control of the Russian authorities over historical education. One of the consequences of this was the total redaction of current textbooks to eliminate positive or neutral references to Ukraine and Ukrainians.