Regional History Textbooks Now Not Only Must Not Contradict Moscow’s Position but One Another, Kremlin Officials Tell Regional Authors

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 15 – Kremlin officials have told a Kazan conference of educational authorities from some 30 federal subjects that new local history textbooks must not contradict either Moscow’s positions on the country’s history or – and this is something new -- one another, lest what pupils are told in one region lead them into conflict with those in another.
    Kazan was host because Tatarstan officials have made the most progress preparing such textbooks and have shown themselves ready to meet the first of Moscow’s demands (milliard.tatar/news/izucenie-istorii-rossii-polnostyu-privedeno-k-edinoobraziyu-6637; for background, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/12/moscow-asks-federal-subjects-to-prepare.html.)
    But at the meeting, after the second demand was made clear, even Tatar scholars admitted that meeting it would not be easy, especially since much local history on the territory of what is now the Russian Federation is about not just conflicts between the center and the periphery but about conflicts between and among segments of the periphery.
    Downplaying or even eliminating all of those will be difficult, speakers suggested; and coming up with regional histories in one federal subject that do not contradict but “re-enforce” the messages of those in other, neighboring federal subjects is thus likely to be one of the most contentious areas of textbook writing in the coming months.
    It is likely that the authors of this latest expansion of Moscow’s commitment to homogenization may not have considered all the potential consequences of this demand. On the one hand, if the federal subjects meet it, they will make it more rather than less likely that regions can cooperate, undercutting Moscow’s traditional divide and rule approach.
    But on the other hand, the process of bringing the textbooks into line with each other will likely have the effect of highlighting the differences among the republics and regions and the nations that form them and this in turn will exacerbate differences between these entities and the federal center.