Paul Goble
Staunton, Sept. 19 – Scholars at the Moscow Institute for Scholarly Information on the Social Sciences have published a new book in which they sharply criticize school textbook writers in the former Soviet republics of Central Asia for their increasingly nationalistic and anti-Russian positions.
The book, Russia in the School History Textbooks of the Countries of the Middle Est, the Post-Soviet Space and China (in Russian; Moscow: 2024; 155 pp.), the full text of which is available online at inion.ru/site/assets/files/8575/092024_rs_rossiia_v_uchebnikakh_istorii.pdf), has been reviewed by Tatar orientalist Azat Akhunov at business-gazeta.ru/article/648695.
According to Akhunov, the Russian authors are especially critical of the Central Asian textbook writers because they treat Soviet policy toward their peoples as a continuation of tsarist imperial policy, downplay the enormous differences, and thus promote increasingly nationalistic and anti-Russian views.
What that means is that the rising generation in the countries of Central Asia is likely to be more anti-Russian than its forefathers, a evolution that will make it ever more difficult for the two sides to work with one another, whatever the leaders of these countries may say about cooperation with Moscow.
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