in Russia, the power modifies history textbooks to explain “why this operation was inevitable”

No one yet knows what the outcome of the special military operation will be, but the history textbooks of Russian pupils in the equivalent classes of the first and final year, at the start of the school year in September 2023, will include a chapter devoted to the war in Ukraine. Naturally, the Russian power intends to make its vision of events prevail there.

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“It will have nothing to do with chronicling military operations. It is simply about explaining what happened, why it happened, why this operation was inevitable, explains Vladimir Medinski, a controversial historian, former Minister of Culture, in charge of supervising this project to add textbooks. The Kiev regime unilaterally attacked parts of its territory that had asserted their right to independence under international law. This is the prehistory of kyiv’s eight-year war against Donbass.”

In the lower grades, the war in Ukraine will not be covered. But the power decided to rewrite certain passages such as the invasion of Finland by the USSR in 1939, presented as “inevitable” because of the Finnish threat, or to erase certain references from textbooks, such as those which situate the birth of Russia near kyiv, in the 9th century. In the new textbooks kyiv is no longer mentioned, it is simply written “the capital”.