Mobilizing the Past: The Use of School History Textbooks as a Legitimation Strategy in Putin's Russia

For any given regime, the power to control the official interpretation of national history is considered to be an important and efficient instrument for nation building and nation maintenance purposes. Through mobilizing a real or invented common past, reinforcing the borders between who are defined as belonging to the national community and who does not, the historical narrative is seen to strengthen the sense of belonging to and identification with the nation. School history textbooks—and the educational system in general—represent important locales for such struggles between competing historical narratives. As history books, school history textbooks represent a special genre. They are not primarily meant to convey the personal views of the author or present complex academic debates. Instead, complicated issues are reduced to undebatable “shared truths” ready for student consumption. In this context, the past is first and foremost meant to provide meaning to and legitimation of the present and to help staking out a common course for the future. With their near universal reach to entire cohorts of youths, school history textbooks are a powerful tool for spreading the message of the current regime of who and what the nation should be—and for legitimizing the powers-that-be.