The Ministry of Education agreed on amendments to Medinsky’s textbook

The Ministry of Education of Russia has published the text of the changes that will be made to the history textbook for high school students in Russian schools under the authorship of Vladimir Medinsky and Anatoly Torkunov. The paragraph about the deportation of the peoples of the USSR during the Second World War will be changed. The current version of this paragraph was criticized by representatives of a number of peoples of the North Caucasus and the authorities of Chechnya.

As RBC writes, the Ministry of Education recently sent a response to the appeal of the Karachay People’s Congress on September 24, which contained a demand to withdraw the current edition of the textbook. According to the document, after the examination, it was established that the textbook fully complies with the federal state educational standard of secondary education. But the department still agreed to make changes to one of the paragraphs on page 351 of the textbook for the 10th grade, “taking into account that the history of the forced resettlement” of peoples “appears as one of the most dramatic pages of recent national history.”

In the current edition of the textbook, this paragraph refers to the “facts of cooperation with the occupiers” of representatives of a number of subsequently deported peoples, with mention of the Karachays, Kalmyks, Chechens, Ingush, Balkars, and Crimean Tatars, and it is noted that “not only bandits and accomplices of the enemy were repressed, but also many innocent people. The settlers had to go through a lot of hardships and deprivation.” In the new edition of the textbook it is said that 12 nations (which ones are not listed) were “generally accused of treason”. “Along with individual renegades and traitors, masses of completely innocent and loyal people of Soviet power, including those who fought in the ranks of the Red Army, suffered,” the text says.

At the Karachay People’s Congress, RBC stated that “it was possible to achieve significant and fair changes.” At the same time, a new edition with a changed text will appear no earlier than the next school year.

• At the end of September – after criticizing the textbook of a number of public organizations of the North Caucasus – the Speaker of the Chechen Parliament Magomed Daudov announced that, on the initiative of the head of Chechnya Ramzan Kadyrov, supported by the presidential administration, a working group would be created to make changes to the textbook. Vladimir Medinsky, according to Daudov, at the same time “assured about his readiness to put the textbook in order.” Daudov also wrote that the textbook was withdrawn from schools on the instructions of Kadyrov. After some time, the record about it was deleted. It is not clear whether schoolchildren in Chechnya now study according to this textbook.
• The textbook entered Russian schools in mass circulation at the beginning of the academic year. It also includes a chapter on the annexation of Crimea and the war in Ukraine, the material in it is presented from the standpoint of the Russian authorities.