The Russian Minister of Education accused the West of a war against the new history textbook

At a meeting with school history teachers, the Minister of Education of Russia, Sergey Kravtsov, accused Western special services of waging an information war against a new Russian history textbook for high school students. The entry is posted on the ministry’s page in VK social networks. Among the well-known critics of the new textbook was the head of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, the official did not talk about the ego role.

According to the minister, the special services of Western countries were among the coordinators of the attack. According to the minister, the initiators did not want the Russian education system to be “sovereign”, and wanted to avoid “objective facts” being included in the text. “They want to bring us back, but nothing will work,” the minister said, without specifying which starting point he was talking about.

The alleged attack, which the minister is talking about, is explained by the fact that Russia is “already winning the information war.” He announced the preparation for the next academic year of a new history textbook for grades 5-9 and a social studies textbook. In the future, new federal textbooks on geography, literature, the Russian language and the basics of family protection will appear.

These are six subjects that, starting in 2023, must be taught according to the new law at school according to the compulsory national course. Previously, school programs were prepared by schools independently on the basis of state standards and competing textbooks.

A new history textbook for high school students was prepared for the beginning of this academic year. Former Minister of Culture Sergey Medinsky, a well-known specialist in PR technologies and the author of patriotic literature on historical topics, was declared one of its authors.

The new textbook was criticized for being ideological. Among contemporary events, it covers the war in Ukraine exclusively from a pro-Kremlin position. In the North Caucasus, the textbook was criticized for justifying the mass deportation of the Caucasian peoples, the Crimean peoples, and the Kalmyks by the Soviet authorities in the post-war years. The text about repressed peoples was included in the section “Auxiliaries [немецких] occupiers”.

In November, Kravtsov came to Chechnya to personally present the rewritten section on deportations to Ramzan Kadyrov. Now the nations, previously accused by the authors of complicity with the Nazis, are called “generally accused of treason”.