On the site "Voices of Russia" published an article from the "Krasnoyarsk newspaper" "Get to the truth, or Who and why rewrites history".An analysis of 187 school textbooks published in the CIS countries showed that, with the exception of Belarus and Armenia, nationalist history is taught in schools, based on myths about autochthonousness, ancestral homeland, linguistic continuity, cultural glorification, ethnic homogeneity, sworn enemy. Images of Russia and Russians are used as the enemy. The image of the enemy is laid in the textbooks, even for the lower grades. So, schoolchildren of 4-th grade of Georgia schools study the history and geography of the country in the course "Motherland". The paragraph devoted to South Ossetia (in Georgian terminology - Shida Kartli), comes down to three key points: 1. Shida Kartli is the birthplace of a number of prominent figures of Georgian culture; 2. Ossetians have long lived "on Georgian soil in close friendship and kinship with the Georgians"; 3. In recent years, the "cunning enemy" has encroached on the friendship of Georgians and Ossetians and achieved its goal. Two kindred people with weapons in the hands opposed each other. A paragraph describing Abkhazia is similarly constructed: “The enemies did everything to sow hostility between the Georgian and Abkhaz peoples in order to ward off Abkhazia from Georgia. The“ insidious enemy ”was never named by name, but is it possible to doubt who is meant here?
The justification of the antiquity of the national history and the autochthonousness of the modern nation in school textbooks reaches anecdotal proportions. Thus, in Azerbaijani textbooks, the ancestors of Azerbaijanis are declared contemporaries of the Sumerians. "The first written testimonies about the tribes of ancient Azerbaijan are given in Sumerian epos and cuneiform records." Among the ancestors of the Kyrgyz people are consistently called the Scythians, Huns and Usuns. In Estonian textbooks, one can find allegations about the ancestors of modern Estonians and the formation of the "Estonian people" about five thousand years ago.
The Ukrainian version of the origin of the modern nation should also be recognized as fantastic. The Ukrainian textbooks set forth the scheme of M. S. Grushevsky, the key point of which is the rejection of the ancient Russian nationality and the statement about the parallel existence of two nationalities: the "Ukrainian-Russian" and the "Great Russian." According to Grushevsky, it turns out that the Kievan state is the “Russian-Ukrainian” state, and the Vladimir-Suzdal state is the “Great Russian” ethnic group. The Kiev period of the history of the "Ukrainian-Russian people" gradually passes into the Galitsko-Volynsky, then into the Lithuanian-Polish, and the Vladimir-Suzdal period of the history of the "Great Russian people" - Moscow. Thus, MS Hrushevsky is trying to prove that instead of a single Russian history there are two stories of two different nationalities: "The History of Ukraine-Russia" and "The History of Muscovy and Great Russia."
Attention to the antiquity of national history has an obvious projection on modernity. The proclamation of the ancient Azerbaijanis by the contemporaries of the Sumerians is called upon to substantiate the thesis: "Modern Armenia originated in the territory of ancient Western Azerbaijan." Maps of the history textbook of Georgia for the 5 class are designed to demonstrate that in ancient times the territory of Georgia was much larger than the current one. The "historical regions of Georgia" on the map depict the territories that are part of Azerbaijan, Russia and Turkey. How they got there, the schoolchildren know from the 4 class - they have captured the enemies.
A common feature of school textbooks of new national states is the presentation of contacts with Russians and Russia as a source of problems and troubles for their ancestors. Thus, the first historical acquaintances of Azerbaijanis with Russians are described in the textbooks as terrible disasters: "During the 914 campaign, for months the Slavic guerillas continuously plundered and destroyed the settlements on the Azerbaijani shores of the Caspian Sea. They massacred civilians and captured women and children ". The authors describe the savagery perpetrated by the Russians as if they themselves were witnesses to this.
The first contacts of Estonian ancestors with Russians are described as predatory raids. Russia as a state from antiquity to the present day is credited with aggressiveness. Thus, in Latvian publications, the very formation of a centralized state in Russia is presented as a negative factor for Latvia, since it had “aggressive aspirations”: it sought to “get access to the Baltic Sea”. A horror picture unfolds in front of the students: beginning at the end of the 15th century, the troops sent by the Moscow rulers repeatedly attacked the Livonian lands, plundering and capturing the inhabitants. Moreover, it is only casually noted that the troops of the Livonian Order "also raided Russia." The Livonian war in both Latvian and Estonian textbooks is interpreted as aggression from Russia.
The accession of certain territories to Russia, as a rule, is evaluated negatively. The benefits received by the peoples within the framework of a large state are ignored; the emphasis is on the loss of independence. The textbooks of the history of Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova and Uzbekistan assess the status of their territories within the Russian Empire as “colonial” and, accordingly, qualify Russians as “colonialists”.
Armenian authors take a more balanced approach, noting the progressive for the Armenian people of the Russian conquest of the Transcaucasus. The main content of the national history in the period of being a part of the Russian Empire is the national liberation struggle. Thus, in the Kazakh history textbook it is written: "The struggle of the Kazakh people against Russian colonialism lasted a long time, covering the second half of the XVIII century to the 90 of the twentieth century. The following are a dozen examples of the Kazakh people’s struggle for independence - uprisings, unrest movements, performances and so on.
Suppressing the uprising of Turkestan Muslims 1916 in Kyrgyzstan’s textbooks is evaluated as an attempt to exterminate the Kyrgyz people: “The measures taken to prevent the uprising by the tsarist forces resulted in a mass extermination of the Kyrgyz people. Faced with the threat of genocide, the rebels hurriedly migrated to China.” “Only the overthrow of the Russian tsar and the October revolution saved us from the complete extermination of the Kyrgyz.”
The events of 1917 and the civil war are considered textbooks, as a rule, through the same prism of the national liberation struggle. In a number of countries, the term "civil war" itself is not used at all. Modern textbooks depict the Bolsheviks either Russian, or puppets in the hands of Russian. In the Azerbaijani school, the Bolsheviks are depicted as allies of Armenians. The very establishment of Soviet power in Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Ukraine is portrayed as "aggression", "intervention", "occupation".
“Soviet Russia was not satisfied with the conquest of Georgia and the creation of an occupying government under its control,” the authors of one of the Georgian textbooks write, “now Moscow has begun implementing its perfidious plan - dividing Georgia into autonomous units. The Abkhaz and Ossetian separatists were not slow to take advantage of Russia's anti-Georgian policy.”
The textbooks of Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan are rated as “colonial” throughout the entire Soviet period of history. "Azerbaijan has become a colony of Soviet Russia, which has begun here to implement socio-economic and political measures that best meet its colonial interests." "Kazakhstan turned into a raw material base of the country, that is, it was and remained a colony." "The enterprises built over these years and Turksib only increased the volume of raw materials exported from the republic."
Textbooks of Georgia, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Ukraine, and Estonia associate the origin of World War II with the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. It is evaluated as an agreement of the aggressors about the beginning of the Second World War.
... History is known to be written by the winners. We lost the Cold War in 1991 and, naturally, the winner began reformatting the story for himself. Here we have what we have, said, in particular, in the publication.