In 2023, Russian schools started using a new history textbook for Grades 10 and 11, edited by Vladimir Medinsky, an aide to President Putin, and Anatoly Torkunov, the rector of the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO). In early 2025, new textbooks edited by Medinsky became mandatory, this time for Grades 5 to 9.
Now all schools are required to teach children using textbooks based on the state’s “patriotic” version of history. And future teachers – those currently studying at universities – have to work with these books.
History students who have already started teaching in schools talk about the contradictions they see in the new textbooks and explain why university professors recommend that they search for other materials for classes.
We have changed the speakers’ names at their request.
My first degree is in history. I taught in colleges in Ufa while I was studying and immediately after graduating.
At the college where I worked, Medinsky and Torkunov’s textbooks were never handed out to students. They were stacked on my desk because only a few were bought – they are very expensive. I’d give them to students at the administration’s request. For example, I had to take a photo in which every student would have this “wonderful” book on their desk. I told them: “Children, do not touch them, I’m going to take a picture [for a report] and take them back.”
I used this textbook for illustrative purposes. I couldn’t hand out maps of World War I battles to every student, but it was needed for them to understand. The book has many pictures, of good quality, in color, they’re great.
Also, there are great documents in the appendix to the textbook, the one that covers the period up to 1941 [for Grade 10]. They too could be handed out for reading, but only partly, like “Children, read just this paragraph.” If you have a good look, you can find bits from historical sources in the book itself. But I wouldn’t look into its text too much because children can pick up some questionable passages. I limited my use of the book to this.
Generally, there is no ideological pressure in secondary vocational education. At least in Ufa. But at one of the colleges where I used to work, they demanded that I teach from the textbook.
That college was rather conservative, policy-wise. We were required not only to use the textbook, but also to conform to the textbook’s discourse. I didn’t get along with this college, they pushed me out of my job.
I went to the coordinator again, asked her who complained, and pressured her. It turned out that one mother of a soldier didn’t like what I said, without students present – I never discussed politics with them.
I said in front of this mother, in the teachers’ cafeteria, that I do not owe my country anything. As a result, they stopped greeting me at college, they stopped cleaning my office and taking out the trash. I had to do it all myself. I’ve never had this happen at any other workplace.
My classmates didn’t really care, saying “we’re not going to use this” and “what for?”. Not because Medinsky’s textbook is particularly bad, but because there’s plenty of useful material on the Internet.
Previous versions of history books had sections dedicated to repressions, their reasons, processes, outcomes, and key figures, victims and executors alike.
You can learn quite a lot about World War I from Medinsky and Torkunov’s textbook. But everything after 1945 is just pure obscurantism. You open the book and it literally… Remember the book in Harry Potter that screamed at Hermione? Literally, you open the book, and it attacks you.
I’m joking, of course, but to be honest, I would like to go to prison with a PhD.
We have a special course at the university called Source Studies, where we look at different historical sources. One of the tasks was to compare [different school] textbooks. Some folks compared a Soviet textbook with the new one [by Medinsky and Torkunov]. Everyone concluded that the Soviet book was surprisingly better than the modern one, because there is some kind of understatement in Medinsky’s textbook, and some of the facts were distorted. While in the Soviet book you could at least see the logic of the narrative. Yes, history is told according to Marxist theses, but conceptually it’s better than in Medinsky and Torkunov’s textbook, because in Soviet books had a logical connection, which is absent in the modern ones. And the problem here is not the lack of ideology, but the fact that the [new] textbook is written extremely subjectively, through the personal perception of the author.
University professors are aware that the new textbook isn’t good, and this opinion is independent of their political views. Generally, the majority of professors discuss specific sections where history was rewritten.
All in all, the books up until Grade 9 aren’t bad, and they are not as politicized as textbooks for Grades 10-11. Politics is an integral part of history, but when paragraphs are written with different ideological messages, you can’t help but wonder what was going on in the author’s head.
By the way, Medinsky leaves a totally different impression in person. He visited Kazan Federal University last year. In conversation, he sounds like a real historian. I don’t know why his textbook says what it says, probably it had to be that way. But in general, he is a knowledgeable person, and it’s wrong to say that he is not a historian.
It all depends on the subject: classes differ, teachers differ, methods used in seminars also differ. Sometimes at a lecture a professor may say something about the Ukrainians, Banderites, and so on, but students usually don’t start discussions during lectures, you simply listen and write down. At seminars this [statements about Ukraine] almost never happens, and if it does, it’s often turned into a joke.
All in all, discussions are still appreciated, so there are no serious issues about it. It actually sounds pretty liberal: you can freely criticise textbooks. Just go and criticize, it’s not a big deal.
Generally, I agree with professors: schools teach the kind of history that the state needs. But I would like to give an objective view of history. I am certain that students should have the opportunity to review the mistakes that any country made in its past and understand the consequences [of historical events].
[During classes] I’ll probably teach the theory myself and come up with tasks on my own. It doesn’t mean that I’m going to exclude the textbook entirely. After all, in the Unified State Exam there are now tasks related to the Special Military Operation [SMO]. This means that I will have to use the textbook.
The risk [while teaching at school] is to discuss the war with students. You can’t express your position openly. But even the topic [of the war against Ukraine] in the textbook can be presented not in a hot “patriotic” vein, but in a dry way.
If I get good students who don’t report teachers, then everything is fine. I think there are many such students.
The textbook [by Medinsky and Torkunov] is overly politicized. At some points, historical figures are described very emotionally. It is because the state’s narrative is aimed at praising… not sure who. At the official level, they say that the Russian Empire was amazing. [In the textbook] they claim that the Bolsheviks, such terrible people, came and destroyed it. And then they say that the Communists helped our country. It’s hard to understand what course the current political establishment is following.
Recently we got a new course called “History of Modern Times”. It is taught by a professor who supports the SMO. And yet he says that we shouldn’t teach from Medinsky’s book, because it’s not always correct.
[Instead, the professors suggest using] methodological literature that has been time-tested. Not necessarily Soviet. When I taught at school myself, I searched for different materials and gave students the mainstream opinion that is found everywhere. Because no textbook gives the full truth. You just need to learn to see different points of view and form a general understanding from them: if you encounter something in every single book, it is the truth.
I am a man of socialist views, literally a disciple of Stalin. We [students and professors] mostly argue about the events that we study in class, but no one is even going to evaluate history through the prism of current politics. It’s just there are different points of view on each event.
If a professor expresses a point of view that I have not heard before, I ask, “But Lenin or Stalin describe it differently, can you please explain how it correlates or differs?” This is an attempt to understand the truth.
Of course, [in class] no one says, “You’re wrong, everything was different. And your opinion is absolutely wrong too.” This is searching for a common truth together, because both we and the professors are finding out something new.
Due to the shortage of teachers in my school, I myself have taught lessons to children of different grades, from 4 to 11. [I taught] history, social studies, economics, and law.
[While preparing for a history class] I’ve been browsing the Internet a lot, creating a kind of mainstream text and optimizing it for the grade I had. I’d make a good presentation with audio and video, entertaining memes. I read the textbook [by Medinsky and Torkunov] and I didn’t like it.
For example, a rationalistic understanding of the material: what’s in [Medinsky’s] book is largely subjective, because many motives of historical figures are not explained and there is no context, background, and outcomes of historical events.
[I plan to teach] only in schools. I purposefully chose schools because I see the current attempts to politicize them. And I want to give my class only bright ideas that encourage creativity, offer opportunities and hope.
The collapse of a powerful internationalist country and the establishment of the power of capital in our country saddens me. I have one goal: to use such methods [through teaching in schools], guided by the ideas of Comrade Stalin, to resist the establishment. If students are taught a different perspective, they may think more critically than they do now.
There are schools where the administration does not support the current government narrative too strongly and allows teachers to teach as they see fit. But if the school wants to follow the government’s agenda and the broader global political agenda, that’s another matter. Of course, I could realize my goal there, but very quietly and clandestinely, as the Bolsheviks did.
