Outline map of the new world: what is behind the scandal with Medinsky’s history textbook

The Scientific and Methodological Council for Textbooks read and approved the manual.

And this is what came out of it…

As the Chairman of the Chechen Parliament Magomed Daudov said in his telegram channel, a convincing request to correct the chapter in which repressed peoples are presented negatively and their deportation positively, on Kadyrov’s instructions, was brought to the head of the Presidential Administration for Internal Policy Andrei Yarin, the Minister of Education Sergei Kravtsov and himself author of the textbook Vladimir Medinsky.

In response, Daudov says, he admitted that he had reprinted the dubious chapter from previous editions without changes, and declared his readiness to “put it in order.”

Regarding the “reprinting of the chapter without changes,” everything was clear from the moment of publication of Medinsky’s dissertation, who was at one time publicly accused of plagiarism. Then the scandal was quelled. Another thing is alarming.

From which textbooks was the scandalous 31st chapter taken, justifying repressions against the Caucasian peoples? For these historical events were declared illegal both in 1991 and in 2014 by decrees of Yeltsin and Putin. That is, for at least the last thirty years they have been interpreted this way.

Perhaps we are talking about completely antediluvian publications, which were the compilers of the current one. There everything was written exactly the opposite. But a lot of water has passed under the bridge since then…

I believe that this is not the first problem that will be encountered in the newest textbook in the literal sense of the word, the writing of four volumes of which began in April 2023. In September, the textbook already went to schools.

One of the best Russian historians, Professor of Moscow University Vasily Osipovich Klyuchevsky, as you know, worked on his course on Russian history for about 30 years… No comments here.

The “history according to Klyuchevsky” included events from the 8th century to 1861. It all ended with the liberation of the peasants from serfdom. Klyuchevsky, who died in 1911, did not write further, since he considered that the events of which he was a contemporary belonged not to history, but to journalism, and, therefore, he had no right to touch upon them.

Today’s real historians also tried to say that textbooks on this subject are not written hastily by non-professionals (the main compiler, as you know, is a journalist by first degree, and this is “different”) and for the sake of the moment. But no one began to listen to them.

Kadyrov has now, of course, been listened to, and now the tragic period in the history of the Chechen people will be presented exactly as the Chechens see it. Some of the dissatisfied ones will still be able to reach the highest authorities, you see, they will change a couple of other heads. Just what will be left of historical science then?

I myself have a diploma from the Faculty of History. When we went to study in the early 90s of the last century, we, future historians, were immediately warned that the period relating to perestroika and the collapse of the Soviet Union would not be taught. Because it’s politics. For objectivity, everything must first be settled in our heads and feelings. New times are still waiting for their impartial researchers.

Textbooks on Medinsky, as we know, quickly included everything, from quotes about Stalin’s deportation to SVO.

A few months ago, a university employee in Samara said that his distinguished colleague was fired from his job for an article of a historical nature. According to a teacher from the Krasnodar region, historians were told that during history lectures “criticism of the authorities in any form, including the tsar, is unacceptable.”

But the only idea that runs like a red thread through the new textbook on the history of Russia: at any time, the authorities are always right. It doesn’t matter who represents it: Ivan the Terrible, Nicholas the First, Nicholas the Second, Joseph Stalin.

This is how schizophrenia turns out. Because the policy of one ruler may be categorically opposite to the policy of another, but at the same time, from the point of view of the compilers of the manual, both are good. The people are secondary, the person on the throne is primary. As they say, no comments either.

Writing any textbook is not easy. This is not a piece for a daily newspaper.

History is facts. This is working with primary sources – archives, documents. Sometimes very boring and painstaking.

This is a serious historical analysis, substantiation of the laws of the historical process, identification of cause-and-effect relationships. There is no need to invent the myths of Ancient Greece about how “Zeus is always right”, confusing the concept of “Fatherland” with “Your Excellency.”

But geography has already suffered. Thus, in official contour maps for grades 10–11, North America began to be called Anglo-Saxon. This is signed above the image of the entire continent. For what? To show the colonial encroachments of the evil Anglo-Saxons?

As they say, French Canada, Spanish Mexico and Russia with our beloved Alaska (all these regions are located in North America, if anyone didn’t know) are nervously smoking on the sidelines…

As it turned out, someone just saw the contour maps; they are more visual. Although “Anglo-Saxon America” also appears in some textbooks of the last two years.

Mention of it, as we were told, seems to be in geography for the 7th grade, 2008, edited by A.I. Alekseev in paragraph 41. Unfortunately, there is no photo confirming this information. But I would really like to find out what scientific approach was used by the team of authors? When the ancient Germanic tribes of the Anglo-Saxons who lived in the fifth century AD. e. suddenly conquered America and made it their colony? In the political sense, this term, by the way, is not used anywhere except modern Russia.