The Teaching of History in Contemporary Russia: Trends and Perspectives
The Teaching of History in Contemporary Russia: Trends and Perspectives. Edited by Vera Kaplan, Pinchas Agmon, and Liubov Ermolaeva. (The Cummings Center for Russian and East European Studies: Tel-Aviv University, 1999). 270 pp. Introduction. Notes on contributors. This collection, comprising fourteen articles, is the result of an international conference that was held in St. Petersburg, in October 1997, and organized by the Cummings Center for Russian and East European Studies at Tel-Aviv University in cooperation with the Herzen State Pedagogical University of Russia. Twelve of the contributions are written in Russian. One of them begins with the words "crisis of historical education in Russia." The theme of crisis and of a painful transitional period is sure to accompany the reader throughout this collection. Leaving behind outworn slogans, illusions, and doubts, Russian scholars are eager to write and teach history in a new way. The contributors to the collection are passionate about their subject; they share the conviction that, by teaching history, they mould the future of Russia In the Introduction Very Kaplan elegantly reviews the collection's articles. She stresses that the common "point of departure" for the authors was the role of ideology in the teaching of history (p. 1). The first article, "The Study of History Teaching in Contemporary Russia: Background, Trends, and Challenges" by Pinchas Agmon, acquaints the reader with recent changes in the Russian educational system. He discusses the reform of education in conjunction with the "new popular interest in the past," which had been unleashed by perestroika. His article helps one understand how and why the teaching of history has become the core of Russia's educational reform. Shocking revelations and shattered myths have made the old history textbooks superfluous-so much so, in fact, that in 1988 history exams were disqualified (p. 15). New historical narratives were urgently needed. A.P. Shevyrev begins his article "Tendencies and Perspectives of the Advancement of Historical Educational Literature in Russia" with reminiscences of 1988 when he was part of a group seeking to elaborate a new concept of history teaching. When the project was finished in 1989, the group's recommendations --such as "the humanization of history," by which was meant the emancipation of history from the dictatorship of ideology-could not be openly stated. At that stage, the concept of competing alternative textbooks seemed so radical that even the authors themselves did not believe that their ideas could be implemented. But, in approximately three years, what the authors had dreamt about, and more, came true. Looking back on the sweeping changes, which did not always exactly follow the projects, Shevyrev casts some doubt on their depth and radicalism. Yes, alternative textbooks exist, but not many schools can buy them because of financial difficulties. Yes, Marxist methodology was rejected but many conceptual problems remain. …