Educational Discourse of Textbooks on Russian History as an Instrument for the Influence of Tsarism on the Mentality of its Subjects: An Attempt at Periodisation

Abstract

ABSTRACT This case study of the Russian Empire, based on the analysis of more than 100 primary sources in the form of textbooks on domestic history (uchebniki otechestvennoi istorii) and archival documentation, is intended to help understand the evolution of the formation of domestic history as a school subject as an integral part of the imperialist state’s historical policy. The essence of the work was an attempt to periodise the development of the educational narrative as one of the components influencing the mentality of the Russian population – or rather, certain segments of it – and the extent of this phenomenon from the point of view of postcolonial studies. Special attention was also paid in the text to considerations based on discourse analysis of how the history of rulers-tsars gradually became the history of the people-Russians.