The Nation-Building Process in History Textbooks: Challenges in Historical Knowledge and Understanding

Abstract

Continuing public and political debates globally about the role of historical explanation and the development of historical consciousness in history textbooks, when dealing with popular understandings of a nation’s growth has given history a significant role in re-positioning competing and ideologically-driven discourses of historical narratives and processes. In Russia for instance, as in other countries undergoing a similar process of nation-building, the three most significant issues defining the repositioning of the politically correct historical narratives are—preferred images of the past (reminiscent of Anderson’s ‘imagined community’), patriotism and national identity. The issue of national identity and balanced representations of the past continue to dominate the debate surrounding the content of history textbooks. One of the dilemmas of the rewriting of Russian history process and introducing a new national (and inter-ethnic) narrative is not only the encouragement and the acceptance of the Western—oriented perspectives on democracy, human rights and the market economy, but also responding to the forces of globalisation and modernity.