The Filippov Syndrome

History as ideology: the portrayal of Stalinism and the Great Patriotic War in contemporary Russian high school textbooks

“…This has not gone unnoticed by Russia scholars, and there has been much important work on this subject (Zajda and Zajda 2003;Sherlock 2007aSherlock , 2007bBrandenberger 2009;Zubkova 2009). Sherlock (2007a) notes the sharp shift away from anti-Soviet narratives that had existed during the Yel'tsin period, both in Russian society as a whole and in textbook content, as the Putin elite sought to portray the Soviet era in much more favorable terms.…”

“…While Sherlock focuses more on the discursive presentation of the Soviet era, he does not dwell on the phenomenon of Stalinism within this. Brandenberger (2009) and Zubkova (2009) devote the majority of their focus to the positive presentation of Soviet, and especially Stalinist narratives, mainly in the vehicle of a teacher's manual written by Aleksandr Filippov, Noveyshaya istoriya Rossii 1945-2006. While the trend of presenting the Soviet era positively -or at least not portraying it negatively -in Russian history textbooks had been under way for sometime prior to the Filippov publication, the Filippov volume was, as Brandenberger notes, "especially partisan and tendentious" (2009,862).…”

“…While scholars such as Sherlock (2007b) have noted the "decay" of the more liberal, that is anti-Soviet, historical narratives even before the time of Putin, tolerance of anti-Soviet discourse in the sphere of education was severely limited in the early Putin years (205). The political elite, as part of a proclaimed larger project to portray the Soviet past in more patriotic and unifying terms, became directly involved in the production of historical discourse that was to be disseminated in schools across Russia (Zubkova 2009). The two issues that they felt most needed remediation were negative portrayals of Soviet conduct during the Great Patriotic War and frank portrayals of political repression during the Stalinist period.…”

“…As mentioned previously, this book, which calls itself a "manual for teachers" (kniga dlya uchitelya), is so pro-Stalin that it has received substantial criticism in both Russia and the West. It has also been the subject of several journal articles that note Filippov's proclivity to portray Stalin's repressive policies in justifiable terms, citing the exigencies of the war and of the need to rebuild after it (Brandenberger 2009;Zubkova 2009;Korostelina 2010).…”

“…There has been some excellent scholarship on the phenomenon of Stalinist revisionism in history textbooks (e.g., Brandenberger 2009;Zubkova 2009). This article builds on this literature by expanding the range of Russian educational source materials utilized in data collection.…”