Ideology and Civilizational Identity in Russia’s State-Approved World-History Textbooks

ABSTRACT

This article examines how recent world history is interpreted in Russia’s latest state-approved textbooks, particularly what kind of ideological and civilizational leanings the interpretations reflect. Discourse analysis reveals that the textbooks broadly accept the superiority of the capitalist developmental model and liberal-democratic political system, all within a Western-centric, if not pro-Western, paradigm based on modernization theory; only in the context of recent geopolitical conflicts is the West portrayed in an adversarial light. These findings suggest that liberal and Western-centric thinking continues to influence sections of Russia’s political and intellectual elites as well as the country’s post-Soviet generation.

Acknowledgments

My research would not have been possible without the guidance of Dr. Kathleen Smith, who advised me on the direction of my research and pointed me to sources I would not have otherwise found. I also thank members of my graduate cohort at Georgetown for offering helpful critiques.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. For the rest of the paper, I may use the word “worldview” to refer to the combination of ideology and civilizational identity, simply to keep the wording concise.

2. In Russian, Federalnyĭ perechen uchebnikov, dopushchennykh k ispolzovaniiu pri realizatsii imeiushchikh gosudarstvennuiu akkreditatsiiu obrazovatelnykh programm nachalnogo obshchego, osnovnogo obshchego, srednego obshchego obrazovaniia.