Historian: Russian view of the Second World War? It is the central point of Soviet history that excuses everything | iRADIO

So how is the end of World War II taught in Russian schools? Is it in any way different from how it was taught, say, 20 years ago?
In general, there are more textbooks, but the main story of the Second World War and its end is connected with the fact that Russia calls its part of the Second World War the Great Patriotic War. They are talking about the period from 1941 to 1945.

And this is what is presented to children in schools, a kind of great patriotic war. All Soviet history, Stalin’s history, everything that the state and society tried to do, what they went through, leads here to the great victory over absolute evil. This is how Hitler’s Germany is interpreted.

That is, the central point of Soviet history as the point towards which everything was headed and through which everything can be explained and everything can be excused – this is probably the main message of the current Russian school curriculum.

And how did they learn 20 years ago? Above all, more attention was paid to the context, that is, those motives of other societies, other motives that led to the Second World War affecting the whole world.

Before, it was not only narrow Russian or Soviet history, but the world context and the effort to understand that it was a global phenomenon that had some development even in the Soviet Union, to which the Soviet Union responded.

Today, much less is learned about what led to the Second World War, much less is said, for example, about the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and the two or three years of Soviet-German cooperation.

Of course, not only Russians served in the Red Army during World War II, but also soldiers from other states of the then Soviet Union. To what extent is this remembered in Russia?
From the point of view of the school curriculum, the Second World War, or the Great Patriotic War, is the moment of the emergence of Soviet identity, it was the point when those societies came together and created a new Soviet man.

Of course, attention to local history, for example to regional losses in Belarus or Ukraine, is decreasing.

And today’s Russia tries to present itself as the main power that won the Second World War on the territory of the Soviet Union.

A certain respect for losses and sacrifices is especially related to the Russian victims. Soviet casualties and Soviet losses are seen as a global effort or a global success of Russian society. They kind of appropriated the victory.

Tomas Pancír

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