SUMMARY:

Andriy Portnov analyzes the recently published eighty-page Conception of the New Teaching-Methodical Complex in Russian History – the result of collective effort of Russian historians to produce a new mandatory history textbook on the request of President Vladimir Putin. Portnov argues that Conception lacks any conceptual vision of Russian history because of the fundamental opportunism of the authors in trying to avoid the most problematic episodes of the past and in failing to pursue any coherent civic agenda. The much-discussed politicization of the very project of a new mandatory history textbook is limited to the superficial statist ideology, which by itself cannot formulate and pursue any meaningful political agenda.