1. Historical Identity and History Textbooks

The writing and teaching of history plays an essential role when forming a national identity, because the idea of nation is deeply involved with the idea of self-consciousness, the knowledge about we as a one-unit group, a nation. When young people start to look for the answer to the question “who am I?”, it is what has been taught about history that forms the basis for the answer. History textbooks reflect the official interpretation about history and they also make uniform a generation’s historical identity – these books are read by future humanists, engineers and economists.

The official interpretation of history is usually constructed by limited group of people sharing a high official status. In the Soviet Union the “guards of tradition”, as Anthony Giddens calls the marginal group creating the official interpretation of history,^[1] was the Communist Party, which from the 1930’s had a certain vision of the Soviet man and the Soviet identity. The ideal “Homo Sovieticus,” the Soviet man, was free from religion and had a strong class identity without ethnic identification. In 1961, the Communist Party published a statement on the ideal moral code of a builder of communism. The ideal features of the Soviet man were declared to be, for example: loyalty to communism, love for the socialist fatherland and socialist countries, work for society, collectivism, optimism, social activism, patriotism, humanism, a communistic relationship with work, and the ability to fight against difficulties.^[2] A very important way to make this vision come true was history education, whose target was to produce patriots and good communists whose strong class identity would obliterate troublesome ethnic identifications.

In this paper there is an overview of both how heroic stories and individual heroes in history textbooks were meant to confirm the Soviet identity and how they started to create new Russian identity after the collapse of Communism. Examples and discussion of the meaning of these heroic stories and individual heroes will clarify the process of Soviet identity formation and give an overview of what happened to these heroic stories after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

2. Heroic Stories
From 1937 onward, one official history textbook, Istorija SSSR, was used as the basic history textbook in the entirety of the Soviet Union. It was first published in Russian and then translated into the other languages that were used in the country.^[3] The Communist Party set strict regulations for the use of textbooks, pictures and teaching methods – these regulations were published in pedagogical journals such as Prepadovanie istorii v shkole.

Authorities in the Soviet Union were convinced that it was possible to create heroes and heroism through education. The belief in evolutionary optimism was strong.^[4] In the 1920’s, a heavy emphasis on collectivism took precedence over the idea of individual heroism, but in the next decade the situation changed. A social category of “heroes” was authorised on the political level, when the title “the hero of the Soviet Union” was brought into use in 1934. This title was given for heroic work on behalf of the Soviet State. As a part of this development, Stalin demanded that facts, chronology and individual heroes be placed back to the history textbooks.^[5]

According to Jorn Rusen, narrative competence, the ability to build a story out of historical events is an important foundation for historical identity.^[6] The “golden ages of the nation,” victorious heroic stories about the common past, awake consciousness about we as a unit group with a common past, present and future.^[7] Stories and heroes have importance, since students more easily identify themselves with individual heroes than with abstract theories.^[8]

In the methodological guides for patriotic education, the Communist Party stressed three heroic stories of the Soviet history as the “golden ages,” creators of the Soviet identity.^[9] The first heroic age was the October Revolution, the Legend of October. For Soviet students, the October Revolution was taught as the groundwork for communist ideology, a landmark of the history of humankind, and a legend that separated Soviet people both from Imperial Russia and from other nations of the world. It was an event that gave legality to the Soviet system. The second important heroic age in patriotic education and the forming of the Soviet man was the heroic period of Industrialisation and Socialisation, the first and second five year-plans.^[10] This was a time of success, one that showed the superiority of the Soviet state and the leading role of the Soviet people compared to the other peoples of the world. Finally the Great Patriotic war proved how successfully and uniformly the Soviet people could defend themselves against enemies. The Great Patriotic War played a slightly different role as an identity maker in history textbooks than the “periods of success” – the legends of October and Industrialisation. The Great Patriotic War was a crisis in which heroes were people who could still be heroes in difficult conditions. War heroes created expectations of how people should act in times of trouble.

These heroic stories received various emphases in different times. Changes in the Communist Party Programme or in the position of the Soviet Union in international politics influenced the official attitude toward the most important periods of the Soviet history.^[11]

3. Individual Heroism

The most important heroes in history textbooks during the Soviet era were connected to the heroic periods of history. Targets of identification in books were 1) revolutionaries of the legend of the October, 2) heroes of the work, the makers of the industrialisation and 3) defenders of the fatherland in the Great Patriotic war.

In the Soviet conception, class identity was supposed to obliterate ethnic identification. History textbooks described the working class as the heroic class, the class that made the Revolution, industrialised the country and fought for the fatherland. The working class was organised and led by the Communist Party, the main inspiration and supporter of the Soviet hero. In the Soviet era the description of the specific hero always began with a description of the relationship between the Party and the person. The hero was, for example, “a strong Bolshevik,” “a loyal member of the Party,” or “the best collaborator of Lenin.” At the same time when the hero was connected to the Party, he was separated from the Imperial government, for example by means of telling how many times he had been in prison and had escaped. In other words, heroes, especially revolutionary heroes, struggled against the old system and stood for the new one. As an example, a 1989 history textbook tells that Bolshevik Party activist Ia.M. Sverdlov was in prison 14 times and was able to escape 5 times.^[12]

After the hero in question was connected to the party, the description continued with the list of the hero’s features. These features followed the moral code of the Soviet man: the hero was honest, manly, loyal, human, peaceful, etc. Very often the hero was also described as having special qualities. For example, Aleksandra Kollontai was described in a 1989 textbook as “one of the best speakers of the Party.”^[13] Together with their positive features, these special qualities supported the idea of heroes as people who were well respected in society. Respect from society was also stressed in mentions of decorations such as “Hero of the Soviet State” or the “Decoration of Victory” given to heroes of the Great Patriotic War.^[14] Respect from society played a very important role in the image of heroism.

REVOLUTIONARY HEROES

In history textbooks the role of Revolutionary heroes was as representative of an ideal type of Soviet man. Revolutionary heroism was bipartite. At the same time when the picture of heroes pointed out individual features such as courage and strength, heroism was also collectivist, pointing out the common good of the society and the strong connection between actors. Heroes were connected to the biggest hero, Lenin, and in Stalin-era textbooks, to Stalin as well. The connection with Lenin could be described in mentions of the unanimity between persons. For example, a 1989 textbook pointed out the relationship between Lenin and the old Bolshevik F. E. Dzierzhinsky by telling how Dzierzhinsky agreed with Lenin about the starting time of the October Revolution.^[15]

Revolutionary heroes were either political actors or warriors, depending on the ideological emphases of the time. For example, during the Khrushchev era revolutionary heroes in textbooks were described more as political and ideological actors than as soldiers and warriors. Krushchev denied the Leninist theory of violence as the basic feature of revolution.^[16] This change in ideological doctrine influenced textbooks’ images of the Revolution. In 1960 twelve revolutionary heroes named altogether, but only three of them were warriors. This can be contrasted with a Stalin-era textbook in which ten out of fourteen revolutionary heroes were emphasised as warriors.^[17]

WORK HEROES

The rows of work heroes increased with unbelievable speed. The names of female workers, collective farm workers and people who worked with culture, technique, science and art became well known in the whole Soviet State and inspired thousands of people to similar heroic achievements. In our country, everybody can be a hero!^[18]Work heroes were another important group of heroes in Soviet history textbooks. One example of the description of hero of the work shows how the model of the ideal hero in textbooks changed over time when there were changes in educational targets. One symbol of work heroism was Aleksej Stakhanov, who fulfilled his work norm several times and was an ideal example of the heroic Soviet worker from Stalin to Gorbachev. By contrast, a Stalin-era textbook tells only that Aleksej Stakhanov’s achievement was amazing. A 1960 textbook writes that Stakhanov made his record because of the technical supremacy of the Soviet State.^[19] In Brezhnev’s era Stakhanov’s achievement was claimed to be possible because of group work and collective correspondence about society.^[20] Finally in a 1989 textbook, Stakhanov’s work was seen to be based on the will of self-development and individualism.^[21] All of the images of Aleksej Stakhanov were shaped by the most important pedagogical targets of the curriculum in each era. During Stalin’s era these were patriotism and physical strength; in Khrushchev’s era – the superiority of the socialist state over the West; in Brezhnev’s era – collectivism and the goal of educating an unselfish socialist who had a strong will to be part of production; finally, in Gorbachev’s era – individualism and initiative.^[22]

DEFENDERS OF THE FATHERLAND

The heroes of the Great Patriotic war created preconditions for similar activism in the future. The significance of heroes of the Great Patriotic War in history textbooks rose especially during the Brezhnev’s era, when patriotic and military education became a more important part in history curriculum.^[23] In 1967, Brezhnev demanded a new historical interpretation of the Great Patriotic War.^[24] This need for a change also affected history textbooks, which started to lay emphasis on war heroes and the Great Patriotic war as the most important period in the history of the Soviet Union. This can be seen, for example, in the number of pages devoted to the war, which greatly increased.^[25] The individual heroes of the Great Patriotic war in textbooks can be separated in three groups during the whole Soviet era: 1) defenders 2) partisans and 3) heroes of the home front.

The first group were soldiers, who defended their fatherland and led Soviet troops. The amount of individually named defenders started to rise particularly in Gorbachev’s era, when filling the “blank spots” of history made visible those heroes who had been forgotten after the war. One hero reincarnated in textbooks was General Georgy K. Zhukov.

Another group, partisans, were pictured in textbooks as strong and dauntless martyrs who sacrificed themselves for of the fatherland. The organiser of the work of partisans was the Communist Party, and the most important target of the partisan work was to make the enemy unable to continue the battle. The girl who lent her face to the entire partisan movement was a young schoolgirl, Zoja Kosmodem’janskaja, who was executed by fascists. Her story is a legend that has kept its place in history textbooks printed after 1991.^[26] However the story of Zoja changes in books over the time. For example, a 1951 textbook, shaping the idea of cult of Stalin, claims that in her last minute Zoja said: “Please do not be afraid – Stalin is with us, Stalin will come,”^[27] supporting the almost-messianic position of “the great Stalin.” In Khrushchev’s era, Zoja leaned on the Party instead of Stalin.^[28] In a 1975 textbook the heaviest emphasis of Zoja’s story is placed on the cruelty of the enemy (in the spirit of the arms race) and on how the fascists tortured this young schoolgirl.^[29] By pointing this out, the textbooks created a picture of an enemy who need to be taken seriously.^[30]

HEROES OF THE HOME FRONT were usually youngsters and women, the people who started to take over the men’s work while they struggled in the front. Workers in the home front were bold and gave everything for the fatherland, such as tractor driver Darja Garmash, who was during the entire Soviet era described as an inspiration during the war years for thousands and thousands of Soviet workers, both in collective farms and in factories.^[31] The image of heroes of the home front mostly followed the image of the heroes of the work in history textbooks over time.

Despite the fact that class identity was supposed to obliterate national identity, and that the Communist Party was declared to be the most important inspiration of the Soviet heroes, nationality was an important part of the images of heroes during the entire Soviet era. History textbooks in Stalin’s era did not question Russians as the “more equal” nation in the home of all nations. After the Second World War Stalin toasted the Russian people, not the Soviet people, and history textbooks also supported the privileged role of the Russians. This can be seen, for example, in a description of the hierarchy of nationalities during the Revolution: “The central parts of Russia, its industrial and cultural centres, such as Moscow and Petrograd, which had a mostly uniform Russian population, became the base of the Revolution. But the frontiers of Russia in the south and east did not have a nationally uniform population – however, Tatars, Baskhirs, Kirgiz, Ukrainians, Chechens, Ingush and other Muslim nations were at the central areas of the counterrevolution.”^[32]

The focus on internationalism began with Russian patriotic pathos and replaced with Marxist-Leninist internationalism. The target of nationality policy in Khrushchev’s era was the creation of a uniform supranational Soviet state, and historians were asked to reduce the hostility between peoples and point out the ideological struggle against the bourgeois. After the cultural thaw, the idea of internationalism abolished the rise of national cultures. The target of the new nationality policy was the idea that different nationalities merge together under one big umbrella – the Soviet nation.^[33] In the history textbooks the internationalist pathos did not, however, obliterate the specific position of Russians in the Soviet history, even if the role of different nationalities as actors was mostly replaced by Party members. For example, in a 1960 textbook it was still mentioned that “In the days of the war all nations in the Soviet Union gathered around the Russian nation... in the especially difficult situation in the first days of the war the Russians presented exceptional manhood and durability, and took the biggest burden in the frontier and home front.”^[34] The same idea continued in history textbooks for the entire Soviet era. Russians were part of the nation, that defended the fatherland, following in the footsteps of old Russian patriots such as Alexander Nevski, Dmitri Donskoj, and Mikhail Kutuzov.^[35]

During the Brezhnev era, the idea of a supranational Soviet identity was mostly forgotten when Brezhnev pointed out the features of different nationalities in the “home of all nations.” A opposed to Khrushchev’s era, the target of patriotic education was not the destruction of local and regional manifestations of collective identity, but the connection of local features with Soviet ones, where the connector was meant to be socialist internationalism.^[36] In history textbooks, national heroes were connected to Soviet ones, and in this way the books tried to create a legend about the co-operation between the national and state levels. When textbooks in Brezhnev’s era told, for example about the battle of Stalingrad, they pointed out that ten different nationalities had representatives in the Soviet army: four Russians, two Ukrainians, two Belorussians and one hero apiece for the in following nationalities: Georgians, Armenians, Uzbeks, Kazakhs, Kirgiz, Azerbaijans and Estonians.^[37]

Gorbachev followed in his predecessors’ footsteps and even in the beginning of 1980’s denied that there was any kind of nationality problem in the Soviet Union. Questions about nationality problems, however, arose in 1986, when the media started to tell of violent national demonstrations in Alma Ata.^[38] Public nationality problems also influenced the teaching of history, which now had a new goal of showing the voluntary co-operation between different nationalities of the Soviet Union. In 1989, “Istorija SSSR” pointed out, for example, that the erecting of the Soviet state had helped to abolish hostility and suspicious between Russians and other nationalities in the territory of the Russian Empire, and that the Soviet state was the fruit of the co-operation of all Soviet peoples.^[39]

At the same time, different nationalities started to demand their own national heroes in the pages of history textbooks.^[40] This demand was answered in a history textbook published in 1988, which told of “the heroes of the Soviet Union” during the Great Patriotic war using the following list: “The title “Hero of the Soviet Union” was given to11,618 Soviet soldiers, among them 8160 Russians, 2068 Ukrainians, 309 Belorussians, 161 Tatars, 108 Jews, 96 Kazakhs, 90 Georgians, 90 Armenian, 69 Uzbeks, 61 Mordvins, 47 Dagestanians, 44 Chuvash, 43 Azebaijans, 39 Baskhirs, 32 Ossetians, 18 Maris, 18 Turkmenians, 15 Lithuanians, 14 Tajiks, 13 Latvians, 12 Kirgiz, 10 Komis, 10 Urdmurts, 9 Estonians, 9 Karelians, 8 Kalmyks, 7 Kabardins, 6 Adygeys, 5 Abkhazians, 3 Yakuts and 2 Moldavians.^[41]”

Here in this list can be found nations that were never before mentioned in textbooks during the Soviet period, such as Urdmurts and Yakuts. Despite the fact that nationalities other than Slavic nationalities got room in the pages of textbooks, the hierarchy of nations did not change: Russians were first, and other nationalities followed as “big brothers” in every list of nationalities in Soviet history textbooks.

4. Old Legends Die – New Russian Heroism

Textbooks published from 1991 to 1995 forgot the legend of October, and the Revolution was described in the textbooks as the event that ended the democratic development in Russia, made the political culture more violent and ended multiparty system.^[42] The legend of October was replaced by the story of the spontaneous event, no longer seen as legal or justified, but as an illegal rebellion, led by anarchists, which did not enjoy the support of workers or peasants.

Industrialisation was another legend that died with the Soviet Union. The picture of the Industrialisation however changed a lot over the time in history textbooks between 1991-1995. Every textbook published after 1991 pointed out that the period of Industrialisation was hard because of the famine and the tragedy of collectivisation. But there were some books that were not ready to forget the heroic aspect of the Industrialisation, even if the period was at same time the period of Stalin’s cult of personality. A 1992 history textbook crystallised the idea of the period of Industrialisation in the sentence, “1930’s were at the same time tragic and heroic. The people’s enthusiasm to build society emerged at the same time as imprisonment and punishments.”^[43] In 1994, Dolutski’s textbook Otechestvennaja Istoria pointed out that the period of Industrialisation showed how Russian people had a high work ethic, which was not based on communistic ideology but on traditional Russian peasant community and orthodox faith.^[44]

History textbooks published after 1994 transformed the period of the Industrialisation from a heroic story into an ultimate time of trouble, where the biggest enemy was the Communist Party. New textbooks placed emphasis on the fact that cultural revolution and collectivisation destroyed Russian cultural tradition and transformed the people under totalitarian rule that did not have any connections to traditional Russianness.^[45]

In addition, the picture of individual heroes changed between 1991 and 1995. In the early years of the Russian Federation, Bolshevik Party members such as Lev Kamenev and Grigory Zinovjev – who acted against the one-party system, the violent revolution and ideas of Lenin and Stalin – could be heroes. These Bolshevik actors were in 1992 and 1994 described as the supporters of democracy, and people who made everything they could in order to save the multiparty system.^[46] In textbooks published in 1995 heroes were especially those who had genuinely acted against the Party, such as counterrevolutionaries, peasants and the clergy, people who had supported the traditional Russian way of living, orthodox faith, and family-centred culture.^[47]

Even if the legends of the October and the Industrialisation died, the legend of the Great Patriotic War survived as a heroic story and finally became the most important story of history in terms of identity making in textbooks after the collapse of communism. History textbooks published after 1991 continued the Soviet tradition and described the war still as the largest individual theme in books.^[48] Textbooks also pointed out that militarism and technology are the most important matters, matters that explain the development of world history. Similarly the picture of heroes in Russian textbooks very faithfully followed Soviet tradition, telling the story of war as a chain of battles and victories emphasising the amount of troops and war equipment. However, war heroes, soldiers, partisans and workers of the home front, were not presented as inspired by the Party or by communist ideology, but rather by traditional Russian patriotism and willingness to defend the fatherland.^[49] The separation between we and the others also preserved its place in history textbooks, which separated the world into two systems: fascism, and freedom, which the Soviet troops had been defending.^[50]

But the description of the war also changed after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The biggest difference between descriptions of the war in Soviet and Russian history textbooks is that after 1991 textbooks more carefully examined the high prize of victory – this had been first examined in textbooks in 1988, in conjunction with Stalin’s mistakes.^[51] Textbooks described the high mortality rates losses and mass evacuation of people from their homes due to inhuman conditions as the fault of the Communist Party, in particular Stalin.^[52] But the heroism of the people, especially Russians, who had gathered all nations together, remained in textbook images of the Great Patriotic war.

After 1991, history textbooks pointed wrote that the highest duty of the people was fidelity to the fatherland. As Istorija Rossii, XX vek (1995) pointed out, Russians need to remember that peoples’ faith for fatherland did not collapse even during the hard years of the war when Stalinist crimes, collectivisation and punishments made the situation even more difficult.^[53] The image of the war in textbooks also shows how the Russian people led the Soviet struggle against the enemy and at the same time confirmed the idea that different nationalities had a common will to defend the multinational fatherland, – the Russian Federation still is a multinational fatherland. For example, Istorija Otechestvo (1995) states that “In the first days of the war, all nationalities in Soviet Union gathered together and started a struggle for sovereignty.”^[54] One function of the war pages in Russian Federation history textbooks was also to confirm the idea of Russia’s important role in world politics. History textbooks published in 1991-1995 described the heroic age of The Great Patriotic war and how the victory made the role of the Soviet state stronger in the world politics, since Soviet troops had liberated from fascist rule not only Soviet territory and Europe, but also all humanity.^[55]

5. Conclusion

The idea of selective memory very well describes the situation of history teaching of the Soviet Union and Russia. Textbooks used specific stories from history as builders of the common memory, and the heroes of these stories were representatives of the ideal Soviet man, meant to be identified with. Even if the general picture of history did not change much over time, new political ideas and educational goals shifted the focus to different features of heroes and stressed different heroic stories. Simply put, the ideal Soviet man in Stalin’s era was seen as the patriotic warrior; in Khrushchev’s era, as a peaceful, supranational ideologist; in Brezhnev’s era, as a militaristic, patriotic defender of the fatherland, productive actor of society, and builder of socialism; and finally, during Gorbachev’s era, as the individual actor, whose nationality was no longer hidden. Despite the fact that over the course of 70 years the Communist Party tried to create a Soviet man with a strong class identity but without ethnic identifications, the Russians and other Slavic nationalities stayed as “big brother nationalities” of the Soviet family in the history textbooks during the entirety of the Soviet era.

After the collapse of communism, the Marxist-Leninist way of explaining history with dialectical periodisation was replaced by a new historical view. After new educational goals were created, the new selective story of history started to form a Russian identity in a multi-national Russian Federation. The old heroic stories and the legends of the October Revolution and the Industrialisation died, and Soviet heroes were eventually transformed from targets of identification to representations of the other. Traditional Russian culture, which had been destroyed by collectivisation, became the source of a new identity. In history textbooks, peasants and representatives of the orthodox church were described as the real representatives of Russian culture, which was manifested in rural family-centred life and in orthodox faith and traditions.

But not everything in history textbooks changed. The Great Patriotic War retained its place as an important identity maker. It was no longer representative of supranational, communistic heroism but instead was seen to represent traditional Russian heroism, where Russia had gathered all together other nationalities and had defended itself heroically against the enemy. Additionally, the old idea of “messianic” Russian people, which was not destroyed even in the atheistic Soviet State, was manifested anew in the new textbooks of the Russian Federation, textbooks that no longer describe the Russian people as the chosen nation of socialism, but as the liberators of humankind from the rule of fascists.