Russia’s Attitude Toward the Past
This is a pretty good one from the Economist, which finally gets around to writing about the Kremlin-approved history manual for public schools. See some original translations here and here.
“The attitude towards the past is the central element of any ideology,” Yury Afanasyev, a Russian liberal historian, has written in Novaya Gazeta. Indeed, in Russia arguments about history often stir greater passions than do debates about the present or future. What kind of country Russia becomes will depend in large part on what kind of history it chooses. And that is why the Kremlin has decided that it cannot afford to leave history teaching to the historians.