There is an element of nationalism in regional school textbooks

After a unified concept of history teaching was developed, many teachers started to talk about the need to adapt this concept to the age and psychological characteristics of the children. How history is interpreted in the textbooks remains another subject of debates. "As a person who had a direct relation to the development of the unified school textbook on the instructions of the President, I can confirm that there is still a very unfavorable, impossible tendency, when the content of the federal textbook is different from the interpretations in regional textbooks. It creates a situation where it seems like we have different histories in one country," The director of the Institute of Russian History of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Yuri Petrov, says.

He believes that it may have far-reaching negative consequences: "In accordance with the strategy of national state policy, we are focused on educating the new Russian civilian political nation. On ensuring that, for a young man, his primary identity is as a Russian citizen, a citizen of our great country, and then as an Ingush, a Kalmyk, etc. But in these regional school textbooks, sometimes there is such a powerful moment of nationalism that it displaces this primary Russian identity, and replaces it with an ethnic identity. As a result, the young man says that he is an Avar, or a Balkar. And this is his first sense of self. And then he might remember, and sometimes even does not remember, that he is a citizen of Russia."

Petrov recalls that Russia faced such situation before the Olympics in Sochi, when the issue of muhajirun was discussed: "This tragic page in our history, the immigration of hundreds of thousands of Circassians, Adygeans from the Russian Empire, how this topic was artificially inflated, politicized, and was aimed at spoiling the atmosphere around the Olympic Games in Sochi."

The historian also remembered Khaibakh issue, repression and direct destruction of the Chechen population during deportation: "This tragic page in our history was once again artificially fuelled by both Western political technologists, and, unfortunately, our domestic ones. Those are such topics that have a direct influence on history, and ultimately greatly hinder the education of our youth. All of this is quite a serious phenomenon, and I would say it has very unpleasant consequences, to which we must respond."