RIGA, Latvia — When classes begin next month, Russian high-schoolers will get fresh history textbooks rewritten to carry Kremlin-approved narratives about the “special military operation” in Ukraine and rivalry with the West — part of a wider government effort to shape how young generations of Russians think about the war and Russia’s place in the world.
It is also part of an extraordinary gaslighting campaign in which Putin has tried to convince his own people — and the world — that Russia is a victim rather than the aggressor in Ukraine, and that the West is at fault for a war that Putin chose to unleash and has already killed tens of thousands.
“Like their grandfathers, they are fighting for goodness and truth shoulder to shoulder,” the book says of Russian soldiers in Ukraine. “Blowing themselves up with the enemy, dragging wounded comrades from under fire, fighting in burning tanks, commanding their units until the last breath,” the book states. “Courage and bravery to give up your life for the Motherland is something inherent to a Russian, Soviet soldier.
Historians have criticized Medinsky’s work, but he found a receptive audience in Putin, who has taken an avid interest in historical revisionism and appointed Medinsky to head a commission on history education.