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Citation: 

Wertsch, James V., and Mark Rozin. “The Russian Revolution: Official and Unofficial Accounts.” In International Review of History Education, Vol. 2: Learning and Reasoning in History, edited by J.F. Voss and M. Carretero, 39-60. Portland, OR: Woburn Press, 1998.

Abstract/Summary: 

Since the inception of history education in Russia, the way history was taught and interpreted was of great concern. This was most evident in the creation of an “official” history where all other forms of history were “unofficial” and therefore deemed incorrect by the government. Instead of focusing on political and institutional processes which are involved in the ‘production’ of history, the authors chose to focus their chapter on the processes of consuming official state histories and how these differed in Russia in the 1980s-1990s after Soviet control ended. There was a huge shift in the 1990s, with many of the teachers instructing students to disregard the history textbooks they had been reading. The authors continue with a discussion of official and unofficial history in the USSR prior to the 1980s and what the distinction is between the two. They also describe the different functions of official and unofficial history, and discuss the consumption of official history in the Soviet Union and how it was a form of mediated action. The ‘October Legend’ and the 1917 revolution played an important role in the Soviet history myth and this was the defining moment in history. The official account of the 1917 revolution changed as the government deemed it needed to be. The authors then discuss Russians’ view of history in the 1990s and how it differed from the Soviet era through the use of a study they conducted with 16 adults in Moscow in 1992-93. They conclude that in the early 1990s, the official history taught during the Soviet era had little impact on Russian adults’ impressions of the past. The Soviets failed to produce a history that was not consumed in a manner they had intended. The goal of the study was to not only understand what people knew about history but what they believed and internalized as well.

Source/Credit: 
Erika Smith