History with literature: The forgotten case of creating the first Soviet textbook in ancient history for schools

S.B. Krikh

Dostoevsky Omsk State University, Omsk, 644077 Russia

E-mail: krikh@rambler.ru

Received January 15, 2019

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DOI: 10.26907/2541-7738.2019.2-3.161-169

For citation: Krikh S.B. History with literature: The forgotten case of creating the first Soviet textbook in ancient history for schools. Uchenye Zapiski Kazanskogo Universiteta. Seriya Gumanitarnye Nauki, 2019, vol. 161, no. 2–3, pp. 161–169. doi: 10.26907/2541-7738.2019.2-3.161-169. (In Russian)

Abstract

Based on a number of rare documents, the draft variant of the school textbook in ancient history, which was written in 1937 after numerous attempts to make a real Soviet textbook, was discussed. The version of 1937 has never been published for schools; it was printed as a book layout in a limited number of copies. A distinctive feature of this version was the incorporation into the text of large excerpts from the fiction literature devoted to the history of Ancient Rome: the works of G. Flaubert, E. Bulwer-Lytton, A. Pushkin, H. Sienkiewicz, and other writers were used. The reasons for rejection of the above-mentioned innovation were considered. The conclusion was made that such experiments shed light on the process of historical narrative standardization in the Soviet science of the 1930s.

Keywords: textbooks for schools, ancient history, Soviet historiography

Acknowledgments. The study was supported by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (project no. 19-09-00125).

References

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