On the Discussion of the Unification of the School Reception of History in the Russian Federation

Abstract

The text contains an analysis and an evaluation of the “Concept of new educationalmethodological complex in teaching native history”, submitted to the president of the Russian Federation and approved by him in fall 2013. Also, the characteristics of Boris Akunin’s “History of the Russian state” and his latest historical fiction serve as the background of this study. The main aim of the article is to broaden the knowledge of the contemporary Russian political culture, especially in association with the politicization of social and individual attitudes towards the past. The criteria of the analysis and evaluation were determined according to the division into „conceptual” and „problematic” thinking proposed by Mikhail Bakhtin. Interpretative inspirations were also drawn from Bakhtin’s texts about antirhetorical properties of laughter and from the literature on his ideas. On account of the tasks performed in the text, the materials published in the poorly known in Poland collection Иное. Хрестоматия нового российского самосознания proved very valuable.