Russians hold newspapers with pictures from the Beslan school siege as they take part in a protest against terrorism near St. Basil's Cathedral in Moscow in September, 2004. Source: AFP
A NEW history textbook ordered by President Putin for every Russian schoolchild has been attacked as a distortion of history.
Critics said it appeared to be a fresh attempt to rehabilitate the country's Soviet past.
Detailed guidelines for the new standardised work were approved by the Russian Historical Society two weeks ago and are now awaiting endorsement from the Kremlin.
Vladimir Ryzhkov, a historian, radio host and liberal politician, denounced the project as something that "could have been written by the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell's classic 1984".
From the 80 pages of guidelines, Mr Ryzhkov said, it was clear that the new textbook was "highly politicised and grossly distorts the historical facts. Like the textbooks tailored to serve the interests of the Tsar and Soviet leaders, the new textbook furthers the interests of Putin and his inner circle".
The authors of the guidelines write: "During his first and second presidential terms, Vladimir Putin managed to stabilise the situation in the country after the chaos of the 1990s and strengthen the 'vertical of power'"- a euphemism for unquestioned centralised control. His return to the presidency in 2012, which triggered the largest street protests in Russia since the Soviet period, is praised for providing "continuity of rule".
There is no mention of those protests, nor of the 2004 Beslan attack or the national trauma of the sinking of the Kursk submarine in 2000. The guidelines fail to mention Stalin's pact with Nazi Germany before the Second World War and present the deaths of millions of people in famines, war and purges as the necessary cost of "Stalinist socialism". The strengths and achievements of the Soviet Union are emphasised, but there is little explanation for its rapid collapse in 1991. Further back, the vindictive, violent reign of Ivan the Terrible is praised as a period of reforms, while the immense human cost of Peter the Great's "modernisation" goes unmentioned.
Mark Von Hagen, a historian specialising in Russia and Ukraine at Arizona State University in the US, said: "Putin's blessing of any national high school project will mark a new version of old Soviet imperial practice."
Dmitri Peskov, Mr Putin's spokesman, denied accusations that the textbook was designed to burnish Mr Putin's reputation and use the past to justify his authoritarian approach.
"One cannot rewrite history," he said. "On the contrary, we consistently stand against attempts to falsify the history."
Mr Putin said in February he wanted to clear up the "absolutely unacceptable" confusion spread by the use of 65 different history textbooks in schools.
The new book, which is expected to be ready next year, will cover a period of more than 1,000 years from Ancient Rus, the cradle of Russian civilisation, to 2012. It identifies 20 "difficult questions", including the political situation so far this century, how to interpret Stalin's rule, the high cost of victory in the Second World War, the dissident movement against Leonid Brezhnev and the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Andrei Petrov, the executive secretary of the Historical Society, said that the guidelines were not biased and did not skirt subjects that could portray Mr Putin in an awkward light.
"We have named difficult issues that should be explained from various points of view," he said. "Otherwise we would just be lying to our children."
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