Peter Tibor Nagy

Professor of education

nagy.peter.tibor@gmail.com

 

A version of a printed text:       Teaching history as teaching of pluralism. In: International Society for History Didactics, 1999. No. 1. 78-86. p

 

 

The historical and political context of the teaching of history before and after the collapse of Communism

As the communist regime collapsed the East European educational elites declared they want to follow, "to copy" the "western patterns". In some meaning it has happened, in some meaning not.

As it well known the American and European history-textbooks in the recent decades concentrated less and less on the political, military, institutional, governmental history, and more and more on the structures, the long tendencies, the history of culture, the history of society, the history of everyday life. The greatest part of new textbooks of postcommunist countries have not follow this pattern.

We would like to explain this phenomenon from the intellectual history of the last decades.


The Central-Eastern European history as the prelude of Warsaw pact

The text books writers - in the communist period - had to avoid the "national viewpoints" because the international political context in the years of communism forced the textbook writers and sometimes the historians not to speak about the conflictous tradition of the Polish-Russian or Hungarian-Russian historical relations.

The history textbooks had to "create" historical "prelude" of the existing Warsaw Pact.

It was important to stress the common features and common interests of East European countries in the history. Tsarist Russia - the textbooks accepted a panslavist ideology - became the "big brother" of the Slavic peoples of the Ottoman and Hapsburg empires. It was not very far from traditional national interpretation of the Bulgarian and Slovakian historical knowledge - but it was very strange for the Polish historical knowledge, and it was problematic for the Czech knowledge too.

For the Hungarians and Romanians - being not Slavic peoples - it was more complicated than for the others. Hungarian textbooks in the 1950-s tried to stress the great cultural and social influence of Slavic people in the early centuries of middle age Hungary. On the other side they described the role of German settlements. The German craftsmen and merchants (who were the pioneers of embourgeoisement in this region) was called as "colonialists" in the textbooks and curriculums.

The "Slavs are good boys" - "Germans are bad boys", and "the English and Americans bad boys too" naturally. For example: as it is well known in the years of 1919-1922 a proto fascist system existed in Hungary, and only the pressure of American, British, French governments and capital forced the Hungarian government (which needed the international loans) to change the regime to a conservative parliamentary system. This process was described in the textbooks of 1950s as "the role of American and the British capital in the consolidation of Horthy fascism."


The Central European history as the prelude of the successor states

Not only the "Warsaw pact context " caused the problems in the history teaching in the Soviet Satelite countries.

The history textbooks had to "create" historical "prelude" of the existing modern states, (the successor states of Habsburg, Turkish and Russian empire - with its modern borders) too.

The Yugoslavian history teaching stressed the common features of the history of Yugoslav states and peoples. (As it is well known one of this states Slovenia belonged to Austria, an other belonged to the Hungarian Kingdom, but ruled by own acts, and the others belonged to the Turkish Empire) (Petrovic-Strugar 1987)

The Czechoslovakian history teaching (especially before 1968) stressed "the Czechoslovak history" (It is well known, that the Czech kingdom belonged to Austria, Slovakia as territorial did not exist, and these territories belonged to the Hungarian Kingdom...- it was impossible to create a special "Czechoslovakian history" as a specific story.

Naturally, within the Soviet union, the Estonien or Litvanian etc. history teaching had to stress the common features to the Russian Empire...


The stalinist and reformcommunist nationalism

The communist power irritated these "small nation - national feelings" not only because of the "internationalism" of the communism, but because of the nationalism of some communist governments and educationalists.

Ruling communist parties of the Stalinist type consciously used nationalist and patriotic ideology as means of underpinning their power. This phenomenon are found documented in the states national curricula quite up to end of the communist era in the region. For instance, Stalin, (himself a Grusian, paradoxically), clearly used the traditional Russian nationalism and anti-semitism in his fight against Trocki and Zinovjev. "Anti-Cionism"- as the anti Jewish discrimination, for example the university "numerus clausus" was officially called - was a key element expressed in soviet ideology not only in the Stalinist period, but all the time, until Gorbachev came into power. (Arendt, 1951, Nielsen 1989, ) Stalinism used Russian patriotism and the orthodox religious tradition consciously when extending Russia as the Soviet empire. Especially during World War II patriotism was used as ideology by the Red Army in the war occupying North-East Finland and the Baltic states and later in its fight against the German invasion. (Tucker, 1977)

At the end of 1980-s the legitimization crisis of the communist regimes was followed by increasingly stronger nationalism in all countries of the region. In East Germany a cult of the Prussian king, Friedrich II, the Great became an official ideology (Hubner 1987).

The state generated conflicts between major Romanian populations and Hungarian minorities, the major Bulgarian population and Turkish minorities became significant in Romania and Bulgaria.

The authorities not only hindered the regional-municipal autonomies of that minorities but the cultural freedom (the schooling and book-publishing) too. (Chirot:1978, Steinke:1977).

Not only the Stalinist type politicians, but the reformcommunist as well used nationalism as a tool in their struggle for political power legitimacy. In the 1980s one wing of the Hungarian reform-communists followed this policy too. This wing of communist party was led by Pozsgai, one of the founders of the "Hungarian Democratic Forum", the right wing nationalist and anti-communist governing party of the period of 1990/1994. This communist politicians very often argued as nationalist politician. In 1988-1989 they formed a compromise with the nationalist opposition of the communist regime for two reasons: to exclude the stalinist and not let to power the liberals. (MP: 1989)In other countries the ex-communist politicians as Milosevic or Meciar in the mid 90-s stood clearly on the nationalist side of the political scenes of Serbia and Slovakia.

The history textbooks mirrored this situation.

Comparing the pictures illustrating the image of "The Capitalist", in textbooks for Soviet pupils, to the ones found in the Nazi textbooks they prove to be quite similar. The same similarity are found with the caricatures of the anti-semitic papers of the Central European fascist movements of the 1940-s: the Hungarian Arrow Cross or the Romanian Iron Guard. The capitalist a fat and ugly man with "Jewish features", keeping a sack of gold or money, or living any kind of hedonist life-style.

In the Soviet textbooks patriotism has been the official ideology since the thirties. The widely acknowledged scholarly conception of Nordic influence on early Russian history became prohibited. (Bartha:1961) For the Soviet Union of Stalin the specific Russian cultural heritage was the important value pattern. In the Soviet Union and in the satellite countries Marx's famous pamphlet, "The Secret Diplomacy of the XVIIIth Century" was not published until the late 1980s, because Marx's topic was the dangers of Russian expansion. Russian colonialisation in Asia was called as "civilisation" by the textbooks, which described the British and French colonisation as a real hell. In the 1960s, when textbook agreements were signed between Hungary and the Soviet Union, Soviets asked the Hungarians to delete Russia from the list of imperialist powers, in the Hungarian history textbooks. (Tucker, 1977, Szabolcs 1994)

Another example is Poland, where the Jaruselski government deliberately not appeared as "a communist government, based on the power of the working class", but took great care to position itself as "a national government" which over all aim was to save the nation from internal chaos in 1980, and, naturally without expressing it as an open message, to save Poland from possible Russian and East German military attack. The Jaruselski regime built "a cult" of Marshall Pilsudski of 1920s, indicating the parallelism with the role of Army in the 1980s, and the 1920s. (Michel 1985, Szczesniak 1986)

The officially published textbook of history stressed the Polish national feeling very intensively and stressed the role of the Polish revolutions and revolutionaries. (Szczesniak 1986).

As one can see, not only Soviet, but the Central European Communist regimes used nationalism as legitimising ideology, especially in history teaching and forming of historical knowledge in the state commissioned films and architectural products.

In Romanian and Bulgarian textbooks the history of these countries was described as being of more than thousand years old. Among scholars the validity of this sort of history writing as been debated and disputed as fairly romantic and mythical. However, this glorification of the country's past was declared official truth, not only in the fifties, but also more recently. The continuous history of the Dacoroman State of the 2nd century to the Romania of the 19th century or the "1300 years old Great Bulgaria" was officially declared and propagated ideology, and counter arguments were prohibited more or less.

In the Hungarian textbooks especially in the fifties - the Hapsburgs - and the modernisation of the 18th century against the particular Hungarian nobility was accused as Germanisation. (Molnar:1961) (Nepszabadsag 1970, 1971, 1972)

All the described textbooks declared themselves as being Marxist. However, from an historical and literary point of view, they are often neglected the classical viewpoints of marxism. They were not interested in what was "progressive" and what was not from a social viewpoint, from the viewpoint of embourgoisement or the human rights. For example in the interpretation of the revolutions of 1848 or 1918 the actors of history were "good boys or bad boys" only from the aspect of national interests.


The new situation after 1990

Because of the above mentioned three phenomena - the influence of legitimisation of Warsaw Pact, the influence of legitimisation of new states and new borders, the interest of legitimisation of nationalist argumentation of communist parties - the renewing the history teaching in Central Europe was a kind of national awaking after 1990. More national history, more facts, more names more battles - we can describe the history of history-teaching of the last ten years with these words. A lot of Central and East European historians think that this is the speciality in which the Eastern history-teaching should be different from the Western one..


History - teaching as the transfer between the public opinion and the historians

Not only the international context - the Warsaw Pact, new states, new nationalism - forced the textbook writers to manipulate textbooks from the 50s to the 80s, but naturally the local - national level - ideological and political context. So the local - national level - contexts give questions for the historians and educationalists about the new spirit of history-teaching after 1990, too.

First of all as it is well known every communist country was a one-textbook-system. It means that although there were debates among historians, about different historical questions, only one opinion was "official": the party and ministry let only one opinion publish in textbooks.

The new possibility - every professional group have the possibility to publish its "own" textbook became a huge attraction after 1990.

The textbook is a natural place for spreading of the different historical interpretations. The historians after so much decades have right to go out from the ivory tower and explain their debates to the people.

The people - after so much decades - have right to understand the different interpretations about their past.

The text books are sometimes full of facts, sometimes full of political stories - because these questions are debated by historians, and the historians communicate to the society by the textbooks, too.


The history teaching as the media of party pluralism

Some questions in the textbooks of communist time were declared not by scientific monopolies, but from direct political reasons.

The East German textbooks could not face the German past, because - in the textbooks - the antifascist German workers movement became the dominant factor of the modern German history.

The Czechoslovakian textbooks could not show a real picture about Masaryk- and Benes-formed democratic state, because the communists in 1948 made a coup against this political regime, and they need a political legitimisation of this.

The Hungarian Textbooks could not describe the importance and realities of 1956 - because the person of Kadar. (In a lot of meanings the Hungarian textbooks of the seventies and eighties were the most objective among the East European textbooks - the interpretation of 1956 is an exception)

In the process of the changing of the regime it became very important: the new generation, the "generation of democracy" have to understand the basic facts of these untold stories. The persons, facts, dates, places of the untold stories of the revolution of 1956 of Budapest or the 1944 of Warsaw were build into the national cultural canon.

Some history textbooks - I can say some good examples of the textbook history of Hungary of the early 1990s - present a real political question. When these books interpret the history of enbourgisement, the second world war, the Holocaust, the communist period - they works as a real political media.

The different opinions about the 20th century Hungarian history mirrored not only different professional-scientific cleavages, but more widely ideological cleavages and sometimes party-political cleavages too.

The ideological and political groups attacking a textbook, which "belongs" to the other ideological and political groups with the argumentation, that one or other political fact is not mentioned in the book, "a fact which would have changed the whole picture of the historical phenomena" To avoid these attacks the textbook writers write a lot of political facts, and chronological data into the textbooks, make this textbooks more objective but less learnable, and less modern, less similar to the western patterns.


History teaching as the transfer of constitutional thinking

The "teaching of democracy", teaching of "democratic values" - these have been the most legitim aims of the educational policies of the 1990s.

In a lot of post communist states (similarly to the western states) you can find a school subject whose name is "citizenship" or "democratic citizenship" or "legal knowledge of citizens". There are a lot of deep problems with the effectiveness of these subjects. The institution of democracy too young and weak, and sometimes the real working of this institutions (parliament, jurisdiction, government, municipality, human rights) are very far from the letters of acts.

The last some years of new democracies could not offer enough example which would be the material of an explanation of one or another constitutional principal. Or: the pupils, the parents, the teachers are involved emotionally, so the explanation with the examples of 1990s not possible, and not useful at all.

There is only one solution to explain the reality of rights, acts, governing etc.: the connection of these things to the history. All of the modern constitutional institutions and principal were born sometimes in history: greatest part of them was a working reality in the 18-20th century USA and West Europe.

It is necessary to teach more about the constitutional institutions and principals of the USA and West Europe and the Austrian-Hungarian empire... That is the only way how the pupils could realize what these institutions and principles meant and mean, how they worked and work, functioned and function.

The last argument is supported by the most modern constitutional and political elite too.

These are the historical fact which hindered the history teaching of Central Europe to follow the "Western pattern".


Sources

The most important sources are East European history textbooks, which available - in translation in Hungarian in the collection of Dr Szabolcs, Budapest. Naturally I used some important books which mirrored the historical thinking of East European countries, and which describe the ideological processes.

ALLWORTH (ed.), Nationality Group Survival in Multi-Ethnic States: Shifting Support Patterns in the Soviet Baltic Region (1977);

ARENDT, The Burden of Our Time (1951; also published as The Origins of Totalitarianism, new ed., 1973, reprinted 1986);

BANAC: The National Question in Yugoslavia: Origins, History, Politics (1984),

BEREND and RÁNKI, Economic Development in East-Central Europe in the 19th and 20th Centuries (1974)

BOCIURKIW and STRONG (eds.), Religion and Atheism in the U.S.S.R. and Eastern Europe (1975).

BOKOV: (compiler and ed.), Modern Bulgaria (1981)

BRADLEY, Czech Nationalism in the Nineteenth Century (1984);

BROCK, The Slovak National Awakening (1976);

Bulgarian (1979);

CHILDS (ed.), Honecker's Germany (1985).

Communism, Nationalism, Anti-Semitism, trans. from Polish (1982);

CVIIC, Remaking the Balkans (1991),

DANIELS, Trotsky, Stalin, and Socialism (1991).

DEÁK, The Lawful Revolution: Louis Kossuth and the Hungarians, 1848-1849 (1979);

DIJANA PLESTINA, "Democracy and Nationalism in Croatia: The First Three Years," in RAMET and ADAMOVICH (eds.), Beyond Yugoslavia: Politics, Economics, and Culture in a Shattered Community (1995), pp. 123-154,

GATI, Hungary and the Soviet Bloc (1986);

GEORGESCU, The Romanians: A History, ed. by MATEI CALINESCU (1991; originally published in Romanian, 1984).

GILBERG, Nationalism and Communism in Romania: The Rise and Fall of Ceausescu's Personal Dictatorship (1990)

HALECKI and POLONSKY, A History of Poland, new ed., trans. from Polish (1983);

HANÁK, Ungarn in der Donaumonarchie: Probleme der bürgerlichen Umgestaltung einer Vielvölkerstaates (1984);

HORVAT, An Essay on Yugoslav Society (1969; originally published in Serbo-Croatian, 1969)

JACQUES: The Albanians: An Ethnic History from Prehistoric Times to the Present (1995)

KITCHING (eds.), Regional Identity Under Soviet Rule: The Case of the Baltic States (1990).

KOSÁRY, A History of Hungary (1941, reissued 1971);

KOSINSKI, "Changes in the Ethnic Structure of East-Central Europe, 1930-1960, "Geographical Review, 59 (3):388-402 (July 1969),

KREJCÍ, Czechoslovakia at the Crossroads of European History (1990).

LETTRICH, History of Modern Slovakia (1955, reissued 1985),

McCAULEY, The German Democratic Republic Since 1945 (1983),

NAHAYLO and SWOBODA, Soviet Disunion: A History of the Nationalities Problem in the USSR (1990);

PALACKY: The Historian as Scholar and Nationalist (1970);

PINKUS, The Jews of the Soviet Union: The History of a National Minority (1988)

Poland: A Handbook (1977),

RAMET, Nationalism and Federalism in Yugoslavia, 1962-1991, 2nd ed. (1992)

ROGEL, "Slovenia's Independence: A Reversal of History, " Problems of Communism, 40:31-40 (July-August 1991).

SHUKHAT, Moldavia, trans. from Russian (1986),

SIMMONDS (ed.), Nationalism in the USSR & Eastern Europe in the Era of Brezhnev & Kosygin (1977).

SKILLING, The Governments of Communist East Europe (1966);

SPINEI, Moldavia in the 11th-14th Centuries (1986; originally published in Romanian, 1982).

SZAJKOSWKI (ed.), Political Parties of Eastern Europe, Russia, and the Successor States (1994)

TURNOCK: Eastern Europe: An Historical Geography, 1815-1945 (1989);

VAN MEURS, The Bessarabian Question in Communist Historiography (1994),

VARDY, Modern Hungarian Historiography (1976).

VASSILEV: Bulgaria - 13 Centuries of Existence, trans. from Bulgarian