Kazakhstani History Education Considered via Textbooks’ War Narratives, with a Focus on the “Great Patriotic War”

Abstract

The article is devoted to how history is taught in Kazakhstan. We take a concrete example: how the complex history of World War II, a topic that has been highly ideologized in Soviet historiography, is presented in the history textbooks of the post-Soviet period. The study defines how the history of the Great Patriotic War – that is, the Soviet Union’s struggle against the Nazis – has undergone conceptual transformations to varying extents in the textbooks of the countries of the former “socialist camp,” with our focus being Kazakhstan. Additionally, the model of Kazakhstan’s education is essential, as the country has yet to be left out of a definitive history of education narratives. For example, after analyzing history textbooks, it is possible to identify how students’ historical memory about one of the most catastrophic wars has been formed. Our interdisciplinary study used content analysis and “opening up the textbook” to identify types of qualitative models of history textbooks’ content about the war. In addition, the authors analyzed the coverage of the war in textbooks in various historical fields and branches belonging to different stages of Kazakhstan’s educational reforms. One result stood clear, namely that history education has been the subject of frequent debate in Kazakhstan, with the debates indicating how the state apparatus has managed a national approach that teaches a history productive of good patriots. On the other hand, teaching history also has its technocratic justification, as a means for students to acquire necessary skills.