The Ministry of Education and Science approved the concept of a unified history course for students without “negative bias and denigration”

The Ministry of Education and Science has approved the concept of teaching Russian history at universities for non-historical majors, according to the department’s website.

At the meeting during which the document was discussed, the head of the Foreign Intelligence Service and chairman of the Russian Historical Society, Sergei Naryshkin, noted that the concept was developed “in order to transition to a unified content of the Russian history course” in all universities.

The document consists of 106 pages and covers the period of history from Ancient Russia to the present, including the war in Ukraine.

The course suggests paying special attention to “understanding that throughout Russian history, a strong central government has been essential to the preservation of national statehood.” It is proposed to talk about contradictions and problems, avoiding “negative slant and denigration.”

The concept mentions “the phenomenon of “color revolutions” in the world and in the post-Soviet space”, the “Orange Revolution” of 2004 in Ukraine, “the Georgian attack on South Ossetia and Russian peacekeepers in 2008”, “periodic military operations in Nagorno-Karabakh” and “ Russia's role in their settlement."

The Ukrainian protests of 2014 are called an “anti-constitutional coup”, after which “residents of the Crimean peninsula voted for its entry into the Russian Federation.” In parallel, the authors of the concept mention “armed provocations in the LPR and DPR.”

According to the authors of the document, Ukraine “was turned into ‘anti-Russia’, which, with the help of NATO, planned to return Crimea and Donbass.” “The Minsk agreements,” the concept says, “were torpedoed by the Kyiv regime and Western countries.”

The department proposes to devote at least 144 academic hours to the course. Classes, said Education Minister Valery Falkov, will begin in universities on September 1 of this year.