Russian Education Minister Sergey Kravtsov has launched an initiative to rewrite the history of CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States) countries in order to remove the “negative portrayal” of the Soviet past.
The Center for Countering Disinformation (CCD) under Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council posted this on Telegram, as cited by Ukrinform.
“Russia is taking historical revisionism to a new level by pressuring CIS countries. Minister Kravtsov has stated that there are ‘problems’ with how history is taught in those countries — specifically, that the Soviet past is portrayed negatively in school textbooks. Moscow is already in talks with education ministers from those countries to promote a ‘unified interpretation of our shared past’,” the CCD said.
The CCD stressed that this represents an attempt by the Kremlin to impose a favorable version of history on neighboring states. The war in Ukraine has sparked widespread historical censorship within Russia, and now Moscow is trying to export that policy, disguising it under slogans about a “common educational space” and “Eurasian mental unity.”
The CCD emphasized that for Moscow, the concept of a “shared history” is a geopolitical tool used to keep former Soviet republics within its sphere of influence. However, this leverage is slipping away. Russia’s aggression against Ukraine has revealed to many in the CIS what the “Russian World” (russkiy mir) really means.
As previously reported by Ukrinform, in September 2024, Ukraine withdrew from several CIS-related agreements, including those on technical modernization of railway equipment and on investigation procedures for workplace accidents involving Ukrainian workers abroad.
Source: Russia rewriting history of CIS countries to sanitize Soviet past – CCD
