Plural: History, Culture, Society (Jun 2016)
Twentieth-Century Leaders in the Moldovan History Textbooks
Abstract
The main research question of this paper is How the twentieth century leaders are treated in the History textbooks published within the last decade in the Republic of Moldova? The textbooks are a reflection of the History curriculum. Therefore, the analysis starts with the discussion of this document and its content concerning leaders and heroes. The main research sources are the History textbooks published in Moldova during the last decade that debate the events of the twentieth century. The paper analyses how the national, European and world leaders are treated in Moldovan textbooks, and how the discourse and the paradigm get changed depending on political regimes. Based on quantitative and qualitative methods, some conclusions have been made about various leaders, such as Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, Antonescu or leaders from the Cold War era. At the end, the leaders of independent Moldova are briefly presented too. As a result of this analysis we could see how the leaders are presented in the Moldovan textbooks and could conclude that the policy makers, textbook authors and publishers have to pay more attention to this topic.
