History with literature: The forgotten case of creating the first Soviet textbook in ancient history for schools

Abstract

Based on a number of rare documents, the draft variant of the school textbook in ancient history, which was written in 1937 after numerous attempts to make a real Soviet textbook, was discussed. The version of 1937 has never been published for schools; it was printed as a book layout in a limited number of copies. A distinctive feature of this version was the incorporation into the text of large excerpts from the fiction literature devoted to the history of Ancient Rome: the works of G. Flaubert, E. Bulwer-Lytton, A. Pushkin, H. Sienkiewicz, and other writers were used. The reasons for rejection of the above-mentioned innovation were considered. The conclusion was made that such experiments shed light on the process of historical narrative standardization in the Soviet science of the 1930s.

Keywords

• textbooks for schools
• ancient history
• soviet historiography