Scholarly record

THE IMAGE OF RUSSIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH DURING THE GREAT PATRIOTIC WAR (1941-1945) IN MODERN RUSSIAN SCHOOL TEXTBOOKS

S. V. Kulik, E. A. Samylovskaya

Abstract

The paper describes the image of the Russian Orthodox Church during the Great Patriotic War (1941-1945), reflected in school textbooks in contemporary Russia. On the basis of the content analysis the authors highlighted the main components of the image of Russian Orthodox Church during the period under review. First, we analyzed the total amount of pages devoted to the history of the Russian Orthodox Church during the Great Patriotic war in every textbook, we studied and counted the percentage of these pages with respect to the total number of pages devoted to the Great Patriotic war in these textbooks. Sec-ondly, the authors analyzed the illustrative material. Thirdly, the authors analyzed the names of the sections, terminology and personalities, describing the Russian Orthodox Church in the period of 1941-1945. Having conducted the study, the authors came to a conclusion that the image of the Russian Orthodox Church during the Great Patriotic war which was formed in modern school textbooks is not fully disclosed. Thus, in some text-books this aspect is given quite little attention. In addition, all the studied literature sam-ples avoid episodes of collaboration from the side of the Orthodox clergy, which is the result of the ideological orientation of modern Russian education. The authors offer a list of facts and events that, in their opinion, should be reflected in the school literature when working at the image of Russian Orthodox Church in 1941-1945.

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