Educational Media Research

Zusammenfassung

In the new nationalizing states, national historiography tries to play an instrumental role, resolving the task of consolidation of society and encouraging it toward successful nationbuilding. The national myth consists of three components. First, memories of the recent past engender victimization, which is utilized to legitimize the gain of independence and to provoke sympathy from the world community. Second, a key place in the national myth is occupied by the image of the great ancestors, which is supposed to charge society with positive energy. Third, such a myth, as a rule, cannot get by without the image of a great enemy. The author illustrates how these three components were constructed in various regions of the South Caucasus and Central Asia at various historical periods and what place they occupy in local school textbooks. Pursuing their own political interests, nationalist versions of history clash with each other and are capable of creating a “scientific” basis for ethnic conflicts. The author proposes approaches to enable the avoidance of such a “war for memory”.