aici - Asociatia Tinerilor Istorici din Moldova

În acest manual, informațiile despre evenimentele
petrecute în anul 1812 sunt integrate în contextual
internațional al epocii, însă prezentarea şi explicarea
evenimentelor este una foarte restrânsă.
Prin urmare, în manualele de după 1989,
informaţiile referitoare la evenimentele petrecute în
anul 1812, care au avut consecinţe dramatice pentru
populaţia din teritoriul anexat de Rusia, sunt destul de
puţine. Cauzele, contextul şi urmările acestor evenimente
nu sunt prezentate şi explicate aproape de loc,
excepţie făcând poate manualul unic apărut imediat
după 1989.
SUMMARY
THE YEAR 1812 IN ROMANIAN TEXTBOOKS, BEFORE AND AFTER 1989
Due to their important functions, their complexity and
diversity of contents, textbooks represent an indispensable
element for each society. According to Wolfgang Höpken,
textbooks nowadays are in competition with other massmedia
devices and, very often, they have few chances to
gain a student’s mind. Even the most sophisticated textbook,
didactically speaking, written in order to promote
peace and harmony loses its power in front of a computer
game meant to prepare a child for a virtual war game.
Mirela-Luminița Murgescu considers textbooks to be
“a means of transport of an ideology, of a system of values,
of a memory, of an identity, which is changed by the society
from a common object into vivid reality”. The textbook
is a kind of “Bible”, of “holy book” which helps students
to interact with both the past of their country and other
nations’ history. However, the way in which textbooks
present a certain event or phenomenon and, also, their
structure depend on the curriculum and on the way in
which the author or the authors understand to integrate
the historical information. Although the textbook seems
a closed work, full of certitudes to which one should not
ask questions, it is, in fact, “a means of transport of an
ideology, of a memory, of a national identity”. Finally, the
textbook is a social product with an educational role. The
History textbook – in particular – answers to some social
rules. It transmits the uniform, accepted, and even the official
version of what the students should know about the
history of their nation.
From the diversity of textbooks, the History ones have,
or better said, had a special character, being transformed
in a kind of “business card”. The history textbooks insist
on some major themes – the origins and the archetypal
symbols, the continuity in the same space, the connections
between the Romanian people and the unity. In addition
to this, the last theme treats the moment 1812 which was
and still is a subject of great interest in the academic area
and not only. The year 1812 can be considered a sort of lieu
de la mémoire of Romania’s national past.
We do not intend to speak about school books, but, it
must be mentioned the fact that textbooks have a specific
writing, a certain conception, depending on the level of
the scientific information and also on the pedagogical and
didactic features characteristic for the period in which they
are written.
In the interwar period, after Basarabia’s integration in
Romania without having Bolshevik Russia’s consent, the
textbooks maintained the lessons about the the Russo-
Turkish War (1806-1812) and Basarabia’s loss. Even if the
textbooks’ authors did not analyse these events in as many
pages as Tocilescu and Xenopol did before the First World
War, the moment of Basarabia’s kidnapping is well represented
in textbooks.
However, the war’s end brought a major change – a
fracture in fact – as far as the interpretation of the events
from 1812 is concerned. During the communist period,
the history became “instrumentum regni”, serving the
communist ideology. In this respect, the year 1812 and
the peace in Bucharest are presented in textbooks according
to the Soviet vision over Romania’s past. Therefore,
in 1812 Russia released Basarabia from the Ottoman occupation,
contributing in this way at the development of this
country even if Tsar’s government was a “retrograde” one.
The distance between Bucharest and Moscow and also the
adoption of the national communist line by Ceaușescu had
a strong impact on the manner in which the national past
was presented in history textbooks. Thus, the main changes
in history textbooks concerning the year 1812 consist in
the explication of the term Basarabia as “part of Moldavia
between Prut and Nistru” and the fact that Russia “incorporated”
Basarabia.
The analysis of the way in which the moment 1812 is
presented in the textbooks printed after 1989 can be made
in the context of the evolution of the historical education
in Romania after the fall of communism. The Romanian
society have not debated yet the school’s role in one’s
education and life, even if the multitude of crisis in the
educational system brought into public attention several
problems regarding this topic.
To conclude, there is little information concerning
the events that took place in 1812, whose consequences
were dramatic especially for the population in the territory
annexed by Russia who suffered a process of Russification.
These events’ causes, context and consequences are very
shortly presented and explained, with the exception of the
only textbook printed immediately after 1989.
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