Reading the Science of the Dead

“History is the science of the dead. A lot of the political figures of this time are still alive, [so] for now, it’s all political science” (Mikhail [pseudonym], Freshman at Saint Petersburg State University, as reported in Meduza, October 18, 2023)

https://meduza.io/en/feature/2023/10/18/i-hope-i-won-t-have-to-talk-about-the-war?utm_source=email&utm_medium=briefly&utm_campaign=2023-10-19

Ron DeSantis, the indefatigable prince of enlightenment in Florida, took a page from Putin’s newly revised history curriculum as a strategy to burnish his credentials with the crazies dancing around the fires of ignorance. Restorying American history to distort the undeniable fact that some slaves learned useful skills while in bondage casts our past in the light of magical thinking aka witchcraft.

From firsthand reporting here on ltRRtl, we know that the Florida whitewashing had a predictable effect on History majors in the United States. While the sinking of truth in a sea of hegemony Florida style has not diminished the passion of History majors to study the past, it has impacted the decision to go into teaching the subject in the public schools. Who would want to study fact-based History and then teach fiction-based History to serve the dark needs of tyrants? Who could make the leap from real life into Orwell’s Ministry of Truth where armies of writers are employed not to write all the day’s news that’s fit to print, but all of yesterday’s news as well?

Meduza, the Russian news outlet that went into exile to sustain its commitments to bona fide journalism after the invasion of Ukraine, reported on a parallel disturbance happening in teacher preparation behind the ironic curtain. Relying on information uncovered by journalists in hiding inside Putin’s nightmare reality, Meduza reported facts from several teachers-in-training to communicate the facts about this effort to distort the story of the dead within the four corners of Russian History textbooks. Here’s Meduza’s lead:

“Russian pedagogy students are preparing to teach history, even as Russia tries to rewrite it. Since the beginning of the new academic year, high schools have started using a fresh history textbook, put together by Putin aide Vladimir Medinsky.”

As these future teachers noted (see the intro quote), there is something very strange about teaching History before it even becomes History. Many of them talked about their motivation to study the past, often arising from a serendipitous glimpse into the powerful cleansing effect rigorously honest thinking had for them as younger people who stumbled onto examples of authentic History written not by propagandists interested in the Now but by Historians interested in the Past:

“This isn’t history at all. The events have just begun, they aren’t over yet. It’s important for history to know where everything began and where it ended, it’s important to get a good base of sources, to wait 50 years at least.”

When I interviewed Justin Moore for ltRRtl subscribers, a second-year student at Sacramento State at a point in his life when consequential decisions are made such as “Do I really want to teach in the public schools?,” Justin was processing the Florida whitewashing of slavery in U.S. history for political purposes in terms of how he should make his decision to sign up for a teaching credential program. Florida got Justin thinking that teaching in public schools could put his intellectual and ethical integrity at risk, and he decided not to get a teaching credential, that his future lies in advanced study and college teaching. Somewhere in Russia another future history teacher made the same decision:

“After the beginning of the war… on the one hand, I wanted to run away and escape, and on the other hand, I wanted to do something that I’m really good at. …[S]eeing how history is now being twisted, it’s possible…to convey historical knowledge in an evidence-based way…. Graduate school gives you the opportunity to teach anywhere, not just in schools.”

Reading this excerpt was eerie; I recalled the struggle in his voice using almost the same words when Justin told me he couldn’t go forward with a credential. Fortunately, students like him still can do research in History without a gag order placed on them. Not so in Russia. Russian history students have had to deal with a peculiarly Russian model of history for decades. Unlike Germany where the official curriculum requires a fulsome treatment of the Holocaust as a national sin never to be forgotten, according to one student teacher reported in the Meduza article, distortions are par for the course in the Science of History (SoH ©️) Russian style. WWII did not happen; instead there was the ‘Great Patriotic War.’ Secondary and college students have long been taught that appropriate documentation goes well beyond the strictures of APA or MLA:

“…[T{hey don’t let us cite the works of some historians, such as Kirill Alexandrov. He studies collaborationism during the Great Patriotic War. There’s an established opinion about collaborators: they were all traitors and degenerates. But he…proves that the social composition…was very diverse: both White Russian émigrés, and ordinary people who disagreed with the Soviet state. He’s seen as justifying collaborationism, although that’s altogether unscientific. Science doesn’t pass judgment; you can’t speak of ‘justification.’”

Justin Moore saw the writing on the wall in Florida and perhaps understood more deeply than ever how fortunate he is to live not just in America, but in California, to have the right to think and speak. We as a people have not yet shown a willingness to buy SoH ©️ hook, line, and sinker like mindless fish swimming in a river gradually growing hotter, less hospitable to our historical imperative to form a more perfect union. We still have the possibility of reversing the trend to distort thought for political purposes, to avoid putting our newest teachers in predicaments like this:

“Now I’m working as a supervisor in an online EGE prep school. [When I teach classes], I try not to add any personal commentary; it’s not relevant to what I do. Besides, I don’t know how the kids would feel about my opinion. Even if they ask me what I think about some historical figure — Alexander Nevsky, for example — I won’t answer.”