The aim of the article is to point out how in contemporary Russian school history textbooks the collapse of the Soviet Union and its consequences for Russia, Europe and the whole world are shown. By combining this information with public opinion polls, aimed at analyzing Russian attitude to this controversial period in history, an attempt was made to find an answer to the question of how in the cultural memory of Russians, transmitting the experience of the older generations to the younger, this groundbreaking change in the political system operates nowadays. The conducted analysis has shown that many Russian history textbooks present a balanced, unemotional picture of the process the collapse of the Soviet Union. However, there are also such textbooks, which include emotional negative opinions about the collapse of the Soviet superpower, considering this event as one of the most tragic moments in the history of the 20th century. The article cites excerpts from history textbooks for history, juxtaposing them with public opinion surveys (regarding the evaluation of the last CPSU Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev; an opinion about the possibility of avoiding the collapse of the USSR, the factors that cause the greatest sorrow for the state union). This juxtaposition has revealed that despite the passage of time, there is lack of one, acceptable to the general public version of events that took place a quarter of a century ago. Just as Russians evaluate events focused around the collapse of the USSR and its consequences differently, so authors of textbooks offer students interpretations of groundbreaking events very diverging from each other. Therefore, the article shows that the historical education of young Russians in relation to this specific period will be the sum of the family stories, reading textbook recommended by the teacher and teacher comments. This leads to the conclusion that the collapse of the USSR is an event affecting the cultural memory of Russians, though the evaluation of this period are still evolving.

War in Ukraine – Causes and Consequences after More than a Year

The war in Ukraine has been going on for more than a year now and there is no indication that it will end soon. The causes of its outbreak are very complex. One of them was the victory of the counter-revolution and the collapse of socialism, followed by the collapse of the former Soviet Union in December 1991. At that time, fifteen independent republics were established to varying degrees – their disintegration took place not only ideologically and politically, but also economically. In many of them, nationalisms arose or were revived, including those based on religion, which included not only the main former union republics, but also numerous national minorities, particularly the Baltic states, the Caucasus, and the Volga region. Some of them turned into local wars. An important role in the disintegration of the countries of the former Soviet Union and the weakening of the Russian Federation was played by external forces, imperialist states, mainly the US, some European countries, NATO in general, and the rivalling with Russia European Union and other forces of international capital. The war in Ukraine has deeper causes, and in case of Russia’s defeat, it will have further adverse consequences for it as a great power, and may even become the beginning of its disintegration. Hence, the result is the full determination of the Russian ruling forces to achieve victory. At the same time, Ukraine enjoys the support of the entire „global West”, led by the US, NATO, and the European Union. The war was preceded by numerous growing contradictions and accompanying conflicts, which took the form of the ‚Orange Revolution’ in 2004, the so-called Revolution of Dignity and the Maidan coup, the declaration of independence by Crimea and the Donetsk and Luhansk Republics in 2014. It took another eight years for the conflict to escalate into a full-blown war, although Russia officially still defines it as a „special military operation”.