On the Study of the History of the 1916 Turkestan Uprising through the Lens of School Textbook Analysis

Abstract

This article focuses on the problem of teaching the topic of “The 1916 Turkestan Uprising” in school curricula based on an analysis of school textbooks from Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, and Russia. A comparative analysis of the textbooks has revealed differences in the authors’ approaches to assessing and interpreting the causes, reasons, and descriptions of the uprising, statistical data, and the overall historical significance of studying the 1916 uprising for the peoples of Central Asia. The study of the textbooks has also demonstrated similarities in their regional approaches, fragmented interpretations of the holistic event, and
differences in the descriptions of the sequence and number of victims of the uprising. Through the study of school textbooks describing the 1916 national liberation uprising in Turkestan, the author offers theoretical conclusions and proposals on the need to further strengthen international cooperation among historians of the Central Asian republics to prepare and publish joint teaching aids, textbooks, and anthologies for secondary and higher educational institutions.