Abstract
Stephen the Great is an outstanding personality in the history of Romanian and Moldavian people who serves as a national icon for many of them. History textbooks have played a decisive role in bestowing this status upon him. This chapter purports to look into the history lessons in the recent and current Romanian school textbooks for Grades 6 and 8 in order to have a better grasp of how this identity benchmark has been built, shaping the identity of the Romanians. The scope of this investigation is to pursue the evolution of history lessons on Stephen the Great in the past few decades, identifying the continuities and stress shifts since the end of the communist regime to the present day.
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Notes
- 1.
A state largely covering the territory of the former province of Bessarabia, part of the principality of Moldavia, annexed by Russia in 1812, and recovered by the Romanians in 1918 (in the context of the World War I and the Russian Revolution). The territory was occupied by the Soviet Union in 1940, then returned to Romania in 1941. It was again occupied by the Soviets in 1944, becoming definitively a part of the Soviet Union. The Socialist Soviet Republic of Moldova also included the Transdniester region, which had not been part of Bessarabia. Meanwhile, the northern and southern parts of the former Romanian province were included in Ukraine.
- 2.
This is the current name of the Ministry, but it keeps changing with high frequency, especially on such occasions as elections and government changes.
- 3.
In Romania, a complete precollege school cycle takes 13 years (a preschool year– also called grade zero – followed by another 12, i.e. four years of primary school, four years of junior secondary school, and the last four years of senior secondary school or high school). This is a benchmark school trajectory, usually followed by higher education. In certain situations, the studies take one more year (in teacher training schools, for instance). However, there is a massive contingent of students who opt for vocational schools, which take 2 to 4 years to receive a degree, and which do not provide their graduates access to higher education straight away. These are options available for the urban population, while children and youth in the rural areas have a very limited access to any form of further schooling after completing a compulsory schooling level (i.e. primary and junior secondary school).
- 4.
Nicolae Ceauşescu was the communist leader of Romania between 1965 and 1989. He started out as a popular character, but after 1980 his credibility rapidly decreased. His authoritarian policy, accompanied by aggressive propaganda and by a drastic drop in living standards resulted in an explosion of fury among the population. Following violent clashes, the communist government was deposed in December 1989, and Nicolae Ceauşescu together with his wife Elena were executed following a summary trial.
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Acknowledgement
This research is indebted to the enthusiastic support and kind advice of Dr. Tatyana Tsyrlina-Spady, to whom I convey my warmest thanks.
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Mihalache, C. (2017). Stephen the Great (1457–1504): A National Hero for Romanians. In: Zajda, J., Tsyrlina-Spady, T., Lovorn, M. (eds) Globalisation and Historiography of National Leaders. Globalisation, Comparative Education and Policy Research, vol 18. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-024-0975-8_9
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