Hiroshima University

In this paper, we first explore the process of history writing and teaching in Soviet autonomies using the concept of ethnic enclosure as a framework to examine the way the distant past is presented in history textbooks published locally in the Soviet Union. We then show the conflicting character of ethnic historical narratives in the textbooks of rival ethnic groups and, next, discuss the legacy of the Soviet policy of ethnic enclosure as reflected in school textbooks published after the demise of the Soviet Union. Recently, there has been a renewed interest among the scholars of ethnicity and nationalism to study the issues of inter-ethnic relations in the Soviet Union for the legacy of the Soviet nationality policy is considered one of the keys to understand the current unrest in many of the former Soviet territories1. The fact is that in the Soviet Union, only a limited number of ethnic groups were given the right to have the highest form of autonomy, i.e. were granted a supreme form of an ethno-territorial unit, a Union Soviet Socialist Republic2. These ethnic groups became “titular ” nations in their republics. Other ethnic groups had to settle for one of the lower forms in the hierarchy of the Soviet ethno-territorial structure – an autonomous republic, an autonomous region or an autonomous district3. Also, there were ethnic groups who were not granted any of such status at all. However, the ethnic groups, who felt discriminated, never stopped the attempts to upgrade their status; and sometimes they needed to protect the status they already had from being downgraded