”Ett spöke går runt Europa- kommunismens spöke” : En studie av religionsläromedel med fokus på den marxistiska livsåskådningen mellan åren 1970 och 1991

In the late 20th century the Soviet Union collapsed and the eastern European countries were freed from the communist Russian oppression. However, during the Soviet period Marxism was a recurring life stance in the Swedish textbooks for religious education in the gymnasieskola. Today the Soviet Union has collapsed, but the Marxist philosophy has had a huge effect on both single individuals and the modern society as a whole. Nonetheless, the Marxist life stance is nowadays often being replaced by other non- religious life stances in the textbooks of religious education. Therefore, this analysis is a hermeneutic study of the presentation of the Marxist life stance in textbooks for Swedish religious education. The purpose of the paper is to investigate how these textbooks portray the Marxist life stance, and to prove that the societal context and the individual author have an immense effect in the portrayal of both religions and life stances in religious education. The material used in the study spans between the Swedish curriculum Lgy 70, which extends between the years 1970-1994. The results of the study show, as predicted, that the societal context and the individual authors has had an immense effect on the portrayal of the Marxist idea of thought. This is revealed because the portrayal of the Marxist life stance differs a great deal throughout the span of Lgy 70. The large difference in theses presentations displays that the curriculum has some effect in some of the Marxist concepts, but it does not effect the overall presentation of the Marxist life stance