Paper short abstract:

This paper will explore history teachers' identity and their feelings toward the Soviet system as well as the post-Soviet order in Kyrgyzstan. It will be based on the analyses of life-story interviews with the teachers who have experience of living and teaching during the Soviet Union as well as after it.

Paper long abstract:

The research paper will be based on findings from the research for my PhD project on Teaching the Soviet History at Secondary Schools in Kyrgyzstan. One aspect of my PhD project is to study history teachers' memories of the late Soviet period with the help of life-story interviewing methodology. History teachers inhabit a unique position as mediators between state and society as well as between collective and biographical memory. With regard to the Soviet past, I explore how cultural categories of perception influenced the ways in which individuals thought and acted in everyday life. With regard to the post-Soviet present, I analyze how cultural patterns shape the social practice of remembering everyday life in the Soviet Union.

The success or failure of state socialization measures depends decisively on how conscientiously history teachers play their role as mediators and how they convey these interpretative models to students. History teachers cannot, however, be reduced to their professional role. They are also individuals with unique biographies and specific experiences which most likely influence their professional role as conveyors and translators of state agendas. In this respect, they function as immensely interesting indicators in the question concerning the ways in which official images of history are conveyed, broken, amplified, reinterpreted, or pluralized in state-run schools.

Teachers from different regions of the country, of different nationalities, age groups and gender are interviewed for the project. The paper will analyse what their civic and national identity is and their feelings toward the Soviet times as well as the post-Soviet order in Kyrgyzstan.