The Soviet Portrayal of the United States South in Secondary School Geography Textbooks

THE SOVIET PORTRAYAL OF THE UNITED STATES SOUTH IN SECONDARY SCHOOL GEOGRAPHY TEXTBOOKS Roger L. Thiede" An examination of the Soviet portrayal of the United States South is especially instructive for geographers and teachers who have a strong interest in the region, professionally or otherwise, for two basic reasons. First, it acquaints us with the official Soviet interpretation of the South, the accepted view to which the vast majority of the Soviet peoples are exposed. Second, it enables us to critically evaluate a sample of the content of the geography curriculum of Soviet secondary schools. To meet these purposes, this paper addresses itself to the following questions: 1) What place does human, i.e., economic, geography of foreign lands occupy in Soviet secondary schools and for what purposes is the United States studied? 2) Specifically, what role is played by the study of the South and how does this study meet the objectives set forth in materials on the United States? Since libraries are reluctant to fill their shelves with the plethora of textbooks published around the world, a complete set of all editions of Soviet geography texts on foreign lands was not available. It was possible, however, to uncover a good representation of the officially accepted texts from 1934 to the late 1960's. (1) One must remember tliat the same texts are used throughout the U.S.S.R. There are no local school boards which select the books to be used in their own districts. SOVIET SECONDARY GEOGRAPHY AND THE STUDY OF THE UNITED STATES. To summarize briefly the status of geography in Soviet secondary schools, it is clear that many of the complaints about the subject have a familiar ring. (2) At present, geography's position in Soviet secondary schools is precarious. It suffers from the attrition of its traditional subject material to the better established disciplines, e.g., history, economics, physics, and chemistry. The number of hours allotted to the study of geography has been reduced in recent years. Geography teachers must combine their teaching with another subject in order to have full-time work. The materials covered in the classroom are criticized as descriptive and lacking a scientific quality, unreflective of the progress being made in geographical research in the universities, and filled with repetitive and meaningless facts. To top it all off, geography is considered to be an easy subject. *Dr. Thiede is assistant professor of geography at the University of Georgia. This paper was accepted for publication in September 1974. Vol. XV, No. 1 57 The student's formal introduction to the geography of foreign countries begins in the sixth form (age 12) with the study of the physical geography of the continents and a cursory look at the population (size and ethnic composition) and basic economic characteristics of the most important states. For the students who enter the ninth form, these last two topics, are considerably expanded with a course on the economic geography of foreign lands. In this subject, the world is classified into the people's democracies, developing, and imperialist states. The objectives of the study of these countries are, by adhering to principles of Marxist determinism, ". . . to disclose those economic-geographical regularities which apply to all social svstems and those which are different under the socialist and capitalist svstems." (3) There will be demonstrated , thereby, the ". . . advantages of the socialist economy over the capitalist economy." (4) The role of geography ". . . as a discipline of political indoctrination capable of inculcating a specific world outlook . . ." is an important aspect of the study. (5) In relation to the United States, this "specific world outlook" as seen in geography textbooks has required a demonstration of the nature of the world's most developed capitalist state. The tone of this characterization is immediately set by the first paragraph devoted to the U.S. in the 1968 Schastncv and Tcrekhov text: The United States of America is the richest and most developed industrial country of the capitalist world. At the same time, the highly developed American capitalism is the most outstanding exploiter of the nations of the world, the principal bulwark of contemporary imperialism and the originator of hotbeds of war throughout various parts...