Mikhail Piotrovsky: War Is Won by the Teacher

In October Russia will be holding the first International Congress of History Teachers. A meeting of the organizing committee has been held.

The congress is a unique event. Gathering in Moscow from around the world will be not historians, and not the writers of textbooks, but teachers. Those who teach history, who see and know how children react to it.

There is a well-known saying that is attributed to Bismarck and associated with the Franco-Prussian War: “War is won by the teacher”. In point of fact, it was said about the Austro-Prussian War and not by Bismarck, but by his contemporary, the geographer and anthropologist Oscar Peschel: “This was the victory of the Prussian teacher over the Austrian schoolmaster.”

Education is a highly important things in many senses.

Today in different countries a struggle is underway to define their own identity. People speak out against hostile interpretations of history. They speak out against political correctness. Some things can be said, some things can’t. Today you say one thing, tomorrow another.

That is taking place around the world, literally before our eyes. It is impossible to work out a single point of view. Various ones have to be discussed.

I think that at the congress they will touch on the subject of revolutions, They will compare not only the historical events, but also the approach to their assessment in the countries themselves in different time periods. The French, for example, used to pull their revolution to pieces like nobody's business, but now they have a somewhat different attitude towards it.

There will probably be discussion of the Second World War. Here it’s everyone against everyone else. Children are told about that war differently in schools. Now a new aspect has arisen – China. The Sino-Japanese War of 1937–45 was part of the Second World War. China is one of the great powers and it is no mere chance that it is a permanent member of the UN Security Council.

We need to see how this all comes together to form a single picture or fails to do so. Take an example from our own history: a round anniversary of Alexander Nevsky’s birth is coming up. A military commander, politician, who made friends with the Golden Horde and used it to his own ends, who fought against the Germans… He is also a saint. How does that go together? We are preparing a big exhibition about how Alexander Nevsky’s image has been interpreted in Russian art.

In the Hermitage new halls will be opened devoted to the era of Peter the Great, the 300th anniversary of whose birth we will be marking in two years’ time. Peter built the wonderful city of Saint Petersburg, but he built it allegedly on people’s bones. How should that be discussed?

One constant Hermitage topic is Catherine the Great. Through exhibitions we have shown the whole world who Catherine was, what a memory she left of herself besides scurrilous jokes and English cartoons. Our city’s first governor, Menshikov, was infamous for being an embezzler of public funds. Without denying that, we show his role in the construction of Saint Petersburg. The celebrated “Nicholas and Alexandra” exhibition many years ago showed the human side of Nicholas II.

I recall the exhibition “Peter I and Charles XII”. We presented Charles and Peter like two near-epic heroes. At that time in Sweden, people were beginning to reassess Charles XII’s policy of conquest, They started to reckon that he ruined Sweden, but thanks to the defeat at Russia’s hands the country became great. At that time, our viewpoints coincided. We produced an exhibition about Poltava together with Swedish colleagues. Today a lot has changed in Sweden.

The exhibition “History Was Made Here” about the revolution and the Winter Palace was a big success. We showed a film about how the great Eisenstein distorted the real history in favour of the epic.

What should be taught in school and how? You need to grasp an important thing that often gets forgotten. Teaching in schools is a contact and conflict between generations. The parents teach; the children learn. Today’s children have their own views about everything. They are well-educated, they have plenty of information. There’s conflict already in that.

I recall a row at the university in 1962, after the denunciation of the cult of personality. The young lecturers began to tell their elders bluntly: “You’re cowards. You’re not capable of doing any good. Step aside.” I remember there was a meeting where the Pro-Rector Alexandrov made a moving speech. It was a bitter struggle for which many caught it in the neck. A conflict of generations.

It's important to remember not just the history of the USSR, but also of the countries that belonged to it. Schools used to teach that the earliest state on the territory of the USSR was Urartu. Through that people knew ancient history. Now that has vanished from the history textbooks altogether. Not just Urartu – it’s as if the Caucasus and Central Asia don’t exist. On the TV screen there’s only America and Russia.

How do children perceive that?

The pandemic is changing the composition of the public in museums. Now 80% of those that come to the Hermitage are young people, below the age of 30 – Generation Y. 70% of them are couples, half are Petersburgers, 30% are students.

When we speak of generational conflict, we need to keep in mind that it is not just about parents and children. There are several generations. There is the traditional generation that was born at the end of the war. Then come those called baby boomers, who entered into the world after the war. After them come Generations X and Y. And finally Z – today’s children, also known as zoomers. They all speak different languages.

Here are a few recent examples. The well-known tale of the flash mob with torches. Piotr Tolstoy’s angry response that traitors signalled with lights like that during the Siege of Leningrad. That’s a legend about life in the beleaguered city: it was described in books, shown in films. Traitors launch rockets – “little green chains” pointing out a target for artillery. For the older generation that makes sense. For the generations that came after, torches are a reminder of rock concerts. The group Leningrad perform on stage and the audience light torches.

A different language. What language should a history teacher use and what generation does it belong to?

There’s a telling story with the word “boomer”. The term “baby boomer” appeared after the war, when a lot of babies were being born. In the unsettled 1990s for everyone [in Russia], a “boomer” was a BMW car. There’s a song about that. Now the older concept of a “boomer” is coming back, but now in the changed meaning of “old man”. In the New Zealand parliament in response to a remark from one of the other members, a 25-year-old woman shoots back “OK boomer!” and blithely continues her speech on climate change. 

Each generation has its own taste and interests. A museum should take that into account. Not try to cater and conform, but to make us of it and do what it should – nurture a complex human being. To teach people that different cultures exist, different languages, different inner meanings.

It is interesting to observe how what we do can be perceived by various generations. For boomers everything is clear; they know everything. They liked the exhibition ” ’Tis Potemkin himself!” about the Illustrious Prince with a host of fresh accents about his life, the reform of the military… For Generation X, who are now aged 50–60, the story around the permanent display of icons makes sense. They still remember those icons being collected from abandoned churches and log cabins.

The Fabergé exhibition is also something for Generation X, although it has various aspects. There is a certain scandal attaching to the exhibition, an issue over the authenticity of individual items. The presence of Fabergé on the market is an amazing marketing story. The revolution. Hammer buys up things, then starts selling them. Fabergé becomes famous in a way it never was before the revolution. We are conducting a scientific study. We shall see what conclusions can be drawn from a piece’s past existence. A plot twist. A complex approach in the hope that another, younger generation will take an interest.

For Generation X the Iron Age exhibition is intelligible. A tale of wartime trophies. The debates on that topic are still fresh in the mind. Some 15 years ago, it was the most pressing issue that people talked about in the museum world. Now the talk is of restitutions. And that is something else.

The Hermitage puts on exhibitions in “salvoes”. We would like them to attract different audiences.

Generation Y is people aged 30–40. They have become one with their computers, spending days on end with them. They are used to text on the computer, accustomed to reading it. I think that our permanent display of “Ancient Colonies on the Northern Black Sea Coast” will be of interest to this contingent. It has a charge of controversy. Today the words “colony” and “colonization” sound offensive. The museum reminds people that we became a part of Europe thanks to the Greeks coming here and founding colonies. The Scythians interacted with them and from there civilization moved northwards and is still doing so. All that is invested in the display.

We try to produce exhibitions that make people stop and think. Generation Y understands that. The great success of the Raphael exhibition lies in the fact that it plays on comparisons. Many people are visiting it; that speaks to them. I think that the Cecil Beaton exhibition is also for Generation Y. The society photographer shot the glamourous life. He is understandable for all those familiar with glamour from magazines and television.

I think that Generation Y will also be suited by the Dürer exhibition that we are planning. It won’t have paintings. There will be prints and drawings – the world in which Dürer existed. Entanglements that are interesting to 35-year-olds.

Generation Z, roughly speaking, are people aged 25 who were born smartphone in hand so as to take selfies. They are also computer-oriented, but for them pictures are more important than text: TikTok, Instagram… They do not read much. The alphabet is a great invention, but one can get by without it. What can we offer this generation?

I think they might be interested by the story of our Calvatone “Victory” sculpture. The statue from Antiquity was reworked. German restorers added wings to make it an exemplary piece of Classical sculpture, which is not at all in keeping with its original appearance. The story of its conversion into a different image and how our restorers took it apart is an interesting tale.

I hope that the exhibition-“toys” that we are offering will be to the new generation’s taste. We have a project entitled “The Mummy Changes Its Name” that will present the results of a study and computer tomography of a mummy. The exhibition “Alexander III’s Travelling Trunk” is about a transforming piece of luggage designed by the remarkable inventor Kostovich. The huge trunk folds out to become a tent, a bed, a bureau and a dressing table. It contains tools, drinks, table utensils and bedroom paraphernalia… It’s like a doll’s house that comes apart. Dolls’ houses and tin soldiers are something everyone likes, and they link all the generations.

The Hermitage’s Museum 15/24 project is intended for communication between the museum and the young generation. One of its elements was the publication of the book Butterflies of the Hermitage, the story of tracking down and studying images of butterflies in the museum collection. A game just as good as those on computers. Take one example: the fantastic creatures flying on the ceiling painting in the Forehall of the Winter Palace have wings that belong quite specifically to a certain species of butterfly.

The project also includes a children’s consultative board. The children speak about their impressions, about what they would like to see in the exhibitions and displays. That is important for finding ways to teach them and for learning ourselves how to translate eternal values and complexities into the language of new generations.

Business specialists write instructions on how to work with people of different generations. We also need to know how to bring up intelligent people. The teaching of history is now at the cutting edge. There is nothing more interesting than history. Discussing it is more captivating than whether life exists on Mars and what the soil is like there.