Narratives as cultural tools in sociocultural analysis: Official history in Soviet and post-Soviet Russia

An approach to sociocultural analysis based on the ideas of Vygotsky, Bakhtin, and others is used to provide the foundation for discussing narratives as "cultural tools." The production of official, state sponsored historical narratives is examined from this perspective, and it is argued that this production process may be shaped as much by dialogic encounters with other narratives as by archival information. These claims are harnessed to examine the production of post-Soviet Russian history textbooks, especially their presentation of the events surrounding the Russian Civil War of 1918-20.