site.btaEducation Minister Approves Revised Texts on Communism in History Schoolbooks

August 15 (BTA) - Education Minister Krassimir Vulchev has approved the new history schoolbooks for 10th grade on Wednesday after the publishers made considerable revisions to controversial texts related to communism in Bulgaria. The revisions were required by the Ministry, the desebg.com website reported. The site, whose mission is to preserve the memory from the totalitarian communist period (1944-1989), was key in attracting public attention to the inadequacy of the schoolbooks offered by the publishers and their sugar-coated version of communism.

The Education Minister told desebg that the publishers reacted positively to the requested changes. "Although every one of us wants the schoolbooks to look better, we are pleased with the change, because it is essential," Vulchev said.

"I can say that the schoolbooks I have approved are now in the spirit of the new curriculum and there is a clearly outlined attitude to the communist regime," Vulchev added. All schoolbooks now include citations of the Act to Declare the Communist Regime in Bulgaria Criminal.

The controversy about the new schoolbooks erupted on June 19, when desebg.com reported that in most of the five 10th grade history schoolbooks (of Bulvest 2000, Anubis, Domino, Rica and Prosveta publishers) there are essential omissions of important facts and events from the 1944-1989 period, as well as occasional glaring manipulations.

A petition not to allow schoolbooks supplanting the truth about the communist period was supported by some 4,500.

In the subsequent heated debate, Vulchev and his Ministry received considerable support from a number of civic organisations, public figures, historians, parliamentary and out-of-parliament parties, and on June 25 he said he will not endorse the schoolbooks. He also demanded that the publishers change the texts about the period 1944-1989 and after 1989, desebg.com recalls.//
//