ABSTRACT
The fall of the USSR, the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, and Azerbaijan's independence were followed by heated discussions around the preservation of national ideology and the construction of new national and historical narratives. Jafar Akhundov's focus on the “Azerbaijani Genocide” seeks to examine how a historical myth adopts official status and becomes an important component of state ideology, especially in secondary schools. This chapter focuses on the school subject “History of Azerbaijan” and how it participates in the discourse of compulsory solidarity in the face of the “cruel and hypocritical enemy,” creating an ideological opposition impregnated with primordial and essentialist ideas. The author investigates the unified school textbook and the emphasis on the March 1918 events, as well as official rituals as the key components of historical politics, including school rituals connected to military-patriotic instruction, and the new places of memory, especially the Shahid Alley and the Quba Memorial Complex.
