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Putin Calls for Universal History Textbooks

United Russia has prepared suggestions for a single history textbook for secondary schools in response to President Vladimir Putin's call for more consistency in textbooks, the party said Wednesday.

At a meeting of the council on inter-ethnic relations on Tuesday, Putin said: "School textbooks must be written in good Russian and free of internal contradictions and ambiguities. This should be a mandatory requirement for all teaching materials," RIA-Novosti reported.

Textbooks must be "designed for different ages but built around a single concept, with the logical continuity of Russian history, the relationship between the different stages in history, and respect for all the pages of our past," he said.

Irina Yarovaya, a United Russia deputy and the coordinator of the Patriotic Platform, told RIA-Novosti on Wednesday that United Russia had specific proposals for history textbooks.

Currently, she said, as many as 36 different textbooks are used for one year of school, leading to contradictions and confusion.

She said the party planned to open a discussion on the matter and present "direct contradictions that are embedded in school textbooks," RIA-Novosti reported.

"Given the president's statement, I hope this discussion will increase public interest and thereby enable us to unite efforts and address this issue," she said.

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