If you were sitting in an American classroom in the 1950s, learning about the Cold War, you might not have been Stalin’s biggest fan. After all, your teachers would likely say he was pretty much responsible for the whole thing - trying to take over eastern Europe and spread Communism across the world. 

Your teacher would also have pointed out how aggressive Stalin was at the 1945 Potsdam Conference (where he met with UK and US leaders to plan how to establish order and peace in post-war Europe). And how unreasonable his demands were, wanting huge amounts of money and power to be given to Soviet Russia.

But fast forward a decade or so - you’re sitting in the same classroom, still learning about the Cold War, but now it’s the late 1960s. At this point, you’d be reading about America’s desire to have greater economic control over Europe and how US President Truman had been far too inflexible and suspicious of Soviet Russia at the Potsdam Conference. You’d be taught that the US needed to acknowledge its part in triggering the war and consider the wider picture - wasn't Stalin just acting in defence, given that his country had lost about 25 million people as a result of World War II? 

Classroom in Minnesota, 1974. Image credit: David Stroble via Wikicommons

And what about that same classroom in the 1990s? By this stage most history books had pulled out of the blame game, saying that the Cold War wasn’t the fault of one person or even one country, it was just an inevitability - thanks to the ideological differences between the eastern and western parts of the world.

They were even questioning whether it was helpful to teach that the Cold War started in 1945 - after all, weren’t its origins really in the 1917 Russian Revolutions and the particular political climate that produced?

The point is, our retelling of what’s happened in the past is constantly changing - history isn’t just a settled set of facts. But what exactly is it that affects our interpretations of the past?

It depends on our evidence

Once an event is far enough in the past that no one who was actually there is still alive, we can only rely on evidence - photos, historical records, diary entries, newspaper clippings, etc. Which makes historians a bit like detectives - they search for clues to help us paint a picture of the past. But, just like in any good detective story, there can often be misleading evidence.

Sometimes an account might be incorrect - either because something got reported wrongly by accident, or because someone purposely tried to cover up a particular event or action. That could lead a historian down the wrong path. Or it might be that there just isn’t very much evidence about a particular historical event, so we don’t know the whole story. 

Looking at the Cold War example again, historians’ opinions changed quite a bit after 1991 when the Soviet Union collapsed because a huge archive of records (Archive of the Soviet Communist Party and Soviet State) that had previously been kept secret were suddenly released. So they had a whole bunch of new evidence to help them better understand what happened.

Historians have perspectives too

Imagine that you’re standing opposite a friend and you draw a number six on the floor between you. You ask them what number it is - they say a nine. Which one of you is right? The answer is that you both are - it just depends on your perspective. 

And the same is true of historians - they work hard to be objective, but ultimately they’re only human and their personal perspective will affect how they look at the evidence.

In Britain till the 1970s most classrooms had big maps showing the extent of the British empire, with different countries coloured pink to show how it dominated the world and how great it was (see example pictured below). Schools were expected to celebrate Commonwealth Day, previously called Empire Day, as late as the 1980s. How do you think people taught this will relate to the British Empire today?

Historians whose families came from different parts of the world that were part of the British Empire, like India and Jamaica, are likely to have different perspectives. Their families will have experienced things like violent repression, a lack of rights and discrimination in the Empire and racism when they arrived in the UK. How might this impact their perspective on British history and Britain today?

Both of these are informed by different experiences. Whose experiences should we consider when we think about who writes history books?

Are there any other examples you can think of where a historian’s experiences, perspectives or personal beliefs might affect their work? How do you think this change what we read?

We’re affected by the society we live in

Historical events also don’t happen in a vacuum - they happen in a specific place at a specific time. And the particular cultural context surrounding an event can have a huge impact on how we interpret and write about it. This is certainly clear if we go back to those different perspectives on the Cold War. 

Just after WWII people were still shell-shocked by all the violence, and doing anything risky - like questioning leaders who were still alive and in charge - just wasn’t appealing. Hence the America-loving/Stalin-hating view of 1950s history teachers.

But then America’s determination to fight against Communism grew out of control and turned inwards, resulting in many innocent Americans being investigated for possible Communist ties. Plus, they went to war in Vietnam, a brutal conflict that many people felt they shouldn’t have been involved in. Suddenly, the US government wasn’t so heroic, they were just power hungry and increasingly authoritarian, and many people (including prominent academics and historians) began to question them. This led to the view of the 1960s history books that placed more of the blame at America’s door.

So, our view of history is affected by what evidence we have and how we interpret that evidence, the personal perspectives of our historians and their motivation for writing and the country and culture in which historical records are created. No wonder it’s not straightforward! 

Ultimately, history is a complex mix of opinions, ideas, beliefs and motives - it’s not really a collection of facts, it’s an unfolding set of stories about the past. But whose version of those stories should we believe?

A brave dictator?

For a dictator, image is everything. The first photo does a lot to encourage a heroic vision of former Italian Prime Minister Benito Mussolini, making him seem strong and inspiring faith in his ability to lead his nation in a time of war (the photo was released in 1942, in the middle of World War II). But the original picture tells a slightly different story - a grown man being held safely by a stable hand, who was later edited out. If you were trying to show the world a brave conqueror, which image would you go for?

Upside-down Bush

Thanks to 24-hour news outlets, bloggers and constant updates on Twitter, the media is now more influential than ever when it comes to shaping our perspectives of those in power. And whatever the truth is about former US President George Bush’s intellect, he certainly gained a reputation in the media for being a little bit dim. Keeping this perception going was a good way to undermine his presidency for those who disagreed with his politics, so it’s no surprise that images like the above were often put out, making Bush look stupid. However, in the original, unedited photo, the book in his hands is the right way up. So was Bush really as dumb as the media made out, or did it just suit what we already thought we knew about him?

Stalin’s airbrush

Soviet Union dictator Joseph Stalin seemed to like the motto ‘out of sight, out of mind’ - at least that’s what these photos suggest. The first picture shows him walking and talking quite happily with one of his commissars, Nikolai Yezhov but then the second photo shows Yezhov airbrushed out. To give some context, Yezhov was one of Stalin’s chiefs of the secret police (NKVD) who had been responsible for the arrest of c. 1.5 million people during the Great Terror of 1937-8. He enjoyed significant praise in Soviet propaganda during that period. However, he later fell out of favour and Stalin wanted to remove any evidence that they’d ever been on good terms. The original photo was taken in April 1937 and the edited version was released in 1940, following Yezhov’s execution. It served as a pretty good warning not to get on the wrong side of Stalin - cross him and he’d just remove you from history!

Misfiring missiles

In 2008 Iran conducted a missile test designed to show off their weapons capability. Tensions were already escalating internationally over how much nuclear power Iran had and they wanted to show the strength of their military. However, one of the missiles misfired, as you can see in the first photo. But it was the second photo, doctored to look as if all four missiles launched successfully, that made the papers. Wonder why?

Misleading smiles

Irish artist Matt Loughley changed black and white pictures of Khymer Rouge prisoners in the Tuol Sleng prison in Cambodia in the 1970s. Loughley changed these pictures from black and white to colour, and changed the facial expressions to smiles. He said he wanted to “humanise” the victims. In power between 1975 and 1979, the regime killed two million people. More than 15,000 people died in the Tuol Sleng prison. Loughrey was accused of falsifying history. Cambodia’s Ministry of Culture even said that he affected “the dignity of the victims” by altering the images. What do you think?

The anti-war hoax

This photo is a fake - but it’s a fake that when released in 2004, nearly destroyed former US Secretary of State John Kerry’s presidential campaign. It showed him standing alongside hardline anti-war activist Jane Fonda and the headline said they were both speaking at an anti-war rally. Fonda was known for being against the Vietnam War and her views upset a lot of Americans - but Kerry had completed a significant period of service in the military, including fighting in Vietnam, and his popularity as a politician was in part because of his pro-war stance. So it’s likely that this picture was faked by his enemies. Although it was eventually proved that the image was actually two different shots edited together and that Kerry had not been anywhere near Fonda’s anti-war rally, it still did great damage to Kerry’s presidential campaign.