Article is devoted to the analysis of high school educational literature on the history of Russia, published in the 21st century. The subject of the analysis were subjects related to the battle of Moscow in the fall and winter of 1941, the 80th anniversary of which is celebrated this year. The research was conducted on the following points: 1) causes of failures in the first phase of the Battle of Moscow; 2) reasons for the success of the defensive and offensive actions; 3) the situation in Moscow in October 1941; 4) the significance of the Battle of Moscow. The authors tried to correlate the results of the analysis of textbooks with the views of domestic and foreign historians on this problem, for which a brief historiographical excursion was made. The work has led to the following conclusions: the textbooks pay very little attention to the events of the Russian military history, the authors of the textbooks either ignore the battle for Moscow, or focus on outdated views, avoiding acute moments and not giving an objective assessment of the events of winter-autumn 1941. Particularly surprising is the fact that in educational literature assessments are in tune with the conservative trend in foreign historiography and complete disregard for the achievements of domestic scholars.

Keywords: textbooks; historiography; the battle for Moscow; military history; Operation Typhoon; radical change; pluralism of opinion; conservatism and tendentiousness.