May 23 2009
I expect better from the Medvedev brothers
The radio station Ekho Moskvy has a very interesting piece on historical falsification (and I was led to track it down by a reference in Johnson’s Russia List # 94, 20 May 2009). Unsurprisingly, Russian ultranationalist Vladimir Zhirinovskii is all in favor of the Commission, though he fears that it might be infiltrated by falsifiers themselves. Given the list of Commission members, this danger is roughly akin to the promulgation of socialism by the Republican National Committee.
Even Roy Medvedev, well-known historian and most notably the author of the anti-Stalinist Let History Judge, has weighed in favor of President Dmitrii Medvedev (no relation)’s Commission. The JRL version, though not the one I found on Ekho Moskvy’s website, quotes Medvedev as saying “there are official histories in all countries. There is the official history of France, the UK, the USA.” Very interesting. I’d appreciate his pointing me to the official history of the USA.
Medvedev is also quoted as claiming “that information wars were still typical of the historical science. (The results of) studies are often published to the detriment of the interests of particular states.” Once again, I ask for specifics. What particular historical claims and works have been published with the goal of harming a specific government?
What’s troubling is that Eduard Limonov, author and neo-fascist / neo-Bolshevik, is the only one quoted as pointing out that an anti-falsification committee will end up endorsing history amenable to the current party of power. Two cheers for the wingnut.
I believe that, if you ask him, Dima Medvedev will kindly tell you that the official history of the USA has indeed been written . . . by the USSR.
Make no mistake: Russia can’t succeed in propounding the “correct” view of its history (innocence at Katyn and Holodomor, victory in WWII despite the collapse of the USSR and the vastly superior standard of living in “loser” France today, etc) unless it can enforce that version everywhere in the world, not just in Russia. That’s why it’s particularly unsettling to see the Putin regime reaching out its tentacles towards Facebook, for instance, and attempting to manipulate Western TV with the Russia Today propaganda network.
And make no mistake: the Putin regime is prepared to enforce its verion of history not merely by using Siberian jail cells and kangaroo tribunals like the one you describe, but at gunpoint. Anna Politikovskaya and Stanislav Markelov were doing nothing more than trying to tell a version of Russian history at odds with the “correct” one, and they got shot in the head for doing so.
As the hymn of the USSR plays for Russia at the Olympics, the world should hear a funeral dirge to Mr. Santayana, whose words about repeating history neo-Soviet Russians are not allowed to read.