Jul 01 2009
The golden brain is watching you!
What’s the golden brain? The name I heard applied in Moscow to the Russian Academy of Sciences building.
The good folks at RFE/RL have gotten ahold of a document that suggests what the campaign against falsification really means (thanks to Brian Whitmore at the Power Vertical). They present a letter from Valerii Tishkov, head of the history section of the History-Philology Division of the Russian Academy of Sciences, in which Tishkov requests his subordinates to provide lists of falsifiers in their various fields of expertise, as well as to report on what they’ve been doing to combat falsification.
Evidently Tishkov is claiming the letter is only a draft. Of course, the very need to compose such a draft is in itself instructive. A couple things I would point out (scan of Russian original available here)
First, Tishkov gives his people three days to come up with their lists of falsifiers. Clearly this is not a matter for careful weighing and sifting of archival evidence.
Second, and more significantly, Tishkov’s letter significantly broadens the scope of what Medvedev’s commission is formally charged with doing. Medvedev’s commission’s title seeks out “attempts at falsifying history in harm to the interests of Russia.” Tishkov’s version asks the Russian Academy of Sciences to find “falsifications AND historical-cultural concepts, damaging to the interests of Russia [emphasis added].” What’s the difference? Tishkov wants to know about historical ideas that are damaging to Russia, whether or not they’re false.
Perhaps I’m reading too much into a single word. If I’ve mistaken Tishkov’s intent, I look forward to hearing his clarification.
Do you or your colleagues know anything about Tishkov? I read his letter and was horrified (for the reasons you give). Then I wondered if the intent of the letter was the opposite, that is a standard bureaucratic way to deal with the request/order without taking it in any way seriously. After all, he gives them three days to rout out all these damaging lies and concepts and say what they’re doing to stop all this nasty falsification. So then he hands in his report, fulfills his obligations, and goes on doing what he’s doing.
Is that a possibility?
Thanks. (Very informative and interesting site.)
An excellent point. There’s a saying (which sadly I can’t track down at the moment) which holds that Russia has draconian laws that are made tolerable by sloppy enforcement.
Clearly Tishkov cannot expect a thorough canvas of the existing historiography in three days. Nonetheless, he does tell members of the ACADEMY OF SCIENCES to find and name falsifiers. The very fact that the leader of a scholarly institution would do such a thing is instructive. It’s hard to see it not having a chilling effect, and it would not take much to put real teeth into this effort.
It seems to me that the key to this would be to see the result of those three days of work. I can’t find anything about it in the Russian press. Have you spotted anything or heard anything from your colleagues? I’m still wondering if it was opiska — a piece of paper that formally satisfies a bureaucratic requirement without taking the requirement seriously.
But please don’t get me wrong; I live in Moscow and the battle for history has been lost in the media. The bookstores are also filled with the most heinous garbage you can imagine. I understand that archive accessibility has been cut back drastically. I was just hoping that scholars have been able to fight back. Ekho Moskvy has a series of broadcasts on Stalin (supported by the Yelstin foundation), and the archivists and scholars on the shows seem to have access to materials and produce sound analyses. But I’m not a historian, so this is a dilettant’s view.
Re: D Stone’s remark above, there’s a Russian saying, the source of which I don’t know: “Russia is a place where everything is forbidden, and anything is possible”. I’ve heard versions of this from the Russian side of my family, and it has the ring of truth.
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