Comments on: The golden brain is watching you!

By: THE RUSSIAN FRONT » The Baltics and Geopolitics

THE RUSSIAN FRONT » The Baltics and Geopolitics — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 18:33:15 +0000

[...] in World War II, efforts that I’ve discussed extensively at the Russian Front, most recently here and [...]

By: Charles Taylor

Charles Taylor — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 20:39:31 +0000

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.

By: mab

mab — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 11:58:50 +0000

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.

By: DStone

DStone — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 23:09:24 +0000

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.

By: mab

mab — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 14:46:09 +0000

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.)