Mar 04 2010
FSB: Defender of Historical Truth
The FSB, lineal descendant of the Soviet KGB, has once again leapt to the defense of historical truth. A round table held in the FSB’s Cultural Center has come to the shocking conclusion that radical nationalists in Ukraine and the Baltics committed war crimes in collaboration with the Nazis.
All in a day’s work in the struggle against falsification, of course, though I’m still wondering which serious historians out there hold the view that nationalists in Ukraine and the Baltics DIDN’T do nasty things. The fact that Goebbel’s pistol was on display (an item of dubious relevance to the question of East European nationalism) suggests a certain lack of scholarly rigor.
In keeping with Russian government’s historical truth commission, with only two and a half actual historians, press accounts of this round table don’t actually mention any real historians who participated. Neither Rosarkhiv nor the FSB, the ostensible sponsors of this event, have any account of what happened as of March 4. I’m going here by the English-language Itar-Tass story and checking a number of Russian accounts here, here, and here.
I’ve found only three people specifically mentioned as being present: head of Rosarkhiv A. N. Artizov, FSB deputy director Yurii Gorbunov, and head of the FSB’s archive service Vasilii Khristoforov. Were there any actual practicing historians at this round table? I’d appreciate knowing.
Unless you were Jewish, German rule was generally a much better deal for people in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania than Soviet rule. Hence, the historical narratives of those countries rightfully emphasize the horror of Stalinism over Naziism or at least put them on an equal moral plane. This of course drives modern day Stalinists nuts, but I really fail to see how Stalin is morally superior to Hitler. In fact I would argue he was far worse. Almost nobody, least of all in Germany, is calling for a new Hitler. The same can not be said about Stalin and Russia or even Central Asia. I have noticed that a lot of Kyrgyz youth (early 20s) are enthusiastic Stalinists in the sense of supporting everything his regime did.