Apr 07 2010
Putin on Katyn
Vladimir Putin and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk have commemorated the 70th anniversary of the Katyn massacre of Polish prisoners in Soviet hands.
Putin has said and done all the right things. Given the current Russian regime’s prickliness over anything that smacks of criticism of the Soviet Union’s wartime record, that it quite striking. It is part of a pattern, though: it was likewise Putin who took the high road on the origins of the Second World War. Today as then, the irony is striking. It’s Putin, the ex-KGB man, who has the sober and dispassionate view of history. It’s Medvedev, the supposed liberal, who attacks legitimate historical inquiry as falsification.
[...] what to read about the Soviet Union. Given the ongoing debates about falsification of history (see here, here, and here, for example), Putin’s comments are instructive. The English version is here; [...]