In a discussion with a Russian official recently, I was surprised by his nostalgic references to the Soviet Union. When we discussed Soviet era excesses, he dismissed them as exaggerations by the West.
He stunned me by denying well-documented atrocities committed during Soviet rule, including wholesale massacres, labor camps and mass deportations during Josef Stalin’s reign of terror. The official also said that most Russians now resent the fall of the Soviet Union. He said that Mikhail Gorbachev is now being held in low esteem in Russia because he is accused of causing the demise of the USSR.
It turned out that revising Russia’s history is part of a new policy ordered by President Putin earlier this year. It is expected that the revised history will be included in school textbooks starting 2014.
The Russian government asked the “Historical Society” in February 2013 to revise history books. The society’s head is Sergei Naryshkin, speaker of the lower house of the Parliament, a senior member of the ruling United Russia Party, and a close ally of Putin. History revisionism was practically invented by Soviet Russia. It was thought important during different periods of Soviet rule to re-write history to eliminate the influence of former leaders. Stalin viewed history as a weapon against his opponents and a means to educate and manipulate the masses. He was famous for airbrushing his enemies out of photographs after getting rid of them in real life and deleting references to them in history books. George Orwell painted a comic illustration of those practices, but they continued nevertheless until the end of the Soviet rule.
After the end of Soviet era in1991, many thought that re-writing history would become a thing of the past. However, it appears as if Soviet ways are slowly making their way back, together with a new, positive look at that history. For example, Putin has revived the Soviet anthem, Soviet-style military parades and a Soviet-era medal for labor. The president is scoring points with some elderly Russians by speaking positively about the Soviet past. He once referred to the collapse of the Soviet Union as the “greatest geopolitical disaster of the last century,” a comment that was amplified by my Russian interlocutor recently.
More seriously, Putin’s opponents also accuse him of reviving Soviet-style cult of personality and violent repression of dissent. In addition, nationalists in the southern Russian republics, such as Chechnya, liken Putin’s no-holds-barred military tactics in suppressing their national aspirations to Stalin’s tactics that resulted in large-scale deaths, mass-deportations and destruction in Chechnya.
Re-writing history appears to be another of those traditions that are being revived. The new policy, adopted in February 2013, called for preparing new textbooks that “reconcile differences over Russia’s past.” It asked historians to come up with “guidelines” for new history books that would provide “a unified version of the many difficult events in Russian and Soviet history.”
Those guidelines have now been prepared by the Historical Society and were recently submitted to the president for approval. If approved, they will serve as the basis for re-writing school history textbooks to be used throughout Russia.
However, independent historians, inside and outside Russia have criticized the new guidelines as the work of loyal historians that airbrushes events and details that are not favorable to the president. For example, they contain no reference to the protests against him and no mention of some of his key opponents. They believe that the whole project evokes unmistakable Soviet parallels.
Vladimir Ryzhkov, a historian and former politician, was quoted as saying: “It was a simple political order — to justify the ruling authorities, to explain they are doing everything right.”
Some fear that another objective of the project is to revive the idea that “Russia needs strong autocratic rulers,” perhaps to justify extending Putin’s rule for life.
They refer to the fact that Putin rose to power in 2000 and has been president or prime minister ever since. He began a six-year third term as president in May last year. By the time his term ends in 2018, he will be the longest serving leader in Russian history since Stalin, who ruled the Soviet Union for over thirty years.
The Kremlin has denied those accusations or any attempt to rewrite history to fit current political agenda. Its official spokesman has said that Russia “consistently stand against attempts to falsify the history.” The last phrase has an ominous double meaning as to what those “attempts” may be and whether he is referring to the work of serious, independent historians who are disclosing for the first time in Russia the mistakes of the past, including those committed during, before and after the Soviet era.
The Historical Society has identified 20 “difficult issues” in the guidelines it submitted to Putin. Andrei Petrov, the Historical Society’s executive secretary said, “We have named difficult issues that should be explained from various points of view. Otherwise we would just be lying to our children.” The “difficult issues” include the interpretation of Stalin’s rule and the circumstances around the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Boris Yeltsin, the first post-Soviet leader tried to expose Soviet-era horrors, but their full extent has not been fully explored inside Russia until recently. Russians have been seriously trying to reconcile themselves with the past by first owning up to its mistakes before taking pride in its achievements.
The new attempt to rewrite history textbooks may put an end to that effort of soul-searching. Besides its immediate political expediency, rewriting history may play in the hands of the Russian ultra-nationalists, who glorify the past and try to revive its worst manifestations.
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