Russia is starting an official drive to reverse what it considers an anti-Russian view of 20th-century history. However, critics see it as an attempt to conceal the unpleasant reality of the state’s communist past.
Kremlin leaders have clashed with former Soviet states such as Ukraine and the Baltic countries for confronting Russia’s interpretation of the 20th century when swathes of Europe were occupied by Soviet troops for decades.
“I order the creation of a presidential commission to counter attempts to harm Russian interests by falsifying history,” Russian president Dmitry Medvedev said in the decree published yesterday.
The commission is mandated to work out ways to counter falsified historical facts that “belittle the international prestige of the Russian Federation”, the decree said.
Russia says its former allies have forgotten the sacrifices made by the Soviet Union during the second World War, which cost about 27 million Soviet lives.
But most of the countries formerly occupied by Soviet forces say Russians have failed to come to terms with their imperial past and the crimes committed under Josef Stalin.
Oleg Orlov, a leader of the Memorial human rights group in Moscow, said Mr Medvedev’s commission was an attempt to impose a view of historical truth. “This is part of a movement to halt any objective view of what really happened in Russia’s past, above all under Stalin,” Mr Orlov said.
Some Russian historians say Stalin’s legacy was airbrushed under former president Vladimir Putin, who once served as a KGB spy in East Germany.
The 28-member commission is headed by Kremlin chief of staff Sergei Naryshkin, includes two senior spies, the armed forces’ chief of general staff and is mostly made up of state officials. Just two academics are members.
“An officially approved state history is the typical attribute of a totalitarian state or, in Russia’s current case, the hangover of totalitarianism,” said Mr Orlov.
“This is an attempt to put a lid on any proper objective look at history inside Russia while throwing down the gauntlet to our former partners in the Soviet Union, above all Ukraine and the Baltic states.”
Moscow’s role in Ukraine’s famine of 1932-1933, in which historians believe 7.5 million died, has been the source of a simmering row between the two countries. Soviet authorities denied for decades that the famine occurred.
For decades the Soviet Union said the Nazis were responsible for the murder of thousands of Polish police officers during the second World War. Moscow only admitted responsibility for the Katyn massacre as the Soviet Union crumbled.
-The US and Russia yesterday held talks aimed at reducing stockpiles of nuclear weapons.
US president Barack Obama and Mr Medvedev last month agreed to pursue an agreement on cutting nuclear weapons that would replace the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (Start I), which expires in December.
The talks, which began at a 19th-century mansion in central Moscow, must deal with complex technical issues about nuclear weapons. Diplomats said the mood was positive. – (Reuters)