Jayeless

Russia acts against “false history”

Apparently, the Kremlin is offended that anyone would dare suggest that Stalin lead a totalitarian regime, and is now implementing its own “Historical Truth Commission” to report back to the government on what the history was. You know, like that Stalin was a great and noble leader who liberated other nations from the oppression of Nazism. Which is true, but seeing as those nations then had another totalitarian ideology forcibly imposed on them — communism — that’s really not much better.

A member of the Historical Truth Commission has this to say, by way of explanation of the necessity of her own job:

In August there will be such a yelling about the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, saying that that was the step that led to the Second World War, and that Germany and the Soviet Union were two equal, disgusting, totalitarian monsters.

I would not equate communism as a whole with Nazism. So no, they’re probably not two equally disgusting, totalitarian monsters. But Stalin acted despicably, and I’m worried about this kind of historical revisionism. You can interpret evidence any way you want, but you can’t be like, “This is true, and if you disagree, you’re a traitor to Russia and we may even prosecute you if we ever get this new law off the ground.”

Especially not when the evidence suggests that something like a million people were executed for being bad communists, another six million starved to death, or died of illness, or sheer brutality, in the labour camps at which they were supposed to be reformed, and an obscene number of millions died in Ukraine because Stalin decided Russians deserved to eat the food the Ukrainians should have eaten. That’s off the top of my head, so I can’t really provide citations or anything, but I think it’s pretty clear that Stalin was a disgusting totalitarian monster if anyone was.

As for whether or not he’s worse than Hitler, I couldn’t go so far as to say that. The Nazis worked hard to streamline the massacring of innocent citizens until they had this highly efficient slaughtering machine. Clearly they believed this was desirable and legitimate, killing innocent people whose only crime was to be born with a particular set of genes, or to particular parents. At least Stalin’s scheme punished citizens who’d done something slightly more than that. Of course, I can’t approve of killing millions because they’re bad communists, but at least it provides people with SOME way to escape. You know, by pretending they’re really enthusiastic communists. When Hitler slaughtered the disabled, the Jews, the Roma, or anyone else he slaughtered, I’m fairly sure there was no escape. “Oh no, I have no disability! Honestly!” Yeah, good luck with that.

Of course the Kremlin is currently upset about the way people are misinterpreting World War Two, not Stalin’s purges, so perhaps that’s more of a tangent than it is relevant. Still, I don’t like this kind of thing — dictating to people what they must believe happened. Telling people they must be intolerant of alternative interpretations. It’s propaganda and the perversion of knowledge to suit the state’s own ends and, if nothing else, absolutely no way to write a history book.

Mon, 27.07.2009, 11pm • 1 Comment • Tags: news, Russia, history, propaganda, politics