Mick Hartley

Leon Aron, in the New Republic, writes about the teaching of history in Putin's Russia. Here's how one of the leading lights of the new historiography, and author of one of the chapters in the new officially-approved textbooks, addressed those teachers who might possibly be harbouring doubts:

"You may ooze bile but you will teach the children by those books that you will be given and in the way that is needed by Russia. And as to the noble nonsense that you carry in your misshapen goateed heads, either it will be ventilated out of them or you yourself will be ventilated out of teaching…. It is impossible to let some Russophobe shit-stinker (govnyuk), or just any amoral type, teach Russian history. It is necessary to clear the filth, and if it does not work, then clear it by force."

A style which may have a familiar ring in some quarters…

And here's some idea of how the youth of Russia will henceforth be taught of their country's recent history:

The first axiom [of the new official Putin line] appears to be this: although there were "mistakes" and "dark spots," what mattered was the survival and strengthening of the state–by whatever means necessary. And, by that standard, the Soviet Union was a glittering success, and the costs were justified–especially, as we have already seen, since the main victims of Stalinism were the elite, not the ordinary people. The second axiom of modern Russian history according to Putin is that the Soviet Union was a "besieged fortress," forever under threat of attack by the West, and that the machinations of the West were responsible not only for Soviet foreign policy but also for a great deal of domestic misfortune. Finally, and most importantly, the overarching aim of this and all future historical narratives is the "normalization" of the monstrosity of Soviet totalitarianism, the manufacture of justifications and excuses for its crimes.

While pages and pages of The Modern History of Russia overflow with official statistics attesting to the dazzling achievements of Soviet economy–the production of mineral fertilizers grew six-fold; of electricity, five-fold; of steel, double–or with positively loving recitations of the quality and quantity of Soviet military hardware, the Gulag is mentioned by name once. And this sole mention is by way of cautioning the reader against the "exaggeration" of its "contribution" to the economy: after all, there were only 2.6 million prisoners (in 1950), compared with 40.4 million in the country's workforce outside the barbed wire….

The origins of the Cold War are covered in three sentences. The United States was bent on "world domination." The Soviet Union's might was in America's way. A "serious confrontation ensued." Churchill's Fulton speech on March 5, 1946, the "Iron Curtain" speech, was a declaration of war, and the reliable Stalin is cited at length from a Pravda interview to that effect.

As Aron notes, this is especially unforgiveable in light of the enormous strides that've been made over the past couple of decades by Russian historians and intellectuals in coming to terms with their recent Soviet past:

And now, to turn all this back, to reverse this great movement of honesty, to dash this splendid hope and retard this amazing transformation, comes the cynicism and the corruption of the past eight years–and this wretched war in Georgia, in which, for the first time, post-Soviet Russia appears determined to resurrect invasion and occupation as tools of its foreign policy. When Russia's historians come to compose their indictment against Putinism, as they surely will, the charges will prominently include Vladimir Putin's unforgivable interruption of his country's renaissance and the subversion of its attainment to moral maturity.