On Sept. 1, the whole world remembered how 70 years ago, Adolf Hitler — nine days after signing the Molotov-Ribbentrop non-aggression pact with Josef Stalin — invaded Poland and started World War II. Seventeen days after Hitler invaded western Poland, the Red Army invaded eastern Poland.
Sept. 1 is also the first day of classes in Russia. Hundreds of thousands of last-year high school students will be given a new textbook recently approved by the Education and Science Ministry that contains a highly distorted version of 20th-century history.
On Friday, Kremlin chief of staff Sergei Naryshkin chaired the first session of the presidential commission “for counteracting attempts to falsify history to the detriment of Russia’s interests.” He made it clear that the commission’s first task would be to “correct textbooks.” The Education and Science Ministry started this process by approving “The History of Russia from 1945 to 2008 for 11th Graders” by Anatoly Danilov, Alexander Utkin and Alexander Filippov for use in high schools. (In the true Orwellian tradition, the publisher’s name is Prosveshcheniye, or Enlightenment.) The ministry approved about 50 different textbooks, but it is safe to assume that the Danilov book, with a circulation of 510,000 copies, will be read by the overwhelming majority of the country’s 11th graders.
This textbook tries to justify Stalin’s crimes during World War II, including his signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, the Soviet Union’s invasion of Finland in November 1939 and its annexation of the Baltic states, eastern Poland and parts of Romania. It is clear that Russia has again placed imperial greatness as the most important value for the country, and it is ready to spend any amount of money and use any means to attain it. Just like during the Soviet period, repression, authoritarianism, militarism and the creation of spheres of influence and satellite states are justifiable prices to pay for building a great nation.
After reading the forward to the textbook, you are left with the impression that Russia’s enemies are engaged in an “ideological war” against Russia by falsely labeling Russia a totalitarian country in an attempt to defame and delegitimize Russia’s great Soviet heritage. Moreover, by claiming that Hitler and Stalin adhered to different ideologies, they try to reject the notion that Stalinism and Nazism had the same criminal, totalitarian foundations. This allows the authors to “normalize” the Soviet regime and to claim, for example, that “the Soviet Union was not a democracy, but in terms of social policy and programs, it was the best model of a fair and just society for millions of people around the world.”
The strong admiration for the Soviet regime is the golden thread running throughout the textbook and serves as the basis for all of the authors’ claims regarding the exaggerated and fabricated “achievements” of the Soviet Union and for their decision to gloss over the crimes and tragic mistakes committed by the Soviet state. For example, in the chapter on Leonid Brezhnev’s and Yury Andropov’s rule, no mention is made of the state’s repression of political dissidents, the practice of sending undesirables to psychiatric wards or to political camps. Not surprisingly, however, the authors write in detail about how the Soviet Union made “dramatic achievements in developing the country’s fuel and energy industries and mining the natural wealth of Siberia.”
It is natural for the textbook’s authors to justify and glorify the Soviet regime because they define Russia’s main strategic goals as becoming a “great country” with a “strong government.” Achieving a high per capita income for its citizens by creating a large middle class, developing culture, science, technology and the arts or creating a civil society with basic checks and balances and human rights guarantees appear to be secondary. Here is one example from the textbook: “The Soviet Union could only achieve its role as an authoritative superpower in international politics with its own blood by relying on its ground forces, which became the most powerful in the world, and thanks to the presence of Soviet troops in countries that were freed after the war.” This argument is used to justify the Kremlin’s installation of pro-Soviet puppet regimes in Eastern European countries after World War II. What’s more, the authors claim that these regimes had the overall support of the people.
The authors’ delight over the partitioning of the world during the Cold War is so great that they couldn’t restrain themselves: “Stalin’s Empire and the Soviet Union’s sphere of influence encompassed a territory greater than all past European and Asian powers, even surpassing the empire of Genghis Khan.” In addition, it comes as no surprise that blame for unleashing the Cold War is placed squarely and exclusively on the United States.
The textbook ends with a 40-page chapter — one-ninth of the book — titled “Russia’s New Course” that covers Vladimir Putin’s rule. It includes section headings such as “President V.V. Putin’s Course for Consolidating Society,” “The Renewal of the State” and “Restoring Russia’s Foreign Policy Strength.” Putin is described as achieving spectacular successes in overcoming corruption, prosecuting criminal oligarchs, resolving the country’s demographic problem, building affordable housing and reforming the economy. It is important to note that the chapter on Putin is authored by Pavel Danilin, a presidium member of Young Guard, the pro-Kremlin youth movement. But Danilin failed to mention anything about the shrinking population, the sharp rise in corruption, the increased monopolization and ineffectiveness of the Russian economy, the growing technology gap with other countries and the rise in alcoholism. Yet Danilin did describe at length the eight components of Putin’s “sovereign democracy.”
The new history textbook is intended to ideologically prepare an entire generation of young people to loyally and complaisantly serve the Russian ruling class. The problem is that Putin’s state capitalism model is fundamentally incompatible with democracy and an open society. Even the smallest amount of transparency and accountability threatens to undermine Putin’s hold on power. That is why Russia’s autocracy is in dire need of an ideological foundation so that the people submissively accept curtailed freedoms to help the leaders build a “great nation.”
And these young students who will be givenDanilov’s history textbook on Tuesday will be taught not to pose unnecessary, uncomfortable questions to their leaders. Let the wise politicians and bureaucrats continue to rule the country and pilfer the oil and gas wealth. This is precisely how they will build a strong and wealthy Russia — at least for themselves and their families.
Vladimir Ryzhkov, a State Duma deputy from 1993 to 2007, hosts a political talk show on Ekho Moskvy radio. This column was originally published in the Moscow Times (www.moscowtimes.ru) and is reprinted with the author’s permission. Ryzhkov’s website is www.ryzkov.ru.
