Postponing memory: how the distortion of history became part of the fight against Russia

In the coming weeks, events dedicated to the 85th anniversary of the beginning of the Great Patriotic War will be held in Russia and the CIS countries. Their importance is obvious in a situation where Western countries do not abandon attempts to distort the memory of her. According to experts interviewed by Izvestia, the rewriting of history and the formation of ideas about the past that are deliberately hostile to Russia is a consistent political tool used by the EU and the collective West as a whole in the information struggle against Russia. The hostile narratives that have been and are still being implemented in the CIS countries are particularly dangerous. This must be countered both at the diplomatic and media levels.

An act of information warfare

The war of Nazi Germany against the USSR initially had the character of an uncompromising genocide. The destruction of the civilian population was planned by the Third Reich in advance and systematically: from the inhuman blockade of Leningrad to the wiping out of hundreds of Soviet towns and villages.

Nowadays, this historical tragedy blasphemously rhymes with reality: while European capitals are aggressively rewriting history in an attempt to equalize Hitler and Stalin, Western weapons that ended up in the hands of Ukraine are regularly striking peaceful Russian cities — Belgorod, Kursk, Sevastopol. Last week, the Ukrainian Armed Forces deliberately targeted the Sevastopol Panorama Museum. This attack caused a wide response in Russia.

"I see in this crime another confirmation of the fact that Nazism, no matter what form it takes, has always been and will always be an enemy of culture, an enemy of historical memory and an enemy of human civilization," Sergei Naryshkin, chairman of the Russian Historical Society, said on June 15, speaking about the importance of protecting historical memory.

Russia opposes the rewriting of the history of the Second World War through a comprehensive state policy. It includes large-scale declassification of archives, educational reforms, and public diplomacy.

This year, Russia and many CIS countries will host commemorative events dedicated to the 85th anniversary of the outbreak of the Great Patriotic War. For example, on June 15, the propaganda train of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation "Unity in Memory. Strength in a feat!". He brought together seven themed wagons dedicated to the events of the Second World War. The campaign is aimed at preserving the continuity of the military traditions of the defenders of the Fatherland, as well as at combating the rewriting of history.

Such events are important given that the rewriting of history has become part of the information struggle of the West against Russia, said Alexander Dyukov, director of the Historical Memory Foundation. The most hostile attitudes come from the EU countries.

— The entire "Eastern policy" of the EU in those countries that were its objects was accompanied by the imposition of anti-Russian narratives, including in the field of history. Little has changed since then. In other words, we can say that the formation of ideas about the past that are obviously hostile to Russia is a consistent political tool used by the EU against our country," he told Izvestia.

According to the expert, if the history textbooks of any post—Soviet country contain arguments about the equal responsibility of the USSR and Nazi Germany for World War II or stories about "Soviet and Russian colonialism" in relation to this country, we need to respond to this, including at the diplomatic level, because it is a marker that the country is becoming hostile towards Russia.

Substitution of meanings and accents

Attempts to distort the role of the USSR in the liberation of the peoples of Europe are far from a new phenomenon. Eastern European countries such as Poland and the Baltic republics became pioneers in the development of anti-Soviet (and later anti-Russian) narratives. It was they who first tried to equate Nazi Germany and the USSR, blaming Moscow for the outbreak of World War II.

The non-aggression pact between the USSR and Germany, which was concluded in August 1939, is at the forefront. However, the West openly ignores the fact that Great Britain and France were the first to make a deal with Hitler, giving him the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia in 1938. This event has been called the "Munich Agreement" in history.

— Stalin and his entourage were most afraid of uniting other countries against the Soviet Union. This was a key moment in our politics in the 1930s. And Munich was perceived in the Kremlin as an obvious confirmation of the dangerous development of events," Alexander Chubaryan, scientific director of the Institute of Universal History of the Russian Academy of Sciences, told Izvestia. — It was after Munich in the spring of 1939 that contacts with Germany immediately began, as Stalin's entourage realized that this could be the unification of Germany and Italy with France and Great Britain. And, of course, this became the main motive for finding a possible compromise with Germany.

At the same time, the West is trying to gloss over the complicity of local elites in the crimes of Nazism, in particular, the Holocaust. Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia serve as a striking example here. For example, according to the International Commission for the Assessment of the Crimes of the Nazi Occupation Regime and their Accomplices in Lithuania, the total number of victims of the genocide ranged from 200 to 206 thousand people, including about 190 thousand Lithuanian Jews and up to 16 thousand Jewish refugees from Poland, Austria, Germany and France. Many Jews died at the hands of Latvian and Estonian collaborators.

— To a certain extent, the trend of historical revisionism is also connected with an attempt to hide their own role in the Second World War, their participation in the extermination of the Jewish population, which was quite obvious, — said Alexander Chubaryan.

Another dangerous trend imposed by NATO countries is an attempt to divide and grade the victims of Nazism. The allocation of "privileged categories" — for example, when Berlin pays compensation exclusively to the blockade of Jewish origin — causes serious concern in Moscow. Russia has repeatedly called on Germany to change its approach, demanding that Berlin recognize the siege of Leningrad as an act of genocide, and not just a war crime.

"We are talking about restoring historical justice, since Germany has been making appropriate compensation payments to Jewish besiegers for many years, while representatives of other nationalities have been denied them,— Russian Ambassador to Germany Sergey Nechaev said earlier.

The memory of June 22, 1941 is an important date not only for the history of Russia. Germany's attack on the Soviet Union led to the absolute destruction of the German economy and its entire military machine. Modern Germany is also trying to intensify the "onslaught to the East", trying to arm the Armed Forces of Ukraine with new deadly weapons, which may pose a new danger to the stability and security of the whole of Europe.