Revenge

So, everything develops in Soviet traditions: the new textbook on domestic history, in which Stalin is represented by an “effective manager”, followed the events to clarify the new public attitudes. On April 22, the FSB Cultural Center hosted a round table on the topic "Problems of publication of sources about the Great Patriotic War. Criticism of attempts to falsify history."

The head of the center, Colonel Sergei Ignatchenko, announced that the FSB was ready to provide archival documents of the period of the Great Patriotic War for both historians and journalists. The media replicated the news as a sensation. However, those who have ever worked in the Russian archives and tried to access closed documents on Soviet history know that the devil is in detail. Everything fell into place after explaining the chief researcher of the Institute of General History of the Russian Academy of Sciences, chairman of the Association of Historians of World War II Oleg Rzhevsky. “Of course,” he said , “some documents will remain inaccessible to centuries, if it concerns state or personal secrets.”

This answer means that in the foreseeable time (so far in Russia there will be the current government), historians will not see the documents (those that have not yet been destroyed), revealing the actual plans of Stalin in the Second World War. Namely, these documents represent the most serious state secret of both the Soviet Union and Russia - its successor.

Mr. Rzhevsky made another remarkable statement. He called on the Russian parliament to abandon the decree "On the political and legal assessment of the Soviet-Germanic Agreement on Nonfall of 1939", adopted by the II Congress of People's Deputies of the USSR in December 1989. “When this protocol was condemned (a secret additional protocol to the agreement. - I.P.),” Rzhevsky asked, “did anyone think that the contract was concluded in the interests of security? After all, no one wondered in which it was concluded. At that time, the USSR was clamped in a corner, and there was no other way out.” If the Russian parliament refuses to condemn the version of this protocol, he emphasized, "this will allow a more effective struggle against history falsifiers."

I believe that Rzhevsk and other elders of the Soviet military -historical science - Anfilov, Gareev, Gorkov, Orlov and others - had long been waiting for a revenge, although ten years ago it was clear that the victory would be behind them. They retained all the posts in Russian historical science, they also controlled the training of new personnel of historians. True, in 1997, at a meeting of the Association of Historians of the Second World War, they only stated that “History is a political science” and the historian should always be remembered about the interests of their state and take care of the sanity of generations entering into life. ”

Here I will allow myself to quote my own text , written under the impression of that meeting. It records the confrontation that then took place in Russian historiography:

"The discussion has demonstrated that the historians of the democratic direction could not be pushed or significantly suppressed the historians of the pro-communist direction. The latter, having retained their positions in the institutional system of post-Soviet science, moved to revenge, which actually does not have scientific significance. However, it has a serious influence on the process of further degradation of historical science in Russia and will affect the preparation of a new generation historians.

The processes that occur in post -Soviet historical science are associated with general political processes in the country. Democracy failed even in history, and could not succeed in a cash balance of forces. If the pro -communist revenge received at least a rebuff from world historical science, but here there was a paradoxical situation: Western historians not only formally contact proprietary historians, but also support them conceptually. Russian historians of the democratic direction will have to show not only patience, but also courage. "

If the situation has changed since then, then only for the worse. Promunistic historians, capturing team heights, are trying to return the territory given in the late 1980s-early 1990s.

Oleg Rzhevsky advocates the abolition of the decision of the Congress of People's Deputies, which for its time was progressive, but in fact half. Since 1989, the historiography of the eve of World War II has gone far ahead in its assessments. The commission of Alexander Yakovlev, who was preparing the draft resolution, did not go beyond the discussion of the contract as an international legal document. The Soviet-German non-aggression agreement, signed by Molotov and Ribbentrop in Moscow on August 23, 1939, was not put into a historical context, and no fundamental conclusions were drawn about its consequences. Yakovlev limited himself to the remark that "Stalin and some people from his entourage could already have imperial ideas, alien to the principles of socialism," as well as "illusions ... not allowed to properly use the obtained respite."

However, even such a careful assessment of the contract haunts Rzhevsky and Co. And of course, nothing more than a falsification with which it is necessary to conduct an “effective struggle” is the conclusion that the Soviet-German contract and the secret additional protocol to it about the division of the spheres of influence are irrefutable: Stalin and Hitler are equal for the interior of the Second World War. Stalin pushed Hitler to attack Poland on September 1, 1939, since the contract eliminated the danger of a war on two fronts for Nazi Germany. Stalin hatched his plan to enter the war, and this plan was not defensive, but aggressive. He told about him, in particular, in his speech to the members of the Politburo on August 19, 1939. The first publication in Russia is one of the records of this speech in the December issue of the New World magazine for 1994 was made by Tatyana Bushueva.

What a wonderful moment it was! That December number meant to me the same as, I believe, for the generation of the 60s, the November issue of the New World for 1962 with the publication of "One Day of Ivan Denisovich." It was a breakthrough - there was a missing piece of puzzle in the general picture of the eve of World War II. From the side of Tatyana Bushueva, it was an act, because before that, and after speech, either was silent or declared a fake. Currently, other records of Stalin's speech are also known besides published in 1994. A lot of evidence was found confirming both the very fact of speaking and the content of what Stalin said on August 19, 1939.

And for me it was a shock that Bushueva also took part in a meeting of the round table at the FSB. This fact characterizes the situation in the country and among historians brighter than all the news combined. I do not know what Tatyana Semenovna had in mind, saying that "in the 90s, after the opening of the archives, there was a sharp demarcation among historians, and even attempts to falsify history, including by direct fabrication of facts, forgery, etc.." But for me it sounded like the repentance of Dmitry Dudko.

The current government may indicate, and historians serving it write about the Second World War anything. They can lie arbitrarily, exalting Stalin and his policy, arbitrarily stigmatize their interpretations and fight them. But the truth about the war, which in the late 1980s-early 1990s escaped from under the blocks, it will not be possible to push back. She lives. And the stronger the Prostalinsky concept will be imposed on society, the more people will reach for the truth.