The end of history

Censorship of Russian history becomes a reality. President Putin signed a law providing for criminal or administrative liability for the "rehabilitation of Nazism", or rather, "aimed at counteracting attempts at historical memory in relation to the events of the Second World War." Even our senators, who are difficult to suspect of free thought, first tried to send a bill for refinement in the Duma, reasonably indicating that in the current formulation it can even be attracted to historians who simply quoting the special opinion of the Soviet judges in the Nuremberg trials (they, as you know, advocated the death sentence of the Hess and against the justification of the mine, papen and firce). But they ordered not to be clever from the Kremlin - the law is needed by May 9 - and the senators obediently voted for him.

However, the law will clearly not be applied against those who risk quoting the special opinion of Nikitchenko and Volchkov. It is prescribed to punish "for the denial of the facts established by the verdict of the International Military Tribunal for the Court and the punishment of the main military criminals of the European countries of the axis, the approval of the crimes established by the specified sentence, as well as for the distribution of knowingly false information about the activities of the USSR during the Second World War." "Knowingly false information" is a purely Soviet formulation, forcing us to recall "the spread of knowingly false fabrications that defeat the Soviet state and social system." According to the experience of Soviet times, one can foresee that no one will try to prove the falsity of information released by the historian, and even more so that the author was aware of, which he says to the lie. No, they will punish for any statements, which are not in the best light of the Stalinist policy and the Red Army. As for, so to speak, the “positive” part of the law, about the approval of Nazi crimes, it actually does not make sense, since these acts are also punished by the legislation on extremism and the inciting of interethnic growth. This means that the goal is only to prevent criticism of any actions of the USSR during the Second World War.

Thus, now, under the threat of a large fine or even prison, it will not be possible to publicly condemn the Molotov -Ribbentrop Pact and the secret protocol for it. It will not be possible to talk about the Soviet occupation and the annexation of Western Ukraine and Western Belarus, Bessarabia, the Baltic states, and the Soviet aggression against Finland. No wonder Russian official historians have stubbornly denied these indisputable facts in recent years. They probably foresaw that something similar could happen to the Crimea, Eastern Ukraine, and other post -Soviet territories.

Now most likely it will no longer be possible to write about the crimes of the Red Army in Germany and in the liberated countries of Europe in 1944-1945. There will be a lot of memoirs and research, including the books of “Storing forever” Leo Kopelev and “War will write off” Leonid Rabichev. But what about the katynya? Will her recognition by the Soviet crime entail criminal liability? Will they demand from us to consider her a German crime, which Stalin could not achieve in Nuremberg?

It is probably impossible to write that prisoners of the axis countries in the USSR during the war were not better than Soviet prisoners in Germany, and the percentage of mortality among them was no less than among Soviet prisoners. I don’t know how it will be with the Stalinist plans for the attack on Hitler. Either they will consider that this justifies Hitler’s attack on the USSR, or they will still take into account that Hitler did not know specific Stalin's plans and did not conduct a preventive war - against the enemy that had already unfolded to attack.

It will not be possible to write anything positive about those partisans who fought with the Red Army on the national outskirts. And the true data on the losses of the Soviet armed forces, many times higher than the official, will now be considered "knowingly false." Yes, and many other things cannot be written.

Now we have a complete restoration of the Stalinist picture of the war, except that a little modified. New books that do not fit into the canon will not be published, and the old ones will stop reprinting. And then, probably, unwanted books from shops and libraries will be seized (recently they actually removed from the sale a book by Ukrainian historian Alexander Gogun about Bandera).

But the Second World War Putin was not limited to . The law signed by him "establishes criminal liability for the distribution of explicit disrespect for the society of information about the days of military glory and commemorative dates of Russia related to the protection of the Fatherland, and for the desecration of symbols of military glory of Russia." However, the responsibility for the "desecration of symbols" is already provided for in an article by the Criminal Code on vandalism. But "disrespect for society" in connection with the days of military glory extends to almost the entire history of Russia. Now, obviously, it will not be possible to put forward alternative versions of the course of the Battle of Kulikovo or say that in the battle of the battle, Kutuzov tactically lost to Napoleon, and the Russian army suffered much more losses than French. And it will not be possible to indicate that Rzhev would be more correct to call the "city of German military glory", since the Germans successfully defended it for a year and a half.

About science in relation to history, both Russian and universal, now you will have to forget. And it is no coincidence that the object of the new law was primarily the military history of Russia. For Putin, she is only a means of educating and propaganda of imperial patriotism, under the flag of which Russian aggression against Ukraine is now being committed. The latter is actually likened to Nazi Germany, and Ukrainians are now not even “Bandera”, but simply “fascists”. So the leader of the Duma faction calls the Kiev government a "fascist reptile", which must be crushed in its lair.

Naturally, in order to justify the current policy of the World War II, it is necessary to create a crystal image of the Soviet Union of that era. And, in all likelihood, now the publishers will be afraid to publish books not only of Russian, but also foreign authors where the events of Russian history are not interpreted in the same way as officialdom requires. We will inevitably find ourselves in an intellectual ghetto, where there will be the only correct interpretation of domestic history - the one that is set from the Kremlin - and everything else will fall under the new law.