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Freedom House

Chapter 4

The Ministry of Truth in Peace and War

An early and telling sign that Vladimir Putin planned something more ambitious than a mere tightening of state control over political life was his decision to return Joseph Stalin to his position in the pantheon of great Russian leaders. Stalin’s rehabilitation was formalized in 2007, with the publication of a new curriculum guide for teachers of Russian history.¹

The manual’s content dovetailed with Putin’s broader promotion of a narrative in which Russia is a great power that recovered from the chaos and weakness of the Yeltsin era and overcame the hostility of determined enemies, especially the United States. According to the manual, Russia’s dark chapters—its domination of Eastern Europe, internal repression, Stalinist purges—were the regrettable but understandable responses to the country’s underdevelopment and encirclement by foreign enemies. The new history paints a picture of an all-wise Russian state, under both Stalin and Putin, whose requirements always take precedence over the needs of the individual.²

Putin took unusual interest in the preparation of the history manual. The idea that history should be written by historians, not political leaders, was never voiced in public discussion. Putin later called for history textbooks “written in proper Russian, free of internal contradictions and double interpretation.”³ He said the manual was needed to clear up “the muddle” in teachers’ heads.

And in unveiling the new guide, he struck a theme that runs through Russian propaganda in the Putin era: Russian history “did contain some problematic pages,” he said. “But so did other states’ histories. We have fewer of them than in other countries. And they were less terrible than in some other countries.” Putin’s basic message was that “we can’t allow anyone to impose a sense of guilt on us.”⁴ More broadly, Putin was saying that a sovereign state has the right to interpret its history in whatever way it wants, to ignore or distort the tragic chapters, and to burnish the reputations of mass murderers and thugs.

Whereas other countries simply avoid serious study of the most shameful episodes of their histories, as Indonesia has done with the epidemic of political killings during the 1960s, or as China has done with the Cultural Revolution, Russia treats the Stalin era as a time of progress during which the foundation for modern Russian greatness was laid.⁵

To build a case that Russia’s dark pages were “less terrible” than those of other countries, Russia’s official history depicts Stalin as a strong leader who was capable of acts of cruelty but whose rough tactics were necessary for the defense of the homeland, which was besieged militarily by the Nazis and politically by the capitalist powers.

Excusing the Soviet empire
The Russian leadership is especially tenacious in defending Stalin’s World War II diplomacy. Putin, for example, has defended the Hitler-Stalin pact, the 1939 nonaggression agreement that opened the door to Nazi Germany’s invasion of Poland and carved up much of Eastern Europe between the two totalitarian states.⁶ While Putin called the pact “immoral” during a 2009 visit to Poland, he defended the agreement during a joint press conference with Angela Merkel in 2015, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

He did so in a fashion typical of current Russian propaganda methods. He accused the West of trying to “hush

[Sidebar Quote 1]
“It’s easy predicting the future; what’s difficult is predicting the past.”
—Soviet joke

[Sidebar Quote 2]
“A lie isn’t an alternative point of view.”
—Linas Linkevičius, Lithuanian foreign minister

[Sidebar Quote 3]
“The implied objective of this line of thought is a nightmare world in which the Leader, or some ruling clique, controls not only the future but the past.... This prospect frightens me much more than bombs.”
—George Orwell, Looking Back on the Spanish War

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