Putin the spin on history

The foreign ministries of Russia and Ukraine are not the only soldiers in the ongoing war of words over the countries’ shared Soviet history.

The battle over the past is also being waged in the classrooms of both countries. The stakes are high, as the victor may be able to win over the hearts and minds of future generations.

The Stalin-ordered Great Famine of 1932-1933, which claimed millions of lives, is a stark example of the conflicting historical views.

A current Russian version: “It should be stressed that there was no organized famine in the U.S.S.R.’s countryside. It was not instigated by authorities against one or another people or social group.”

A current Ukrainian view of the same event: “The Holodomor of 1932-33 was for Ukrainians what the Holocaust was for Jews and the slaughter of 1915 for Armenians.”

The statement exposes the increasingly widening gap between the two nations’ understanding of history.

Since 2003, Ukraine has sought international recognition of the Holodomor (death by hunger) as an act of genocide against Ukrainians since 2003. President Victor Yushchenko has pursued the goal vigorously, drawing the ire of Stalin’s apologists at home and in Russia.

The Russian version of the same tragedy is not an obsolete bit of Communist propaganda. It is what Russian education officials are recommending for their country’s school curriculum. It comes from the Russian Ministry of Education and Science’s “Concept paper on Russian history from 1900-1945.”

Ukraine blames the Communist regime and Stalin specifically for the famine of 1932-33, while Russia seems to justify – or at least minimize – Stalin’s policies. According to the proposed Russian teacher’s manual, starvation was caused by poor weather conditions and problems with collectivization.

The Russian manual now under consideration also explains away the Great Terror and mass repressions of the 1930s.

This is the Russian description of Stalin, one of the great mass murderers in world history: “It is important to show that Stalin acted as a very efficient manager in a specific historical situation, as a protector of the system, as an unwavering backer of the country’s transformation into an industrial society managed from a single center, as a leader of a country which faced the threat of imminent large-scale war.”

The rationalization of mass repressions in Russia’s school curriculum was presented to teachers just before the beginning of the current school year, sparking debate in Russia.

Last year’s textbook “History of Russia, 1945-2007” evoked criticism for its extremely loyalist coverage of the Soviet period and characteristic of Stalin as an “efficient manager.” Yet the textbook was published and distributed in schools.

The shift in official interpretation of history is related to Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s view of the Soviet past. In 2005, Putin famously called the Soviet empire’s disintegration the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe” of the 20th century.

Putin held several major meetings with the country’s teachers where he emphasized the need to produce decent history textbooks – or those that teach history in the cheerleading manner that the former KGB agent evidently prefers.

“We need to remove all the layered husk and foam. Textbooks must include historical facts, they must nurture pride in the country and its history among young people,” Putin said back in 2003.

With its resurgent oil wealth, cost appears to be no objection to nurturing pride in Russia – which means overlooking some of its darkest chapters.

“As to some problematic pages in our history – yes, we’ve had them. But what state hasn’t? And we’ve had fewer of such pages than some other [states],” Putin told teachers last year. “All sorts of things happen in the history of every state. And we cannot allow ourselves to be saddled with guilt.”

Given the Kremlin’s attention to historical issues, the contents of textbooks have turned into a political matter in Russia, observers noted.

“In the 1990s, there was a relative diversity in the interpretations of Russian history in the textbooks while the mainstream ‘history of state and statehood’ was quite critical in its estimation of the Soviet period,” said Georgiy Kasianov, a Ukrainian historian. “In the 2000s, we see a tendency to glorify empire and its greatness and, thus, the apologetic estimation of the Soviet period, justifying the extremes of Stalinism by a renewed version of raison d’etat.”

Another Ukrainian historian, Stanislav Kulchytsky, said that Russian history textbooks provide a “light” version of Soviet history.

“Yes, they speak about repressions, but they try somehow to explain them…All in all, there is kind of a mixture of everything that is in line with the modern state-building process in Russia. They use the Red Army, the White Guard, and the Tsarist Army [to glorify Russia],” Kulchytsky said.

It remains to be seen if reinterpreted history wins over Russians minds. If the television project "Name of Russia"  -- Russia’s equivalent of the BBC’s 100 Greatest Britons – is any indication, Stalin’s apologists are making progress: the dictator was ranked second behind 13th century Russian leader Aleksandr Nevsky.

Meanwhile, the situation with teaching history in Ukraine leaves a lot to be desired.

On the one hand, top Ukrainian officials are pursuing an approach similar to Putin’s in establishing a “correct” version of history. On the other hand, the poor quality of Ukrainian textbooks is to blame.

Kasianov said the major problem with Ukraine’s textbooks is institutional.

“The system for evaluating textbooks in Ukraine is non-transparent, muddled by conflicts of interest and ineffective. The main problem is that the primary consumers – parents, teachers and students – have no influence on quality and are forced to use what the state imposes upon them. It’s not an issue of influencing the contents of textbooks. It’s a question of the right to choose among several textbooks on a given subject that are different in terms of quality,” Kasianov said.

“In contrast to Russia, these issues are actively discussed by professional historians and the public in Ukraine, but so far with little results.”

Officials have become more involved in humanitarian disciplines, Kasianov said, citing Yushchenko’s campaign to have Holodomor recognized as genocide against the Ukrainian people. The president’s administration has also signalled to the Institute of National Memory that it should prepare a “correct” textbook on Ukraine’s history.

“But the permanent political mess is drawing Ukrainian officials’ attention away from more active interference,” Kasianov said.