Revisionist history as propaganda in Russia
Earlier this week, Czech Republic's Ministry of Foreign Affairs lodged a complaint against a documentary recently shown on Russian state TV channel Rossiya-1.
Why? Because, as the Gazeta.ru article explained, it, shall we say, took some liberties with historical facts about the Prague Spring. Prague Spring, for those who don't know, being a period of liberalization reforms in what was then socialist Czechoslovakia that was brutally ended by Soviet troops.
AP Photo/Libor Hajsky/(via Gazeta.ru)
I'm just going to translate the relevant passage below.
["Warsaw Pact - the Declassified pages" documentary], which dealt with the 60-year anniversary of the political-military uninon between USSR and the socialist countries of Eastern Europe, said that Soviet troops and their allies entered Czechoslovakia to prevent a takeover by NATO forces
The documentary said that the decision to send Warsaw Pact troops into then-united country was made by the Soviet government was made to defend "the fraternal nation of Czechoslovakia." In reality, the USSR government was concerned about the polities the reformist wing of Communist Party of Czechoslovakia implemented under the "socialism with a human face." It described [the policies] as scheming by the West and USA.
During the clashes [between Soviet troops and protestors], over 100 residents of Czechoslovakia were killed, many leaders of the Prague Spring were arrested and reformist leader Alexandr Dubchek was removed from all positions and sent into exile.
The interpretation of the events shows in the documentary really doesn't look even a little objective
"The narrative about the supposedly peaceful uprising under the romantic name of "Prague Spring" is nothing propaganda that falls apart under accounts from real participants in those events," the off-screen narrator of the film states. The main protagonist of the documentary, who explains what happened on those days, was the [Communist Party of the Russian Federation] MP Yuri Sivel'schikov, who was the a 20-year-old Soviet army soldier
What makes this especially weird is that, as the article points out, the idea that Soviet Union was in the wrong on this one wasn't that controversial. My country apologized for it not once, but twice. As recently as 2007, Putin told Czech president that Russia fees "deep moral responsibility" for the incident.
If this interpretation of Paris Spring sound an awful lot like the Russian state media's official position on what happened in Ukraine... It's because that's probably the point.
According to Assistant Department head of the Decision Support and Forecasting Center [of the Central Economics and Mathematics Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences] Sergey Utkin calls the interpretation expressed in the film the 'deliberate revisionism.'
This is a a return of using pre-Perestroika interpretations of a wide array of historical events," he said."Of course, this is painfully received not only in the affected foreign countries, but also by the part of Russian society that values Perestroika's victories. In my view, this is the biggest problem not for Czechs or Slovaks, but us ourselves. Our ideologues think that if they can show that were were always in the right, it would give the people confidence and will to win. But in the real world, victories are facilitated by the ability to think clearly, rather than getting blinded by the feeling of our own flawlessness."
On his part, head of the Council for External and Internal Politics Fyodor Lun'yakov noted that the interpretation laid out by the film's creators is "fairly predictable."
"It's a look at historical events not from the perspective of scientific subjectivity, but from the current party line, where the biggest threats are the 'orange revolutions' and 'sabotage from within,'" he said, noting that this view of various historical events became especially prominent in the wake of the events in Ukraine.
Among the examples of the new interpretation of historical events was sending USSR troops to Afghanistan, which, by the end of 1980s was already seen as "foolhardiness." [Strannik's note: for Westerners - for as long as I've been live, Russians saw Afghanistan as our Vietnam.] Meanwhile, in his speech to Afghanistan veterans last February, Putin stated that invasion was driven by "real threats."
For reference, the catalyst for the war in Afganistan was Soviet special forces' overthrow of Stalinist Hafusulla Amin because of his disloyalty to USSR. At the time, Soviet politicians dubbed him an "American Agent."
As I've written plenty of times before, the events in Ukraine seems to have really driven the United Russia apparatus to tighten the screws. But the last few months have seen the paranoia reached some bizarre new heights - the criticism of Leviathan because its depiction of Russian corruption made Russia look bad, the backlash against Child 44 (because it supposedly makes the Soviet soldiers look bad - which prompted me to ask, incredulously, if we weren't allowed to say anything bad about the people who enforced Stalin's purges. Because, even in Soviet Union (after Stalin's death) the media was allowed to depict them as bad guys)
But this latest bit of news does invite an obvious question. Is it really just an effort to whitewash Russian history, or is the state media laying the groundwork for escalation of the Ukrainian Crisis and outright Russian military intervention. Since the article was written, the very shaky not-quite-peace was shattered.
Mind you, I don't think the government has any particular appetite for an outright invasion. Russia is expected to sink more than 676 billion rubles into Crimea - and, unlike militia-held sections of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasti, the peninsula hasn't been ravaged by almost a year of fighting. The age when Russia's oil, gas and natural resources were bottomless piggiebank is over.
But I could see the government hedging its bets. Just in case.
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02.06.2015, 08:42
Чехия пересмотрела российский телевизор
МИД Чехии выразил протест против показанного по российскому телевидению фильма, в котором фактически оправдывалось...
http://www.gazeta.ru/politics/2015/06/01_a_6742325.shtml
Why? Because, as the Gazeta.ru article explained, it, shall we say, took some liberties with historical facts about the Prague Spring. Prague Spring, for those who don't know, being a period of liberalization reforms in what was then socialist Czechoslovakia that was brutally ended by Soviet troops.
AP Photo/Libor Hajsky/(via Gazeta.ru)
I'm just going to translate the relevant passage below.
["Warsaw Pact - the Declassified pages" documentary], which dealt with the 60-year anniversary of the political-military uninon between USSR and the socialist countries of Eastern Europe, said that Soviet troops and their allies entered Czechoslovakia to prevent a takeover by NATO forces
The documentary said that the decision to send Warsaw Pact troops into then-united country was made by the Soviet government was made to defend "the fraternal nation of Czechoslovakia." In reality, the USSR government was concerned about the polities the reformist wing of Communist Party of Czechoslovakia implemented under the "socialism with a human face." It described [the policies] as scheming by the West and USA.
During the clashes [between Soviet troops and protestors], over 100 residents of Czechoslovakia were killed, many leaders of the Prague Spring were arrested and reformist leader Alexandr Dubchek was removed from all positions and sent into exile.
The interpretation of the events shows in the documentary really doesn't look even a little objective
"The narrative about the supposedly peaceful uprising under the romantic name of "Prague Spring" is nothing propaganda that falls apart under accounts from real participants in those events," the off-screen narrator of the film states. The main protagonist of the documentary, who explains what happened on those days, was the [Communist Party of the Russian Federation] MP Yuri Sivel'schikov, who was the a 20-year-old Soviet army soldier
What makes this especially weird is that, as the article points out, the idea that Soviet Union was in the wrong on this one wasn't that controversial. My country apologized for it not once, but twice. As recently as 2007, Putin told Czech president that Russia fees "deep moral responsibility" for the incident.
If this interpretation of Paris Spring sound an awful lot like the Russian state media's official position on what happened in Ukraine... It's because that's probably the point.
According to Assistant Department head of the Decision Support and Forecasting Center [of the Central Economics and Mathematics Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences] Sergey Utkin calls the interpretation expressed in the film the 'deliberate revisionism.'
This is a a return of using pre-Perestroika interpretations of a wide array of historical events," he said."Of course, this is painfully received not only in the affected foreign countries, but also by the part of Russian society that values Perestroika's victories. In my view, this is the biggest problem not for Czechs or Slovaks, but us ourselves. Our ideologues think that if they can show that were were always in the right, it would give the people confidence and will to win. But in the real world, victories are facilitated by the ability to think clearly, rather than getting blinded by the feeling of our own flawlessness."
On his part, head of the Council for External and Internal Politics Fyodor Lun'yakov noted that the interpretation laid out by the film's creators is "fairly predictable."
"It's a look at historical events not from the perspective of scientific subjectivity, but from the current party line, where the biggest threats are the 'orange revolutions' and 'sabotage from within,'" he said, noting that this view of various historical events became especially prominent in the wake of the events in Ukraine.
Among the examples of the new interpretation of historical events was sending USSR troops to Afghanistan, which, by the end of 1980s was already seen as "foolhardiness." [Strannik's note: for Westerners - for as long as I've been live, Russians saw Afghanistan as our Vietnam.] Meanwhile, in his speech to Afghanistan veterans last February, Putin stated that invasion was driven by "real threats."
For reference, the catalyst for the war in Afganistan was Soviet special forces' overthrow of Stalinist Hafusulla Amin because of his disloyalty to USSR. At the time, Soviet politicians dubbed him an "American Agent."
As I've written plenty of times before, the events in Ukraine seems to have really driven the United Russia apparatus to tighten the screws. But the last few months have seen the paranoia reached some bizarre new heights - the criticism of Leviathan because its depiction of Russian corruption made Russia look bad, the backlash against Child 44 (because it supposedly makes the Soviet soldiers look bad - which prompted me to ask, incredulously, if we weren't allowed to say anything bad about the people who enforced Stalin's purges. Because, even in Soviet Union (after Stalin's death) the media was allowed to depict them as bad guys)
But this latest bit of news does invite an obvious question. Is it really just an effort to whitewash Russian history, or is the state media laying the groundwork for escalation of the Ukrainian Crisis and outright Russian military intervention. Since the article was written, the very shaky not-quite-peace was shattered.
Mind you, I don't think the government has any particular appetite for an outright invasion. Russia is expected to sink more than 676 billion rubles into Crimea - and, unlike militia-held sections of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasti, the peninsula hasn't been ravaged by almost a year of fighting. The age when Russia's oil, gas and natural resources were bottomless piggiebank is over.
But I could see the government hedging its bets. Just in case.
---
02.06.2015, 08:42
Чехия пересмотрела российский телевизор
МИД Чехии выразил протест против показанного по российскому телевидению фильма, в котором фактически оправдывалось...
http://www.gazeta.ru/politics/2015/06/01_a_6742325.shtml