Transatlantic Politics

The Russian school manuals are being rewritten in order to fit the Putin doctrine of a strong Russia, unashamed of its past, bluntly distorting facts and bullying the US. Even scarier is the glorification of Stalin. The Times reports from Moscow: 

One [manual], for social studies teachers, presents as fact Mr Putin’s view that the Soviet collapse was “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century”. It describes the United States as bent on creating a global empire and determined to isolate Russia from its neighbours. 

The book describes Josef Stalin as “the most successful Soviet leader ever” and dismisses the prison labour camps and mass purges as a necessary part of his drive to make the country great. The manuals are intended to serve as the basis for developing new textbooks in schools next year, though Education Ministry officials insisted that they would not be compulsory. Mr Putin gave them his seal of approval at a conference he hosted for teachers at his presidential dacha last month. He described Stalin’s Great Purge of 1937, in which 1.5 million people were imprisoned and 700,000 killed, as terrible “but in other countries even worse things happened”. Discounting the Soviet Union’s long history of oppression, he said: “We had no other black pages, such as Nazism, for instance.”

Pavel Danilin, who wrote the chapter on Sovereign Democracy, told The Times that it explained the “core transformation” of Russia under Mr Putin.

“We understand that the only guarantee for our democracy is our sovereignty, our strong state, our strong army, our strong economy and our strong nation,” he said. “It is not an ideology. It is just common sense. And my intention was to explain that common sense to teachers.”

 The new history manuals also explain Putin's support for Viktor Yanukovich in Ukraine during the "Orange Revolution":

Mr Putin’s support for Viktor Yanukovych in Ukraine’s rigged presidential election of 2004 is also defended. Mass protests in the Orange revolution eventually brought his pro-Western rival, Viktor Yushchenko, to power, but the manual states: “Yanukovych was the only candidate capable of truly resisting Yushchenko. So Russia’s choice was clear.”

Some more on the Stalinist era revival here. Le Figaro also writes about the "rehabilitation of the Communist past". And the Daily Mail about a freakish revival of "youth camps", a la Hilter: "Sex for the Motherland".

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