Moscow to make it a crime to criticize Soveit military in WW

[Annelie]

http://www.nationalpost.com/todays-pape ... id=1360604

Russia is to outlaw criticism of Soviet military tactics during the Second World War.

The plan was announced after a television documentary exposed the scale of human losses during one of the conflict's bloodiest battles.

The program stirred deep emotions in a country that traditionally glorified the exploits of ordinary soldiers during the "Great Patriotic War," but often ignored the immense human cost of the victory over Nazi Germany.

As anger grew over the documentary, the government was thought to have taken advantage of the public mood at a time when recession threatened the popularity of Vladimir Putin, the Prime Minister.

Sergei Shoigu, the Emergency Situations Minister, called for a law that would make it a criminal offence to suggest the Soviet Union did not win the war.

Mr Shoigu indicated the legislation would also seek to punish other states that denied they were liberated by the Red Army. Their leaders could be banned from Russian soil.

He added he was alarmed by "a growth in infringements on our memory," apparently referring to the celebration of wartime anti-Soviet guerrilla movements in Ukraine and Poland.

The Minister's comments were also aimed at Estonia, which moved a statue of a Red Army soldier from a central square in Tallinn, the capital city, to a nearby war cemetery two years ago, prompting outrage in Russia.

"The presidents of certain countries denying this would not be able to visit our country and remain unpunished. Mayors of certain cities would also think several times before pulling down monuments," he said.

Mr. Shoigu has won support for his proposal from Yuri Chaika, the prosecutor-general, and other legislators who say that a bill will be presented before parliament in the next few months.

Liberal Russians fear the legislation will be used to punish anyone who criticizes the manner in which Stalin conducted the war.

More than 26 million Russians are said to have been killed in 1941-45, a death toll that dwarfs the losses of any other country. Yet in Russia, where Stalin is revered as the country's wartime saviour, the subject remains forbidden.

"The Kremlin has been actively campaigning for the rehabilitation of Stalin," said Orlando Figes, a British historian who claimed this week his Russian publishers had scrapped the translation of his book The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin's Russia on the orders of the Kremlin.

"It wants Russians to take pride in Soviet history and not to be burdened with a paralysing sense of guilt about the repressions of the Stalin period."

Last year, the Georgianborn Stalin, who died on March 5, 1953, came a close third in a state television poll late last year to find the "greatest Russian" in history.

Perhaps other countries should take note on this?

[Rolf Steiner]

There seems to be a strange hankering for the good old bad old days there, which can't be a healthy trait. Has Stalin's reputation really been that reglossed there? I thought subsequent administrations had given him the hatchet treatment.

[Tom Houlihan]

Revisionist laws? Great! Just like the old days.

[phylo_roadking]

Well, with the economy dissolving THERE just as fast as anywhere, maybe they're just preparing the people for the "benefits" and "joys" of central control of the economy, etc...etc...

[Paddy Keating]

Maybe we need leaders who will make it a crime to criticise or undermine Western values and the historical achievements of our armies. Well...not all our armies! Just the ones that have managed to win a war or two in the last few centuries. Legislation should also be enacted to make working class men wear brown pinstriped suits - with knotted hankies on their heads during bank holiday weekends - and working class women wear floral print dresses and clumpy shoes. Mind you, the West would have to reinstate a working class. Now, there's a radical thought. The Ivans do have something, though. Turning the clock back to 1945 might not be a bad idea.

PK

[Pirx]

Moscow to make it a crime to criticize Soveit military in WW.
What a surpirse, nothing new, typical, homo sovieticus, putinism...