Distortion of history is a major theme in modern information warfare. On the eve of the celebration of the 68th anniversary of the Victory of the USSR in the Great Patriotic War, rabid lies are again gaining momentum, the purpose of which is to nullify the unprecedented feat of our soldiers. Attempts to revise the results of World War II are being carried out at the highest level.

The bigger the lie, the sooner they will believe it.

J. Goebbels.

Distortion of history is a major theme in modern information warfare. On the eve of the celebration of the 68th anniversary of the Victory of the USSR in the Great Patriotic War, rabid lies are again gaining momentum, the purpose of which is to nullify the unprecedented feat of our soldiers. Attempts to revise the results of World War II are being carried out at the highest level. On July 3, 2009, the European Parliament adopted a resolution “On the reunification of a divided Europe,” according to which August 23, the day of signing the non-aggression treaty between the USSR and Germany (Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact), is proposed to be considered a day of remembrance of “the victims of Nazism and Stalinism.”

As if there were no attempts by the USSR to enter into an alliance with Great Britain and France, which they abandoned, pushing Hitler to aggression in the East. As if Russia, as a result of the forced pact, did not receive additional time to prepare for the inevitable war and additional space 300 km from the transfer of the state border. Denying the obvious, inventing the most incredible explanations for long-known facts, is the favorite style of falsifiers of any level.

Their goal is the same: to fill the heads of ill-informed people with ersatz trash about how Stalin was preparing an attack on Germany, but nothing came of it, which is why he did not ride a dashing horse across Red Square, but sprinkled ashes on his head on the platform of the mausoleum, until Americans successfully solved their geopolitical problems in Europe.

"Holier than the Pope"

Surprisingly, such nonsense is spread not only by Western “historians” and their fugitive followers. Our compatriots also voluptuously mock the shrines of their people. Moreover, if Western “historians” are only trying to share responsibility for the outbreak of World War II between Germany and Russia, then our biased “experts,” burdened by personal frustrations and the archetypal acquisitiveness of Western grants, go even further, blaming Russia exclusively for the outbreak of the war.

The “icebreaker” man V. Rezun, a former Chekist defector who brazenly appropriated the glorious surname “Suvorov,” writes a lot about the “so-called Great Patriotic War.” He is echoed by other pseudo-sufferers of historical truth - G. Popov, K. Alexandrov, B. Sokolov, I. Chubais, D. Winter, etc. Referring to “a number of scientists,” and in fact, echoing the “genius” of fascist propaganda Goebbels, they accuse the USSR in preparing an attack on Germany, they are trying to belittle the importance of the Soviet-German front in the defeat of fascism and the liberation of Europe from the Nazi yoke.

A look from the inside

The interpretation of historical events always depends on point of view. You can juggle facts and figures for a long time. When the flow of facts dries up, it is easy to refer to “closed archives.” The inconsistency of the attempts of falsifiers of the history of the Great Patriotic War becomes obvious if we consider historical events in the context of the properties of the mental unconscious. System-vector psychology of Yuri Burlan convincingly shows that the eight-dimensional matrix of the mental unconscious works not only at the level of the individual, but also at the level of states.

The given properties of the collective psyche underlie the mentality of the people, determining their picture of the world and ways of interacting with it. The contrast between the urethral-muscular mentality of Russia and the skin mentality of Europe explains many of the “miracles” of our common history. The victory of the Soviet people in the Great Patriotic War is a victory in the struggle of worldviews (mentalities). It convincingly testifies to the superiority of mercy over cruelty, selflessness over egocentrism, natural bestowal over the archetypal desire to appropriate someone else's, the spiritual feat of including the desires and aspirations of all humanity over the sick sound idea of ​​world domination.

Everything for victory

By falsifying the facts in their own interests, falsifiers of the history of the Great Patriotic War argue that the cost of the USSR victory was so great that this victory can be considered a “Pyrrhic” victory, that is, a defeat. The prudence of the Western mentality, the desire to set a price for everything and avoid unpredictability in any way does not allow skinny individualists to accept the urethral system of values, when for the sake of preserving the whole, not something, but everything is sacrificed. If we are talking about preserving the integrity of the country, “we are not behind the price.” This has never satisfied our enemies.

The idea of ​​the identity of the Soviet social system and Nazi ideology, communism and fascism stuck in my teeth. This nonsense, designed to be completely dense, has even penetrated textbooks (“History of Russia. 20th century: 1939-2007”, “Astrel” and “AST” in 2009, edited by A. B. Zubov), where in the very title Chapter “Soviet-Nazi War” has already concluded the position of the authors: two dictators, two totalitarian regimes fought for world domination! The fact that world domination was needed by only one person - the mentally ill and anally frustrated moral degenerate Hitler, the fact that the Soviet side honestly complied with the terms of the peace treaty with Germany is simply kept silent. Silence is a powerful weapon of falsification, as is appealing to unimportant facts while ignoring essential ones.

The Myth of the Geneva Convention

You can often hear the myth about Stalin’s failure to sign the Hague Convention and the Geneva “Agreement on the Treatment of Prisoners of War,” they say, that’s why the Nazis treated our captives this way. According to statistics, only 13% of Germans did not return to their homeland from Soviet captivity; 58% of prisoners died in fascist dungeons. Is the reason for such a terrible difference in the unsigned contract? Of course not.

Tsarist Russia, like Kaiser Germany, signed the Hague Convention on the Laws of Land War back in 1907. The Decree of the Council of People's Commissars of June 4, 1918 declared that “international conventions and agreements relating to the Red Cross, recognized by Russia before October 1915, are recognized and will be respected by the Russian Soviet Government, which retains all rights and prerogatives based on these conventions and agreements."

And although in 1929 the USSR did not join the Geneva Convention “On the Treatment of Prisoners of War” (we were against the division of prisoners of war according to nationality), already in 1931 the People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs of the USSR announced the USSR's accession to the 1929 convention, about which the German government the moment of the beginning of the war could not have been unknown. The myth that the USSR was outside the rules provided for by the Geneva Convention, which means that anything could be done with Soviet prisoners of war, is nothing more than a “canard” of fascist propaganda, zealously supported by falsifiers of all stripes.

Moreover, all countries that signed the Geneva Convention, including Germany, accepted the responsibility to treat prisoners humanely, regardless of whether their countries signed the convention or not. Another thing is that long before the start of the war, German fascism set itself the goal of the complete destruction and enslavement of “racially inferior” peoples. By clearing living space for the “Aryan” nation in this way, the fascists placed themselves outside the law.

How could this happen on the basis of the skin mentality of the Germans with their love of law and order? How could an entire nation “go crazy”? System-vector psychology helps answer this question.

When the sick sound dominates

The sick idea of ​​a superman, in whose service millions of untermensch “subhumans” should be placed, found strong support in the frustrated large part of the German population, which felt the strongest resentment towards life. A person who is deadlocked in grievances always wants to “even out the square,” and it is better if this happens at the expense of those who are guilty of injustices towards him. The culprits were found - Untermensch, primarily Jews and Slavs, communists. They were the focus of both the anal desire of individual unfulfilled citizens and the skin desire for revenge of the entire German nation after the Treaty of Versailles, which was predatory for Germany.

The urethral-muscular mentality is truly inaccessible to the skin's understanding. There is restriction in the skin - but the urethra does not see boundaries, in the skin there is discipline - but the urethra is willful, there is no skin ambition in it, which is perceived by the skin mentality as laziness or indifference. The urethral-muscular mentality of Russia opposes European skin individualism, the desire to rebuild the whole world from itself and for itself, with natural bestowal and conciliarity, the primacy of the collective “we” over “I” - the last letter in the Russian alphabet.

The humility and long-suffering of peasant, muscular Russia are deceptive. In a state of war, the Russians slowly but inevitably mobilize and become invincible, as the muscular army takes on the properties of urethral commanders. An army of urethral leaders arises, invincible by skin regular units. This is how it was under Alexander Nevsky, this was the answer to Karl of Sweden, this is how we fought in the Patriotic War of 1812, and in the Civil War, and in the First Imperialist War. This mechanism was repeated during the Great Patriotic War against Hitler's fascism. The mentality of the people is a stable formation, reinforced by the properties of the mental unconscious.

Show me how to die for my country

By the time the War began, the USSR remained 66% a peasant country. The response of the muscular people to the invasion of the deeply alien, high-tech, well-functioning military machine of Hitler’s Germany into their borders was an internal, irresistible desire to defend their land at all costs from strangers who were taking away their daily bread, the opportunity to live and work on their land. In such a situation, the exploits of individual urethral heroes immediately became widespread. And this is not only and not so much a matter of propaganda and not at all a matter of coercion, as the liars from the “alternative history” of the Great Patriotic War are trying to prove. The mass heroism of the Soviet people was an internal response of the muscular psychic unconscious to a clear example of the urethral sacrifice of one’s life for the sake of preserving the lives of all.

The first feat, which later received the name Alexander Matrosov, which due to circumstances became known earlier, was accomplished by the political instructor of the tank company Alexander Pankratov already at the end of the summer of 1941. Political instructor Pankratov covered the enemy firing point with his body, “buying” from the enemy with his life a few seconds for the unit to advance and a dozen lives of fellow soldiers. In total, during the Great Patriotic War, 403 soldiers repeated the feat of Pankratov-Matrosov, and these are only officially known facts.

“There are known cases when, under the impression of one feat that had just been accomplished, a second and a third were performed in the same battle... Thus, in one of the battles with the Nazis, Sergeant Ivan Gerasimenko, privates Alexander Krasilov and Leonty Cheremnov covered the enemy’s existing machine-gun embrasures. Group feats were performed by Soviet soldiers P.L. Gutchenko and A.L. Pekalchuk, I.G. Voilokov and A.D. Strokov, N.P. Zhuikov and F.N. Mazilin, N.A. Vilkov and P. I. Ilyichev."

On the very first day of the war, June 22, 1941, the flight commander of the 62nd Fighter Aviation Regiment, Senior Lieutenant Pyotr Chirkin, sent his burning plane into a cluster of German tanks. On June 27, 1941, on the second day after the death of Nikolai Gastello, the commander of the 21st bomber wing, Lieutenant Dmitry Tarasov, in the Lvov region, hit a motorized convoy of invaders with his burning car. On June 29, 1941, on the territory of Belarus, the deputy squadron commander of the 128th Bomber Aviation Regiment, Senior Lieutenant Isaac Preisen, blew up his bomber in a large fascist tank column. On July 4, 1941, Captain Lev Mikhailov rammed his burning plane into German tanks. There are known cases when in one combat mission a bomber group carried out two or three air-ground fire rams.

Examples of mass heroism in the Great Patriotic War can be given endlessly. During the defense of Moscow and Leningrad, in the battles on the Volga and the Kursk Bulge, during the liberation of the countries of Eastern Europe, in battles with Japanese militarists, people of different nationalities, religions, social origins and education, united into a single Soviet people, without hesitation, sacrificed their lives for the sake of peace in earth. But it is precisely the exploits of the first days of the war that clearly illustrate the complete failure of attempts to attribute the heroism of the Soviet people to propaganda and coercion. Even if he wanted to, “bloody Stalinism” would not have had time to either force or fool him - this was the first, natural, unconscious reaction of people to an attempt to take away their home, homeland, and country.

Conclusion

The deheroization of Soviet soldiers is accompanied by the praise of traitors to the motherland and attempts to revise the decisions of the Nuremberg trials. Analysis of many individual facts of falsification of the history of the Great Patriotic War goes far beyond the scope of this article. Thanks to the systematic psychoanalysis of Yuri Burlan, one can easily see the falsity of any fabrications and their true purpose, no matter how the desire for “objectivity” the falsifiers hide behind.

The purpose of falsifying Russian history is the desire to divide our people along fictitious national and/or religious lines. The enemies of our country would like to see us repent of non-existent sins, because it is so easy to make very specific territorial and material claims for this matter. The goal of the modern information war against Russia is to destroy the urethral mentality of our people, destroy their values, turn them into a slave herd, obediently consuming low-grade goods of someone else's overproduction.

Each individual fake is not worth a penny and is easily refuted by facts. Penetrating into textbooks and the media, falsification of the history of the Great Patriotic War can cause irreparable harm to the younger generation, and this is its main danger for the future of the country. Systematic psychoanalysis shows that, in addition to specific historical facts that can be manipulated, ignored or silenced, there is a basic structure of the psyche that explains the impossibility of certain events in reality, no matter how beautifully and convincingly they are presented for the sake of someone’s immediate benefit.

Bibliography:

1) Vasiliev N. M. The Great Patriotic War under the pen of falsifiers. Collection RUSO - Be careful, history, M., 2011.

2) Georgi N. The Great Patriotic War: the greatest feats of the war. Evening Kharkov, April 27, 2005

3) Matvienko Yu. A. Dedicated to the 70th anniversary of the beginning of the Second World War. Part 2. IAP “Geopolitika”, 2011.

4) Frolov M.I., Kutuzov V.A., Ilyin E.V., Vasilik Vladimir, deacon. Collective report at the international conference “The Second World War and the Great Patriotic War in history textbooks of the CIS countries and the EU: problems, approaches, interpretations”, April 8-9 at the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies (RISI).

5) Shchutsky S. Hero of the Soviet Union Nikolai Gastello. Minsk, 1952.

Proofreader: Natalya Konovalova

ABSTRACT

on the course “History of Russia”

on the topic: “Lessons of the Second World War and the main directions of its falsification”

1 Key Lessons from World War II

The events of World War II are becoming increasingly distant in time. However, millions of people never stop thinking about the reasons that gave rise to this war, its results and lessons. Many of these lessons are still relevant today.

The Great Patriotic War is one of the most tragic pages in the history of our country. The Soviet people and their Armed Forces had to experience many difficulties and hardships. But the four-year fierce struggle against the fascist invaders culminated in our complete victory over the Wehrmacht forces. The experience and lessons of this war are of great importance for the current generation.

One of the main lessons is that the fight against military danger must be waged while the war has not yet begun. Moreover, it will be carried out by the collective efforts of peace-loving states, peoples, everyone who cherishes peace and freedom.

The Second World War was not fatally inevitable. It could have been prevented if the Western countries had not made fatal political mistakes and strategic miscalculations.

Of course, the direct culprit of the war is German fascism. It is he who bears full responsibility for unleashing it. However, Western countries, with their short-sighted policy of appeasement, their desire to isolate the Soviet Union and direct expansion to the East, created the conditions under which war became a reality.

The Soviet Union, for its part, in the troubled pre-war years, made a lot of efforts to consolidate the forces opposing aggression. However, the proposals put forward by the USSR constantly ran into obstacles from the Western powers and their stubborn unwillingness to cooperate. In addition, Western countries sought to stay away from the military confrontation between Nazi Germany and the USSR.

Only after the aggressor captured almost all of Western Europe did Soviet diplomacy manage to prevent the formation of a single bloc of states hostile to the USSR and avoid a war on two fronts. This was one of the prerequisites for the emergence of the anti-Hitler coalition and, ultimately, the defeat of the aggressor.

Another important lesson of the Great Patriotic War is that military cooperation should be carried out not only taking into account the economic capabilities of the country, but also a real assessment of existing military threats. The solution to the question of what kind of war the Armed Forces should be preparing for and what defense tasks they will have to solve depends on this.

When planning military development, it is important to take into account all factors that ensure the country's security: political-diplomatic, economic, ideological, information and defense.

In the pre-war years, many military theoretical developments remained unrealized. But our country is the birthplace of operational military art, and it was in those years that the development of the theory of deep operations was completed. The same can be said with regard to weapons: there were many new developments, but the troops did not have them in the required quantity.

This deficiency is partly manifested at present in the Russian army. So, if seven previously unknown types of weapons were used in the Second World War, twenty-five in the Korean War (1950 - 1953), thirty in four Arab-Israeli military conflicts, then in the Persian Gulf War - about a hundred. Therefore, the need to improve the products of the state’s military-industrial complex is obvious.

The following lesson has not lost its relevance - the Armed Forces can count on success if they skillfully master all forms of military action. It must be admitted that in the pre-war period mistakes were made in the theoretical development of a number of important problems, which negatively affected the practice of combat training of troops. Thus, in the military theory of that period, the main method of action of the Armed Forces in a future war was considered to be a strategic offensive, and the role of defense remained downplayed. As a result, the unfounded desire of the Soviet military command to conduct military operations primarily by offensive and on foreign territory was manifested,” and our troops were trained accordingly.

After the war, in the conditions of global confrontation, there was no other alternative but to prepare for a world war using all available forces and means. Now, with the end of the Cold War, the priority task is to prepare for local wars and armed conflicts, to master the methods of conducting combat operations, taking into account their characteristics based on the experience of Afghanistan, Chechnya, the war in the Persian Gulf, etc., as well as the fight against terrorism.

At the same time, according to some military leaders, it would be a big mistake to exclude the possibility of a large-scale war in Russia, which could break out as a result of the growth of small conflicts and regional war. Taking this into account, it is necessary not to weaken attention to the mobilization, operational and combat training of troops, and to comprehensively train army and navy personnel. Events in various regions of the world confirm that the main emphasis in combat training must be placed on training in combat operations in the context of the use of conventional, long-range, high-precision weapons, but with the continuing threat of the use of nuclear weapons. The latter is becoming the property of an increasing number of states, including countries with extremist political regimes.

The most important lesson from the outbreak of war is a thorough analysis of various options for the actions of a potential enemy and flexible planning for the use of forces and means, and most importantly, the adoption of all necessary measures to maintain the Armed Forces at a sufficient degree of combat readiness.

As you know, during the last war, measures to transfer troops to martial law were carried out very late. As a result, our troops found themselves in a state of “relative combat readiness” with a personnel shortage of up to 40 - 60 percent, which did not allow us to complete not only the strategic, but also the operational deployment of groups in the composition envisaged by the mob plan.

Despite the availability of information about the threat of war from Nazi Germany, the Soviet leadership did not take appropriate measures to bring the troops of the western districts into combat readiness.

The strategic deployment of German strike forces was significantly ahead of the deployment of Red Army troops in the border districts. The balance of forces and means, as well as the number of formations in the first echelons of the opposing sides, gave a more than twofold advantage in favor of Germany, which allowed it to deliver the first powerful blow.

The lesson of the last war is that the winner is not the side that struck first and achieved decisive successes at the very beginning of hostilities, but the one that has more moral and material forces, which skillfully uses them and is able to turn the potential for victory into real reality. Our victory was not historically determined, as has been emphasized in the past. It was won in a stubborn struggle, at the cost of enormous effort of all the forces of the state, its people and army.

Not a single state of the anti-Hitler coalition carried out such a mobilization of human and material resources as the Soviet Union did during the war, no one endured such trials as befell the Soviet people and their Armed Forces.

In the first 8 months of the war alone, about 11 million people were mobilized, of which more than 9 million were sent to staff both newly created and existing combat units. The war consumed so many reserves that in a year and a half, the rifle troops in the active army renewed their composition three times.

Over the four years of the war, 29,575 thousand people were mobilized (minus 2,237.3 thousand people who were re-conscripted), and in total, together with the personnel who were in the Red Army and Navy on June 22, 1941, they entered the army system ( during the war years) 34,476 thousand people, which amounted to 17.5% of the total population of the country.

The most difficult trials that befell the peoples of the Soviet Union during the war allow us to draw another extremely important lesson: when the people and the army are united, the army is invincible. During these harsh years, the country's Armed Forces were connected by thousands of invisible threads

with the people, who helped them with both the necessary material means and spiritual strength, maintaining high morale and confidence in victory in the soldiers. This is confirmed by mass heroism, courage, and the unbending will to defeat the enemy.

The heroic traditions of the great historical past of our people have become an example of high patriotism and national self-awareness of our citizens. In the first three days of the war in Moscow alone, more than 70 thousand applications were received from them with a request to be sent to the front. In the summer and autumn of 1941, about 60 divisions and 200 separate militia regiments were created. Their number was about 2 million people. The whole country, in a single patriotic impulse, stood up to defend its independence.

The defense of the Brest Fortress in the first days of the war is a symbol of the perseverance, inflexibility, courage and heroism of the soldiers. Entire formations and units, companies and battalions covered themselves with unfading glory.

Even our opponents recognized the courage and heroism of Soviet soldiers. Thus, the former Nazi general Blumentritt, who fought against Russia with the rank of lieutenant back in the First World War, said in an interview with the English military historian Hart: “Already the battles of June 1941 showed us what the new Soviet army was like. We lost up to 50% of our personnel in battles. The Fuhrer and most of our command had no idea about this. It caused a lot of trouble." Another German general, Chief of the General Staff of the Wehrmacht Ground Forces, Gelder, wrote in his diary on the eighth day of the war: “Information from the front confirms that the Russians are fighting everywhere to the last man...”

Love for the Motherland and hatred for its enemies cemented the front and rear, made the country a powerful fortress, and became the most important factor in achieving victory.

2. Exposing the falsification of war history

During the Second World War, a fierce struggle was waged not only on the battlefields, but also in the spiritual sphere, for the minds and hearts of millions of people all over the planet. The ideological struggle was waged on a variety of issues of politics, international relations, the course and outcome of the war, while pursuing fundamentally different goals.

If the fascist leadership openly called on its people to enslave other peoples, to world domination, then the Soviet leadership always advocated a just liberation struggle and defense of the Fatherland.

Already during the war, politicians and historians appeared who propagated myths about the “preventive nature” of the war of Nazi Germany against the USSR, about the “accidentality of defeat” of the Nazi troops in major battles on the Soviet-German front, etc.

Victory in the war promoted the Soviet Union to the ranks of the world's leading powers and contributed to the growth of its authority and prestige in the international arena. This was in no way part of the plans of the reactionary international forces; it aroused in them outright anger and hatred, which led to the Cold War and violent ideological attacks against the USSR.

Throughout the entire post-war period, the events of the Great Patriotic War were one of the main areas of intense ideological confrontation between Western ideological centers and the Soviet Union.

The main objects of attack were the most important problems of the war - the history of the pre-war period, the military art of the command of the Red Army, the role and significance of various fronts, Soviet losses in the war, the price of victory, etc.

Falsified concepts and views on these and other problems were disseminated in millions of copies of books and articles, reflected in television and radio programs, and in works of cinema. The purpose of all this is to hide the real reasons that the Second World War was generated by the capitalist system itself; present the Soviet Union, along with Germany, as responsible for starting the war; to belittle the contribution of the USSR and its Armed Forces to the defeat of the fascist bloc and at the same time exalt the role of the Western allies in the anti-Hitler coalition in achieving victory.

Here are some of the techniques used by falsifiers of the history of the Great Patriotic War.

Throughout the entire post-war period, including the last decade, some Western historians (F. Fabry, D. Irving) have been disseminating versions that the USSR in 1941 wanted to be the first to start a war against Germany. The myth about Moscow’s readiness to unleash a preventive war against Germany is also present in the books of Russian-speaking historians V. Suvorov (Rezun), B. Sokolov and others. They even refer to the resolution that was allegedly imposed by the then First Deputy Chief of the General Staff N.F. Vatutin on the plan for strategic deployment in the West, adopted in March 1941: “Start the offensive on June 12.” However, it is known that decisions of this kind are made by the political leadership of the state, and not by the General Staff.

These authors do not provide convincing documents and facts about the Soviet Union’s preparation of an attack on Germany, because they do not exist in reality. As a result, speculative schemes are being written and conversations are being held about the USSR’s readiness to launch a “pre-emptive strike” and other fabrications in the same spirit.

Another technique by which Western falsifiers also try to justify the USSR’s preparation for an “offensive preventive war” against Germany is an arbitrary interpretation of Stalin’s speech to graduates of the military academies of the Red Army on May 5, 1941, which is called “aggressive,” “calling for war with Germany.” " This version is actively promoted by a number of Russian historians.

The peremptory and far-fetched nature of these conclusions is obvious. Facts indicate that in 1941, neither Hitler nor the Wehrmacht command had any reason to think that the USSR could attack Germany. No information was received in Berlin about the aggressive plans of the Soviet Union. On the contrary, German diplomats and German intelligence constantly reported on the USSR’s desire to maintain peace with Germany, to prevent the emergence of serious conflict situations in relations with this country, and on the readiness of our state to make certain economic concessions for this purpose. Until the very last moment, the USSR sent industrial and agricultural goods to Germany.

Falsifiers are making a lot of efforts to downplay the losses of the German side and exaggerate the losses of the Red Army in some major battles, thereby trying to downplay the significance of the latter. Thus, the German historian K. G. Friser, citing data from German archives, claims that during the tank battle near Prokhorovka on July 12, 1943, the losses of the German side were reduced to only 5 tanks. Another 38 tanks and 12 assault guns were damaged.

However, according to Russian military archives, it follows that the German side lost from 300 to 400 tanks and assault guns permanently. At the same time, the Soviet 5th Guards TA, which took the main part in the Battle of Prokhorov, suffered heavy losses - about 350 tanks and self-propelled guns. It turned out that the German historian provided data on the losses of only the 2nd SS Panzer Corps, keeping silent about the losses of the 48th and 3rd German Panzer Corps, which also took part in the battle.

Not only individual researchers, but also serious government organizations act in this way. For example, in 1991, the National Committee to Commemorate the 50th Anniversary of Victory in World War II was created in the United States. Soon this organization published a colorful anniversary booklet in a huge edition, prepared with the participation of historians. It opens with “A Chronicle of the Most Important Events of the Second World War.” And in this very detailed list, not a single one of the major battles is named, not a single one of the operations won or carried out by Soviet troops against the Nazi invaders. It’s as if there were no Moscow, Stalingrad, Kursk and other battles, after which Hitler’s army suffered irreparable losses and finally lost its strategic initiative.

In the post-war years, under the conditions of the Cold War, a huge amount of historical literature was published in the West, which distorted the true events of the Second World War and in every way belittled the role of the USSR in the defeat of the fascist aggressors. This falsification technique is still used today, although during the war our Western allies more objectively assessed the leading role of the USSR in the fight against the common enemy.

The Patriotic War was Great both in its scope and in the forces and means involved in the Soviet-German front. The total number of personnel on both sides in the active army alone reached 12 million people.

At the same time, in different periods, from 800 to 900 contingent divisions operated on a front from 3 to 6.2 thousand km, which riveted the vast majority of the armed forces of Germany, its allies and the Soviet Union, thereby exerting a decisive influence on the situation on other fronts of the Second World War .

US President F. Roosevelt noted that “... the Russians kill more enemy soldiers and destroy more of their weapons than all the other 25 states of the United Nations combined.”

From the rostrum of the House of Commons, W. Churchill declared on August 2, 1944 that “it was the Russian army that let the guts out of the German war machine.”

There were many similar assessments in those years. And this is not surprising. It was very difficult not to see the obvious truth: the decisive contribution of the Soviet Union to the Victory, its outstanding role in saving world civilization from the Hitlerite plague seemed indisputable. But soon after the defeat of fascism, the recent allies of the USSR began to speak differently, high assessments of our country’s role in the war were forgotten and judgments of a completely different kind appeared.

With particular persistence in post-war historiography, the idea was pursued that the most important battles of the Second World War did not take place on the Soviet-German front and the outcome of the armed confrontation of the two coalitions was decided not on land, but mainly at sea and in the airspace, where the armed forces of the United States and England carried out intense fighting. The authors of these publications claim that the leading force in the anti-Hitler coalition was the United States, since it had the most powerful armed forces among the capitalist countries.

Similar views on the role of the countries of the anti-Hitler coalition in achieving victory over fascism can be traced, for example, in the 85-volume “History of the Second World War” prepared by the historical section of the British Cabinet of Ministers, the 25-volume American “Illustrated Encyclopedia of the Second World War” and many other publications.

Our people appreciate the great contribution to the victory over fascism of the people of the USA, Great Britain, France, China and other countries of the anti-Hitler coalition. But it was on the Soviet-German front that the main battles of the Second World War took place; the main forces of Hitler’s Wehrmacht were concentrated here. Thus, from June 1941 until the opening of the second front on June 6, 1944, 92–95% of the ground forces of Nazi Germany and its satellites fought on the Soviet-German front, and then from 74 to 65%.

The Soviet Armed Forces defeated 507 Nazi divisions and 100 divisions of its allies, almost 3.5 times more than on all other fronts of World War II.

On the Soviet-German front, the enemy suffered three-quarters of its casualties. The damage to the personnel of the fascist army inflicted by the Red Army was 4 times greater than in the Western European and Mediterranean theaters of military operations combined, and in terms of the number of killed and wounded - 6 times. Here the bulk of the Wehrmacht's military equipment was destroyed: over 70 thousand (more than 75%) aircraft, about 50 thousand (up to 75%) tanks and assault guns, 167 thousand (74%) artillery pieces, more than 2.5 thousand ... warships, transports and auxiliary vessels.

The opening of a second front also did not change the importance of the Soviet-German front as the main one in the war. Thus, in June 1944, 181.5 German and 58 German allied divisions operated against the Red Army. The American and British troops were opposed by 81.5 German divisions. So all objective facts indicate that the Soviet Union made a decisive contribution to the defeat of Nazi Germany and its allies.

When assessing the results of the Great Patriotic War, Western historians pay especially close attention to the issue of the cost of victory, about our sacrifices during the war. Due to our large losses, the overall significance of the achieved victory is called into question.

It is known that the total losses of the USSR in the war amounted to 26.5 million people, of which 18 million were civilians who died as a result of fascist atrocities in the occupied territory. The total irretrievable losses (killed, missing, captured and not returned from it, died from wounds, illnesses and as a result of accidents) of the Soviet Armed Forces, together with border and internal troops, amounted to 8 million 668 thousand 400 people.

The losses of the fascist bloc amounted to 9.3 million people. (fascist Germany lost 7.4 million people, 1.2 million - its satellites in Europe, 0.7 million - Japan in the Manchurian operation), not counting the losses of auxiliary units from among the foreign formations that fought on the side of the fascists (according to according to some data - up to 500 - 600 thousand people).

In total, the irretrievable losses of the Soviet Armed Forces amounted to 1 - 1.5 million people. exceed the corresponding German losses. But this is due to the fact that there were 4.5 million Soviet prisoners of war in fascist captivity, and only 2 million people returned to the USSR after the war. The rest died as a result of fascist atrocities. Of the 3.8 million German prisoners of war, 450 thousand died in Soviet captivity.

Attempts to present the aggressor's losses as less than they actually were distort the historical truth and indicate the bias of those who seek to deliberately belittle the feat of the Soviet people in the Great Patriotic War.

Literature

1. History of the Second World War 1939 - 1945. In 12 volumes. T. 12. M., - 1982. p. 13 - 21, 33 - 37.

2. G. Kumanev. Our contribution to the victory over fascism: truth and fiction. //Reference point. - 2006. - No. 7.

3. G. Kumanev. Feat and forgery: pages of the Great Patriotic War of 1941 - 1945. M., - 2007 - p. 336 - 351.

4. 60 years since the beginning of the Great Patriotic War. Military-historical conference. // Appendix to the Military Historical Journal. M., 2001.

Report by leading researcher at RISS, Doctor of Political Sciences L. M. Vorobyova at the international scientific and practical conference held in Tiraspol on April 23-25, 2010.

L. M. Vorobyova

Leading Researcher, Department of Euro-Atlantic Studies,

Doctor of Political Science

The history of World War II remains a front of the most acute ideological, scientific, information and psychological struggle. On the eve of the celebration of the 65th anniversary of Victory in the Great Patriotic War and the Second World War, the efforts of falsifiers to shield the true culprits, to downplay the role of the USSR in the defeat of fascism, to denigrate the liberation mission of the Soviet Army, and to question the results of the war, continue unabated.

Attempts to reinterpret history are being made not only by the victors, but also by the vanquished, not only by the opponents of the USSR in the Cold War, but also by former allies in the Warsaw Pact, as well as by a number of former Soviet republics, primarily the Baltic ones.

This process of rewriting history also included part of the Russian scientific, journalistic and literary community. Some defend Suvorov’s “Icebreaker” and denounce Soviet military leaders who, allegedly, defeated the Germans not thanks to the art of war, but by overwhelming them with millions of corpses. Others demonstrate a hypocritical “objectivity”, following which they obscure the guilt of the creators of the Munich policy, and seek to misrepresent the goals of the USSR’s foreign policy in the 1930-1940s, the efforts of the Soviet government aimed at maintaining peace and collectively repelling aggression.

The most paradoxical thing is that the approaches of today's falsifiers of the history of the Second World War and the Great Patriotic War go back to the developments of the propaganda apparatus of the Third Reich. When preparing a campaign to the East, Hitler attached great importance not only to the creation of strategic offensive bridgeheads, not only to solving logistical, resource and food problems at the expense of third countries, but also to favorable propaganda support for his actions. It was in the depths of Hitler’s propaganda machine that myths arose about the “Soviet threat”, about “Soviet expansionism”, about the USSR’s desire to establish control over Eastern and South-Eastern Europe, about the “preventive” nature of the Barbarossa plan, about the “hostility” of the Soviet system to small peoples, about the “liberation mission” of the German Reich in the East, etc.

These and other myths became the core of the ideology of the Nazi occupation policy. Then they entered the arsenal of the Cold War ideologists, and were subsequently adapted to the needs of the current moment in the information and propaganda war against modern Russia.

The persistence of the myths and technological techniques of Hitler’s propaganda is partly explained by the fact that after the war, West Germany, which considered itself the successor of the German Reich, moved to the center of the conflict between East and West and took an important place among the ideologists of the Cold War. Denazification here took place formally, and the amnesty law adopted in 1949 opened the way for numerous officials, specialists and military personnel of the Third Reich to enter government structures, scientific institutions and the newly formed army. At the same time, in post-war Germany, a system of studying the East developed, put at the service of the Cold War, or Ostforschung. It included over 100 research institutions and institutes. Initially, many of them were ideological and organizational successors to the corresponding centers that existed in pre-war Germany. Not only German military officers, historians, lawyers, and political scientists who had previously worked for Hitler’s propaganda found refuge in the Ostforschung institutions, but also representatives of the elites of Eastern European countries who collaborated with Hitler’s occupation forces and then emigrated to Germany. It was this military generation of the defeated, who escaped punishment, that not only complicated the process of understanding the past in Germany, but also created the basis for further falsifications of the history of the Second World War.

In particular, the approaches of the West German professor Ernst Nolte and his like-minded people, expressed in the “dispute of historians” in 1986-1986, gave an undoubted falsifying impulse to the understanding of history. Thus, E. Nolte pulled out from the ideological storehouses of the Ostforschung the old Hitler’s thesis about “preventive war”, demanded that the theory of totalitarianism be restored as a basis for understanding history, putting Hitler and Stalin on the same level, tried to deprive the Nazi crimes of their exclusivity by presenting them as a reaction to the “Bolshevik threat”. Nolte's opponent, the West German philosopher Jurgen Habermas, was right when he saw in Nolte's concept a desire to downplay the crimes of the Third Reich in order to free Germany from its historical burden and historical debt.

Although during and after the dispute E. Nolte was subjected to sharp and justified criticism, the questions posed during the “dispute of historians” in Germany are in demand by falsifiers to this day. Was Hitler's war against the USSR preventive? To what extent did the Soviet Union act as a liberator? Wasn't he just a new conqueror? Is it possible to put the Gulag and Nazi concentration camps on the same level?

It is noteworthy that these issues are also being brought to the center of modern debate by Hitler's former allies from the countries of Central, Eastern and South-Eastern Europe. In their attempts to reinterpret the history of World War II and question the liberation mission of the Soviet army, one can see a desire to belittle their own country’s involvement in the crimes of National Socialism and present it as a victim of the “Soviet threat” and “Soviet expansionism.”

It should be said that the cultivation by the former countries of the Hitlerite coalition of their image as a victim became an important direction in reinterpreting their responsibility for the tragedy of the Second World War. This direction began immediately after the end of the war in West Germany. In fiction, films, the media, and in the statements of politicians, Germans see themselves as victims of the defeat at Stalingrad, unfortunate refugees fleeing the advance of the Soviet army, victims of the policies of the occupation authorities, victims of forced relocation (in German terminology - expulsion) from the eastern regions of the Reich and other places of centuries-old residence, victims of Anglo-American bombings and, of course, victims of Hitler and his executioners, who allegedly encouraged raped and terrorized Germans to do things completely alien to their human nature. And finally, in the film “Sunset” (2004), Hitler himself is already presented as a victim - a victim of his illusions and delusions, but also of changing military happiness, political betrayal and human loneliness.

In this case, we are dealing with belittling and even ignoring cause-and-effect relationships. This has become a widespread technique used by modern counterfeiters today. Therefore, restoring and preventing the oblivion of cause-and-effect relationships in the history of the Second World War remains the main direction of defending the truth about the war and the role of the Soviet Union in it.

An important place in the arsenal of ideas of modern falsifiers is occupied by the delights of American historiography, serving the goals of US foreign policy. Thus, the US claims to a leadership role in the post-war world were materialized in a false concept that actually denied the decisive role of the Soviet Union in World War II and extolled the US military contribution as the “chief architect” of Victory and the “arsenal of democracy.” Already during the war and immediately after its end, American historians examined events on the Soviet-German front without touching on the question of their influence on the general course of the war. At the same time, the results of the combat operations of the American-British troops in various theaters of military operations (in North Africa, Italy, France) were exaggerated in every possible way. Rejection of the results of World War II and the desire to revise them were reflected in statements according to which the post-war strengthening of the USSR’s position in Europe and Asia was mainly caused by the military-strategic mistakes of the United States, the nature of the international obligations they accepted during the war, and the assistance they rendered to the Soviet Union. In this context, attempts have been and are being made to discredit the liberation mission of the Soviet Army in the countries of Eastern and South-Eastern Europe as communist expansion in Europe, as a result of the intervention of Soviet troops in the internal affairs of these countries.

The demise of the Warsaw Pact, the unification of Germany on Western terms, the collapse of the USSR, and the expansion of NATO to the borders of Russia are now presented not only as a victory for the West in the Cold War, but also as the final victory in World War II. As a result, the winner turns into a loser.

During the tragic period of the collapse of the Soviet Union, the ethnopolitical elites of the former Soviet republics moved to the vanguard of the forces falsifying the history of World War II and the Great Patriotic War, and the ruling elites of the Baltic republics were ahead of everyone else. They are creating an unjust judgment on our common history. They reject and denigrate everything that historically, culturally and spiritually connected and, I hope, continues to connect the peoples of the former USSR, who survived and won the Great Patriotic War. It is noteworthy that the Baltic falsifiers did not invent anything new, but adopted political myths constructed in the Sovietological centers of the West with the participation of their compatriots who collaborated with the Nazi occupation regimes, including in the field of propaganda.

This is a myth about the eternal “Russian and Soviet” genocide of the Baltic peoples.

This is a propaganda-motivated reduction of the German-Soviet non-aggression pact of August 1939 to the odious-sounding Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, which is interpreted in the spirit of the theory of totalitarianism as a conspiracy of aggressors that allowed the Soviet Union to “occupy” the Baltic states. (It should be said that today leading historians of Western European countries have abandoned the theory of totalitarianism as an unfruitful approach, since it sets the vector for a tendentious reinterpretation of historical reality and facts, and allows all kinds of opportunistic fabrications to be built on top of them)

This is a denigration of the liberation mission of the Soviet Army in the Great Patriotic War and World War II with the aim of accusing the USSR of “re-occupying” the Baltic states and justifying the cooperation of the Baltic nationalist elites with the German occupation administration.

And, finally, this is a selective, simplified and malicious interpretation of difficult periods in the development of the USSR in order to present its peoples as victims of “Bolshevik atrocities”, the harsh policy of eliminating the formations of the “forest brothers”, as well as supposedly purposefully carried out “Russification”.

Today, when contacting representatives of the Baltic states, Russian citizens are amazed at how deeply Russophobic and anti-Soviet myths are integrated into their consciousness, which in modern conditions have acquired an anti-Russian orientation. The fundamental myths are about the “occupation” in the summer of 1940 and the “re-occupation” of the Baltic states in 1944-1945. Under the conditions of the dominance of these myths, facts are multiplying that cannot but cause concern and protest on the Russian side. In the politics of the Baltic states, militant nationalism directed against Russia triumphs, discrimination against the Russian-speaking population continues, the process of legalization and glorification of SS legionnaires is rapidly developing, museums of “occupation” operate, educating young people in an anti-Russian spirit and reducing the great significance of the Victory exclusively to the shadow sides.

I would like to draw your attention to the fact that over the 65 years of the post-war period, a huge literature on the history of the Second World War, numbering thousands of titles, has been created in the countries of Europe, America, and Asia, covering the events of the war in the wrong sense. During the Soviet period, tendentious interpretation of the facts and events of the war, their deliberate distortion, met with a decisive rebuff from Soviet historians. In the 20 years since the collapse of the Soviet Union, this resistance has weakened significantly. Meanwhile, the volume of literature on the events of World War II continues to grow. However, a significant number of publications that misinterpret this period often remain without a clear and reasoned answer. The growing number of such publications is countered by a small number of books, articles, and public speeches.

The atmosphere of “non-resistance” and indifference of the historical community to the fate of its country and its authority in the international arena is being tried, in particular, by the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies, headed by director Leonid Petrovich Reshetnikov. In November 2009, the international conference “Collaborationism in the Second World War. Vlasov and Vlasovism.” Based on the conference materials, a collection has been published that is in great demand among a wide readership. In January 2010, the Institute hosted a presentation of the book “History of Latvia. From the Russian Empire to the USSR", published jointly with the Historical Memory Foundation. It provides an analysis of historical facts that are deliberately suppressed or falsified by modern Latvian historians, since they destroy myths about the “occupation”. This book is a response to those who are waging an information and psychological war against our country. And at the same time, it is a source of reflection for those who have already become or may become victims of propaganda attacks on our history.

On April 8-9, RISI hosted an international conference “The Second World War and the Great Patriotic War in history textbooks of the CIS countries and the EU: problems, approaches, interpretations.” The representative of the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic, Olga Vladimirovna Gukalenko, gave a meaningful and interesting report. Less than two weeks have passed since Pridnestrovie took up the baton from Moscow, becoming the organizer and venue for the international scientific and practical conference “Great Victory and Modernity. To the 65th anniversary of the Victory of the Soviet people in the Great Patriotic War."

I have always had great respect and admiration for the people of Transnistria, and I am closely following the fate of this heroic republic, a worthy heir to Russian glory for many generations. The deputy is absolutely right. Rector of the Pridnestrovian State University named after. T. G. Shevchenko, professor Vladimir Okushko, who called Pridnestrovie an outpost of Russian and Orthodox-Slavic civilization. I am grateful that I was invited here to give a report, and I am confident that in alliance with Pridnestrovie, Russia will be able to defend the truth about the Great Patriotic War, as well as solve many other problems that are important for both Russia and Pridnestrovie.

The Soviet Union collapsed almost a quarter of a century ago. Soviet history in the media and in textbooks has long been habitually painted in the dark colors of communist terror, which was supposedly the meaning of the Soviet political system.

It seems that the authorities are waiting for the last witnesses of the Soviet past to die out, and for new generations of Russia to lose all interest in the heroic image of the great country, which for seventy years inspired the whole world with hope for the triumph of justice. In the meantime, other values ​​are promoted and other heroes are glorified.

However, a movement has emerged and is growing in Russian society for the revival of the historical dignity of Russia. This happens following the strengthening of its political position in the world. For now these are public organizations of a club format. Their main task is to combat the falsification of history, opportunistic disinformation and forgery of documents aimed at destroying the unity of the peoples and social groups of our vast country. Essentially, in response to the information aggression of the falsifiers of the past, a search is underway for a consolidating national Russian idea or ideology, despite the vague definition of political diversity in Article 13 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation.

“Forget your family, and you are nobody”

As we know, history is politics directed to the past. Writing history and factual interpretation are purely ideological work. Without the past there is no future. The ideological basis of personal self-identification and patriotism lies, first of all, in historical memory, around which culture and the language of communication in its diversity are formed. Everything together unites people into a society inhabiting a historical territory, and with the development of the economy, a nation is formed from a historical community. If this algorithm of nation formation is destroyed, its identification historical basis is distorted, then society will begin to disintegrate and the nation will not come into being.

The main sign of distortion of historical facts is manifested in the direction of the description of the fact itself, its interpretation. If the orientation is anti-Russian or anti-Russian, anti-Soviet, then probably behind this lies a propaganda goal and disinformation, information intervention in the historical consciousness of Russian society with the aim of its decomposition and the formation of an inferiority complex. This is the direct goal of the so-called Western information war against the Russian Federation and the former Soviet republics.

The goal is neither new nor exceptional. Information sabotage against Russia has been actively used in politics by Western governments for hundreds of years. In this case, fending off the intervention systematically, new historians and journalists studying history need to be able to perceive the factual series of events, linking them to the political situation of the time in which the events occurred, abstracting from modern ideological cliches and not mentally bringing them into the social relations of the past . Only then, based on the analysis and modeling of events, can an alternative interpretation of facts or processes appear to Western propaganda, which will serve to comprehend the past and consolidate society.

Without a decent understanding of the past, it is impossible to build the future without destroying oneself. Moreover, the Russian state, losing the historical continuity of generations, condemning its history and renouncing the choice of previous generations, risks blindly following the ideological guidelines of Western competitors, losing its sovereignty. We have no reason to be ashamed of our past. It was worthy, historically predetermined within the laws of evolution.

Below are several examples of distortions in the interpretation of historical events accepted in Western historiography, and a real alternative to them, based on the cause-and-effect relationships of social processes and facts. This is an exclusively subjective view of the author.

1. There is a strong message that the Red Army and Stalin forcibly imposed communism on Eastern Europe. That is, the fear of the USSR and the Bolsheviks paralyzed the democratic forces in the countries of Eastern Europe, which were allegedly against communism and socialism.

In fact, it was the other way around. By the beginning of World War II, almost all European countries were affected by fascism to varying degrees. The fascisation of Europe was caused by the reaction of the bourgeoisie, primarily financial, to the growing popularity in Europe of left-wing movements and parties, the authority of the Comintern after the First World War.

Fascist bourgeois political regimes in European countries were the norm. Moreover, many of them hid behind ultra-left slogans of nationalist socialism. This was the case in Italy - the birthplace of fascism - led by Mussolini. Hitler's party was called National Socialist, the national flag of Germany was red with a swastika in a white circle, symbolizing the absolute vitality of the National Socialist idea. This was a calculated propaganda technique by the Nazis during the crisis of the 1930s.

The Second World War was launched as an anti-communist war, in which Germany was the striking force in the intrigue of the financial cartels against the USSR and the core of the anti-Soviet European or Western coalition. Fascist Europe concluded peace treaties with Nazi Germany. This was the quintessence of political strategy in Europe’s next campaign to the East, as a continuation of the First World War. For this purpose, Germany was armed by US and European financiers.

The allies of the USSR, really the Anglo-Saxons, were hypocritical in this war and looked for a profitable middle ground in pitting two major powers against each other and at the same time their historical competitors - Germany and the USSR.

At the same time, one cannot help but say that the birthplace of the communist project Marx-Engels there were France and England, and the project itself was conceived by the British prime minister Palmerston, a skilled political intriguer who tacitly supported Marx, was intended for rival Germany to undermine its economy and state.

Marxov "Manifesto of the Communist Party" was developed and freely published in London in 1848 as the program document of the Communist League, and in Germany the manifesto appeared only in 1872. The First International, as an international organization of workers, was founded in 1864, also in London.

At this time, a complete translation of Marx’s “Capital” was published for the first time in St. Petersburg, and Marxism was a little-known philosophical movement. The Manifesto of the Communist Party was published in Russia only in 1882, and before that there were attempts to translate it into Russian abroad, in particular in Geneva.

In Germany in 1918, a communist political party appeared and, if not for Hitler’s pogroms of the communists, it would have had a chance to come to power. The communist idea also appeared in Eastern Europe earlier than in Tsarist Russia. In 1919, a Soviet republic was proclaimed in Hungary and a Red Army was formed to defend it, while a civil war was in full swing in the RSFSR, in which European internationalists also participated. So Europe was ready for communism long before World War II and Stalin.

Rather, Russia followed European leftist ideas and allowed a grand experiment to take place. There was no dictate to Europe on its part, just as there was never any forced imposition of Russian Orthodoxy. It is no coincidence that after the war in the 70s of the last century, Eurocommunism, different from the Soviet version, was cultivated in Europe. What do the USSR and Stalin have to do with it?

After the victory in 1945, the authority of the USSR and the ideas of socialism were in themselves very high, and the USSR was perceived by the broad masses of the world as a role model in solving such pressing political problems as social justice and the prosperity of peoples, their independence.

Therefore, the influence of left-wing parties in European countries increased sharply as a result of the war, while the right-wing bourgeois parties that collaborated with the Germans in governments during the war collapsed. This is the main reason for the leftward movement of political parties in Europe, as well as in Asia, South America, and Africa. The process also affected the United States. This is how the International Socialist System arose, which was represented by socialist countries and countries with a socialist orientation. And then there were unifications of Eastern European countries into Comecon And Warsaw Pact.

Nobody forced anyone into these organizations. Albania left these organizations of its own free will. Socialist Yugoslavia and Austria did not participate in them, on whose territory there were Soviet troops until 1954, and on the Austrian coat of arms from 1919 to 1934 there was a hammer and sickle.

In order to prevent leftist revolutions in their countries, in America and France, for example, in the post-war period pro-fascist measures were taken and communist parties were banned there. This is an anti-communist policy De Gaulle in France, and McCarthyism in the USA. In Spain and Portugal, the fascist dictatorship was established earlier, but was not overthrown immediately after the war, but only ended decades later due to the death of the dictators Franco And Salazar. It is noteworthy that in Portugal, the constitution of 1974 (the so-called Carnation Revolution) proclaimed a course towards building socialism. Then this article was removed from the text of the constitution.

They may ask, how can we evaluate the events in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968, if we do not consider them a dictatorship of the USSR? Very simple. The Warsaw Pact provided for mutual military assistance in crisis situations. The putsch in Hungary and Czechoslovakia was inspired from outside, as was the case much later in Yugoslavia. That's why troops not only from the USSR, but also from Poland, the GDR, and Bulgaria were brought into the Hungarian People's Republic and Czechoslovakia. The operation was collective, and not exclusively Soviet. At the same time, modern Russia does not bear any historical responsibility for these events.

Moreover, the Warsaw Pact provided for a procedure for self-dissolution if a pan-European system of collective security was created. The treaty was open to accession by other countries, regardless of their political system of power, on the basis of equal sovereign rights.

2. Western propaganda and the opposition in Russia are inflating the myth of the notorious Iron Curtain between the USSR and the West, allegedly lowered by the Soviet dictatorship. This is a complete distortion of the essence of the isolation of the USSR. The Iron Curtain was lowered by the West, that is, the economic and political isolation of the USSR was declared, a blockade of its entry into the world market immediately after the establishment of Soviet power after the revolution.

The Second World War did not change the position of Western governments. Churchill's speech at Fulton in 1946, Truman Doctrine and other policy statements of American presidents confirm this fact. The strategy of the “Iron Curtain”, that is, isolation in the post-war period, was implemented in the form of the Cold War. All this continues now in the form of sanctions and trade restrictions, but against Russia.

Nevertheless, the Soviet Union managed to conduct successful foreign trade. In addition to raw materials, timber and oil, products of mechanical engineering, energy and chemical industries, aircraft manufacturing, etc. were exported. For international payments, gold and foreign exchange ruble, which protected the domestic market and CMEA from the influence of the American dollar and ensured market stability. However, this created a shortage of foreign currency in the state treasury, which was necessary for industrial development and foreign policy activities.

Among the intelligentsia, there was a widespread belief that the state was deliberately prohibiting travel abroad for ideological reasons. In fact, the reason for the restrictions was the shortage of foreign currency, since the government had to provide citizens traveling abroad with foreign currency for rubles according to international standards. For the same reason of the currency shortage, trade in foreign consumer goods was organized through the Vneshtorg store system for VPT checks, which were used to pay Soviet citizens instead of currency for work on foreign business trips, and the earned currency itself went to the state treasury.

As for ideological obstacles, for this reason the dissident emigration of the 60s and 70s would hardly have taken place. Compared to the first wave of emigrants, Soviet dissidents did not play any significant role in the ideological confrontation between the West and the USSR; they were dangerous at home, and not abroad, where dissidents were sent out of harm’s way. The very ideological background of the exit restriction has become a kind of legend to cover up the true cause of the problem - saving foreign exchange reserves.

The exchange of tourists and students was also rationed due to the foreign exchange shortage, but there were quotas for the exchange of tourists and students. There were also visa restrictions on both sides. In the USSR, by law, citizens who had access to secret documents were also limited in traveling abroad.

In addition, bilateral agreements on free border crossing were then concluded between states. The USSR did not have such agreements with foreign countries. But this was not determined by ideology, but by the migration policy of each country. One could travel to a socialist country at the invitation of an organization or relatives. The procedure for registering travel to a capitalist country for the same reasons was more complicated. But it depended on the rules of the other side. Nowadays, when almost all restrictions on leaving the Russian Federation have been lifted, restrictive conditions on entry into some countries remain.

What was currency spent on in the USSR? First of all, for foreign policy purposes to ensure a balance of power and global influence of the two systems under the conditions of the blockade and the Cold War, to put it briefly. Peaceful coexistence cost money. Therefore, the USSR supported materially friendly states in their development and ensuring sovereignty. The maintenance of foreign government institutions, provision of maritime navigation, and international communications also required foreign exchange expenses.

The task of world revolution, for which the USSR is accused, was never set by the Soviet leadership after the departure of Trotsky and the collapse of the Comintern. But the myth of the “world revolution of the Soviets” remained, thanks to the slogan of the Comintern era “Proletarians of all countries, unite!” This tradition did not reflect the real Soviet foreign policy, but was tendentiously used in Western anti-Soviet propaganda, now the Soviet threat has been replaced by Russian.

3. Russophobes and the opposition shout about the technological backwardness of the USSR and Russia. But the USSR was not technologically backward. On the contrary, most of the advanced technologies in the world were developed by Soviet scientists, but they were implemented in other countries. For example, laser, television, mobile phone, space exploration and nuclear power.

In military technologies, we were ahead of developed capitalist countries, and we are ahead of them now, but in the production of consumer goods, the state did not allow excess consumer qualities, focusing on domestic demand in the absence of competition. Many high dual-use technologies were unjustifiably classified.

Soviet goods were simple, cheap, and their quality suited the demand of the bulk of the population, and the state saved on this. Although the industry could have produced more complex household appliances, if they had not saved on costs in the light and food industries in order to carry out grandiose space programs - the basis of the country's security. At a time when the West was switching to plastic and food substitutes at the whim of speculators, the USSR preferred natural products and fabrics, and building materials. Today it has been proven that the shortage of goods in the USSR was deliberate, a form of political pressure in the struggle for power.

In fact, based on the results of participation in international exhibitions, our products, including cars, were in fairly wide potential demand abroad among the population due to their low cost and utilitarian nature. This was precisely one of the reasons for the market isolation of the USSR in favor of Western concerns that produced products, for example, the same cars, with inflated consumer properties at a higher price and a relatively short service life, even with well-organized technical service.

Overproduction, an excess of goods in relation to demand lead to overuse of resources and their depletion, an increase in industrial waste and garbage. But a competitive market cannot exist without this glut of goods and intensive financial circulation. Today we see this with our own eyes.

After the collapse of the USSR, Russia entered the world market, but was limited in realizing its capabilities by the obligations of WTO membership. The ruble became freely convertible and unprotected from the influence of stock market conditions. As a result, the economy of the Russian Federation, like those of other former Soviet republics, turned out to be controlled by Western financial cartels. Russia imports consumer goods that it could produce itself with better quality. Gradually, consumption develops into pathological consumerism, which ensures the growth of capital of financial speculators and usurers, morally corrupting society.

What are the benefits for the Russian population from participating in the WTO and is there any? The profits of speculators do not increase the standard of living of the population and the quality of goods.

4. The West has constantly accused the USSR and accuses Russia of aggressiveness, citing far-fetched aggressiveness in the first place among other threats. However, in world history there is no other state with many peace-loving initiatives, as the USSR was and as the Russian Federation is.

At the Genoa Conference in 1922, the Soviet delegation, on behalf of the head of state, proposed general disarmament. The USSR offered peace and fulfillment of the obligations of the previous government (tsarist and bourgeois-republican) regarding debts and compensation for losses of foreign companies from the revolution in exchange for official recognition of the Soviet government as legal and full-fledged in international relations. The West rejected both proposals. The Soviet state remained in a trade blockade and political isolation. The West is now pursuing the same policy towards Russia.

5. Outright lies are being spread in the media and on the Internet that the West was forced to create NATO and expand it due to the threat of a communist invasion from the East. Few people know that initially, after the end of the war, the UN was planned like the pre-war League of Nations, from which the USSR was excluded in 1940. The League of Nations itself collapsed due to insurmountable political differences between its members on the eve of World War II and was formally dissolved in 1946, but after the establishment of the UN in 1945.

USSR membership in the UN was also not envisaged, and the new international organization was conceived by the Western powers as a consolidated instrument in the fight against communism, similar to the League of Nations.

However, this could not be done, thanks to the authority of the then leadership of the Soviet Union, which became one of the founders of the modern UN. It is obvious that, as a counterweight to the anti-communist UN, the Comintern could be revived with the Soviet Union at its head, which caused a lot of concern to world capital before the war. This was a powerful argument in favor of USSR membership in the UN, which did not seek confrontation. The inclusion of the USSR and two union republics - the Ukrainian SSR and the BSSR - into the UN as independent members of the organization was a victory for Soviet diplomacy.

Soviet lawyers, specialists in international law, actively participated in the development of the UN Charter. At their proposal, a Security Council was formed at the UN with the right of veto for each of the five member countries of the Security Council: the winners of WWII and China. The inclusion of China in the UN Security Council was proposed by the Soviet leadership. Thus, the plans of the leading Western powers to escalate the confrontation in the Cold War, which was fraught with the Third World War with the use of nuclear weapons, were thwarted.

As a result, the UN was established in 1945 as a universal subject of international law to develop international cooperation, ensure security and maintain peace on Earth with the authority to form and use peacekeeping armed forces.

Having failed in the UN project, Western states united with the same anti-Soviet and anti-communist goal, creating the North Atlantic Alliance NATO in 1949. This organization was initially not only commercial and political, but also military, which included the combined armed forces of NATO member countries. In response, the military Warsaw Pact Organization appeared in Eastern Europe six years later in 1955., and before that there was already an intergovernmental consultative economic body of the socialist countries of the CMEA (1949). Both organizations were dissolved in 1991.

This is the reason and sequence of the appearance of these international organizations. To this must be added the treacherous expansion of NATO to the east after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact. So who is the real aggressor here?

6. A special place in Western propaganda is given to the shortage of goods in the USSR, low wages, and the infringement of the rights of agricultural workers. This issue is very difficult to discuss, since there are no unambiguous methods and comparable statistical data to compare two different systems of government and distribution of national income related to solving specific internal economic and social problems.

Of course, the USSR was “catching up with America.” But by what criteria? The Soviet economy was built on the basis of its own resources and labor, and America, which did not fight on its own soil, dominated the world market through dollar speculation and military force.

Nevertheless, today we can quite comparablely compare life in the USSR under socialism with life in the Russian Federation under capitalism in many respects: in terms of income level, personal self-realization and spiritual life.

In Soviet times, real incomes of the population were significantly higher than wages. They consisted of earnings and government subsidies. The state subsidized the costs of maintaining housing and communal services, kindergartens and nurseries, provided free education at all levels from primary to higher special education, maintained at the expense of the budget an extensive network of institutions for out-of-school education and health improvement of children and youth, sports clubs and sections, sports schools and houses of pioneers. Today in Russia this is practically not the case. You have to pay for everything. For many families, comprehensive childcare is unaffordable due to low incomes. Thus, from generation to generation, the marginal part of society is growing as a social base for extremism and criminality.

Speculation on historical events

In addition to the ideological falsification of historical facts and distortion of the essence of the events of the Soviet past, Western political technologists are looking for episodes in our past that could become ideological grounds for the disunity of peoples and regions. That is, they are looking for ideological cracks along which Russia could be split.

Among such events, for example, the episode of the capture of Kazan in 1552 by the Tsar was chosen Ivan IV the Terrible, the main city of the former Kazan ulus of the Golden Horde. This was the fifth campaign against Kazan, the previous ones were unsuccessful, which indicates the power of the Kazan Khanate, comparable to Moscow.

This event is presented by Western and many Soviet historians as the conquest, the conquest by the Russians of the Kazan sovereign Khanate of the Volga Tatars with the aim of expanding Moscow possessions. Thus, the aggressive image of the Russian Moscow state is projected, which should encourage modern Tatars to take historical revenge and stimulate separatist sentiments in Tatarstan.

In fact, Kazan was taken by the troops of the Russian Tsar, which included squads of Kazan Tatars, Mari, Chuvash, Mordovians with their khans and princes. Free Don Cossacks came to the rescue.

The combined forces expelled from Kazan the protege of the Crimean Khan and the Ottoman Empire, who blocked the Volga trade route and raided Russian lands for robberies and seizures of slaves. The slave trade was one of the trades of the Crimean Khanate. After the capture of Kazan, the tsar, according to the custom of that time, himself became the khan of the Volga Tatars, the Volga trade route became free, and the peoples of the Volga region joined the Russian state, for which they repeatedly turned to the tsar. Neither the way of life, nor the faith, nor the customs of the annexed peoples, including the Tatars, were changed or violated by force. However, the capture of Kazan is presented as a war of conquest.

For several years, Turkey tried to restore its influence in the Kazan Khanate and by placing its khan on the throne, organizing rebellion after rebellion against Russia with the help of the Nogais, but was never able to do this. This period is taught as a national liberation war of the Kazan Tatars against the Russians.

The settlement of the provinces of the North Caucasus in the 18th century and later is played out in the same manner. The fact is that most of the settlers were from the regions of Little Russia, the Kuban and Terek Cossacks were mainly formed from the Zaporozhye Cossacks, and therefore, until our time, the original Ukrainian dialect was widespread in the Stavropol and Krasnodar territories, and Ukrainian culture was also introduced. Modern Ukrainian Nazis took this episode of Russian history as the basis for territorial claims against the Russian Federation, threatening to spread their ideology to Kuban and even annex the Kuban lands to Ukraine. They talk about this openly, voicing it in the context of Western scenarios of stimulating the collapse of Russia.

It is no coincidence that scientists - historians, ethnographers, sociologists and political scientists from European and American universities - are quite actively conducting research work in the North Caucasus, reports on which are becoming the property of specialists of a different kind. Probably as a result of such scientific contacts with representatives of the local intelligentsia in Stavropol, the opinion suddenly began to spread that “Russians have lost their culture.” What will happen next?

It is also no coincidence that publications about the peasant war led by Emelyan Pugacheva or about the Pugachev uprising of 1773-1775. This topic has always aroused great interest in Russia. Too many mysteries remain for posterity about that distant event. But what is the intrigue of the current popularity? It lies in just a few lines. The Peasant War is interpreted as a war between two states - Tsarist Russia and the Cossack Yaik (Ural). Pugachev allegedly had a full-fledged government with its own orders and ministers, and the army was regular.

If we compare these interesting statements with the activity of the American embassy in the Urals, then we can judge the possible preparation of some kind of ideological basis for an anti-Russian American project in this region. It is quite possible that the authors of historical studies are not aware of such intentions of the customer. But this does not mean that there are no such intentions at all.

In the same series of historical speculations there is the problem of the revival of the monarchy in Russia; candidates for the royal throne have already been prepared from imaginary Bagrationi-Romanovs.

The public was shocked by the news of a certain scientific dissertation justifying the treason of the commander of the 2nd Shock Army, General Vlasova. They say that in modern anti-communist Russia, Vlasov cannot be considered a traitor, since he did what higher leaders repeated in the Cold War in the 80-90s of the last century. Moreover, the remains of a white general Denikin and his wife were reburied in the Donskoy Monastery in Moscow as a sign of reconciliation of the past. But everyone knows that Anton Ivanovich Denikin refused to cooperate with the Germans against Soviet Russia, although he was an implacable enemy of the Soviet government and the Bolsheviks.

As the old Russian proverb says, you can’t put a scarf on every mouth. Bans on provocative topics will not improve matters here. It is necessary to adequately respond to such challenges with counter-information, new historiography with a clear ideology of statehood.

Who will curse his past,

he is already ours (among the demons. - V.K.)
F. M. Dostoevsky

History is politics

thrown back into the past

M. N. Pokrovsky

The problem of falsification and distortion of history to the detriment of Russian interests has recently acquired a pronounced importance on an international scale.However, this is not the first time this has happened: similar processes have taken place in the past. Their reason lies in the following – the desire for the redistribution of property on a global scale, when forceful methods no longer bring the desired results, and inciting national and religious intolerance and rejection of other people’s lifestyles become a necessary condition for achieving goals. And here history, mostly military history, comes to the aid of political strategists.

And this is no coincidence. Military history is not only a reference point for military thinking, but also one of the components of the formation of worldview and historical memory. It is military history that helps society get answers to the questions posed by the modern era, in particular, determine who is the aggressor and who is the victim; assess the nature and consequences of military conflicts.

The information campaigns of history falsifiers achieve the greatest effect in an environment where the historical memory of the nation is formed on the short-term benefits of political groups and business elites, where there are no clearly established assessments of the key problems and events of history - after all, they are interpreted to the detriment of the security of the state. This is especially relevant for the national security of modern Russia, which has a rich military history.

This page is intended to counter attempts to falsify and distort history to the detriment of the interests of Russia. We hope that its content will allow modern Russian society to better know and understand its history, and develop stable immunity to any attempts to falsify the past.

“The Story Told by the People”: Book Four

“Thousands of books have been written about the Great Patriotic War, but the book you are holding in your hands is special,” says the chairman of the Russian Historical Society (RIS) in an address to readers. Sergei Naryshkin. – From its pages you can hear the living voices of people who forged the Great Victory at the front and in the rear. [...] We do not have the right to abandon this memory, to simplify and generalize the very image of the war. [...] The value of our Great Victory lies in its historical specificity, unvarnishedness and absolute authenticity. Behind it are not myths, but millions of human destinies. And our moral duty, our common task is to remember these soldiers by name.”

Partisan mimicry in Western Belarus

The concept of “mimicry” has long crossed the line of natural science knowledge. In such a complex living organism as society, the laws of nature are applicable, allowing a person to survive in conditions of prolonged threat. An extreme situation for the manifestation of such qualities is often war, which exposes the animal instincts of people. Guerrilla methods of struggle, which often lack clear boundaries of identification, allow one to hide one’s true essence and intentions, including behind the mask of a potential enemy. The concept of “partisan mimicry” is introduced by the author for the first time; it is a kind of product of the convergence of the natural sciences and the humanities.

The concept of “mimicry,” introduced in biology by the English naturalist Henry Walter Bates in the 19th century, today is not limited to the classical formula: the imitator imitates a stronger model in order to protect itself from a predator. Mimicry has a broad classification. Taking into account the complex structure of human society and the behavioral characteristics of the individual, the examples of mimicry described by biologists around the world are not only applicable to society, especially in a guerrilla environment, but they can give rise to its more complex forms. In this particular case, we will talk not so much about external signs borrowed by military units for survival, but rather about attempts by some partisan formations to portray actions characteristic of their opponents for the sake of a variety of goals. This article will focus on a fairly large unit of the Home Army - the Stolbtsy battalion, which for a time pretended to be pro-Soviet and was practically integrated into the Soviet partisan movement.

What do official history textbooks teach our children?

Europe and Asia were liberated by Russian “outright bandits, drunkards and rapists”?

One of my friends accompanied his congratulations on Victory Day with a sign that contained the answers of modern residents of Western European countries to the question of who played a decisive role in the victory over Nazi Germany and its allies.

Seeing the, I would say, blasphemous figures presented in the table published here was not only unpleasant, but also offensive. It is insulting to the 27 million of our compatriots who gave their lives, including those Western Europeans who forgot or, initially brought up by propaganda, did not know their saviors.

However, there are honest, objective-minded people in the West, including the USA. I remember my acquaintance two years ago on Sakhalin during the International Scientific Conference “Lessons of the Second World War and the Present” with the director of the Institute of Atomic Research at American University, Professor Peter Kuznik, who devotes a significant part of his activities to upholding the truth about the world tragedy of the 20th century. He is known to Russian audiences as the co-producer of the 12-episode documentary film “The Untold History of the United States.” The first three hour-long episodes of the film are dedicated to World War II.

Zinaida Portnova

The tenacity and courage of a 17-year-old girl infuriated the Nazis.

At the turn of the 1980s and 1990s, during the period of dethronement of Soviet heroes, dirt was sought on each of those who were recognized and glorified by the Soviet regime.

It turned out to be difficult to find anything compromising the underground worker Zina Portnova. And therefore, the main complaint against her was that she, glorified among the “pioneer heroes,” was not a pioneer!

Resistance to the Nazis on the territory of Belarus was especially fierce. From the first days of the war, partisan detachments and underground groups were created here.

In the Shumilinsky district of the Vitebsk region, an underground youth organization “Young Avengers” was created, the history of which is similar to the history of the “Young Guard”. The leader of the “Young Avengers” was Fruza (Efrosinya) Zenkova, who rallied local youth around herself, ready to resist the fascists.

Bandera: facts and myths

There is no need to talk about what is happening in Ukraine now. The Nazism that is now rising in Ukraine has Bandera roots, uses his rhetoric, uses his methods. And we, knowing their history, their tricks, can resist them.

Myth No. 1 -Bandera’s followers did not fight from the very beginning with Russia and, especially, Russians, as they are credited with

From the very beginning of their appearance, the Banderaites waged a fierce war against the Poles (who were occupiers) and Russians (who were also considered “Muscovite” occupiers). And they prepared for this war well in advance.

Testimony of Colonel Stolze at the Nuremberg trials on December 25, 1945:

“Lahousen gave me an order for review... The order indicated that in order to deliver a lightning strike on the Soviet Union, Abwehr-2, when carrying out subversive work against the USSR, must use its agents to incite national hostility between the peoples of the Soviet Union. In particular, I personally was instructions were given to the leaders of Ukrainian nationalists, German agents Melnik (nickname "Consul-1") and Bandera, to organize, immediately after the German attack on the Soviet Union, provocative performances in Ukraine in order to undermine the immediate rear of the Soviet troops, as well as in order to convince the international community that that the Soviet rear seems to be decomposing."

Cryptomnesia. Kill the past

Falsification, or more simply put, rewriting history, is nothing more than a factor in international politics. He changed history - he raised a new generation - he got a new people - he changed the situation in the world.

Film “Cryptomnesia. Kill the Past" was filmed as part of the "Roads of Memory" campaign. This unusual title was given to the film for a reason. “Cryptomnesia” in psychiatry means a memory disorder in which the patient loses the ability to distinguish between events that actually took place and events that the patient heard about from others, from the media, and even from dreams. The film is intended to draw public attention to the problems of falsification of history and, in particular, the demolition of monuments to Soviet soldiers in the Republic of Poland.

The producer and author of the idea for the film is the Chairman of the Regional Branch in the Kaliningrad Region of the Great Fatherland Party (GPA) Andrei Viktorovich Omelchenko. Air defense leader Nikolai Starikov and Anatoly Wasserman took part in the filming.

Aggression against Russia, 75 years later: protecting history - securing the future

The most famous among the works of the post-Soviet revisionist direction (the authors of which seek to prove the thesis about the “preventive”, “defensive” nature of the war on Germany’s part, the “need for protection” from a potentially strong enemy in the person of the Soviet Union, which allegedly itself was preparing an attack on Germany) back in The 1990s received a trilogy (“Icebreaker”, “Day M”, “The Last Republic”) by Viktor Suvorov (V.B. Rezun). According to its author, “Stalin helped Hitler start a war against the coalition of Western powers (England, France and their allies) so that the outbreak of a war of extermination would devastate Europe, through the ashes of which Stalin’s armies were to march triumphantly. In June 1941, preparations for this march were interrupted by the unexpected... invasion of the Wehrmacht.”

Subsequently, according to Mark Solonin, V. Suvorov’s hypothesis “demonstrated the main feature of a true scientific theory... P. Bobylev, T. Bushueva, V. Danilov, V. Kisilev, M. Meltyukhov, V. Nevezhin, I. Pavlova, Yu. Felshtinsky is not a complete list of Russian historians, whose works contain hundreds of documents and facts that confirm V. Suvorov’s hypothesis and actually transfer it from the category of “hypothesis” to the rank of scientifically established truth.”<...>

The “preventive” nature of Germany’s attack on the USSR as an attempt to justify aggression and falsify the history of the Great Patriotic War

2016 marks the 75th anniversary of the start of the war unleashed by the Third Reich against the Soviet Union. At the same time, since the first days of the Great Victory, the opponents of Russia (USSR), through first bourgeois falsifiers of history, now the authors of “alternative history,” have not stopped trying to give Germany’s war against the Soviet Union a “preventive” character. Thus, they seek to remove responsibility for the outbreak of war in Europe from Great Britain, France and the United States, placing it on the USSR.

A trend in modern international politics has become the comparison of the President of the Russian Federation V.V. Putin with the German Reich Chancellor A. Hitler, and modern Russia with Nazi Germany (German Finance Minister W. Schäuble, Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Chamber of Deputies of the Czech Republic Parliament K. Schwarzenberg, Advisor to US President J. Carter in 1977–1981. C Brzezinski, etc.).

Taking into account the military-political situation, in order to counter the policy of revisionism on the eve of the 75th anniversary of the start of the Great Patriotic War, the article by Vladimir Kiknadze identifies, summarizes and presents the main directions of activity of Soviet historical science in solving this scientific problem, which has important political, socio-economic and cultural significance.

“In general, the work is very neglected”

Meeting of the working group on preventing distortion of history, 2016

On January 15, 2016, a meeting of the working group of the Russian Organizing Committee “Victory” was held in Moscow to coordinate work with government bodies, public associations and creative unions on objective, scientifically based coverage of the military history of the Fatherland and preventing facts of its distortion.

The working group is headed by the President of the Academy of Military Sciences, General of the Army Makhmut Akhmetovich Gareev, and his deputy is the head of the Research Institute of Military History of the Military Academy of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation Ivan Ivanovich Basik.

The meeting was attended by Deputy Head of the Office of the President of the Russian Federation for Civil Service and Personnel Issues Valery Viktorovich Vishnevsky, First Deputy Chairman of the Federation Council Committee on Defense and Security Franz Adamovich Klintsevich, Chairman of the Military Scientific Committee of the Russian Armed Forces - Deputy Chief of the General Staff, Lieutenant General Makushev Igor Yuryevich, Head of the Main Directorate for Work with Personnel of the RF Armed Forces, Major General Mikhail Vyacheslavovich Smyslov, Director of the Department of Information and Press of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation Maria Vladimirovna Zakharova, members of the Working Group, representatives of the Government, the Federal Assembly, the FSB of Russia, executive authorities of Moscow and Moscow region, the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Russian Military Historical Society, public organizations of veterans, chief editors of the media, employees of the Institute of Military History.

Auschwitz-Auschwitz: facts, versions, distortions of history

Publications in Komsomolskaya Pravda and Rossiyskaya Gazeta

History of World War II and the Great Patriotic War is still the object of distortion and attempts at falsification to the detriment of the interests of Russia.

Events in Ukraine in 2014 – 2015 provoked a surge in “alternative” history, political speculation and provocations.

Before our eyes, in an atmosphere of intense information confrontation at the international level, in fact, information aggression against Russia, events are taking place related to the 70th anniversary of the liberation by Soviet troops of prisoners of the largest complex of concentration camps, the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp, organized by the Germans in southern Poland in the Auschwitz region -Brzezinka.

Meeting of the working group on preventing facts of distortion of history

On January 15, 2015, a meeting of the working group of the Russian Organizing Committee “Victory” was held in Moscow to coordinate work with government bodies, public associations and creative unions on objective, scientifically based coverage of the military history of the Fatherland and preventing facts of its distortion.

The meeting was attended by the executive secretary of the ROC "Pobeda", the head of the Presidential Administration for Civil Service and Personnel, Anton Yuryevich Fedorov, the deputy head of the Main Directorate for Work with Personnel of the RF Armed Forces, Major General Alexey Mikhailovich Tsygankov, members of the Working Group of the Russian Organizing Committee " Victory", representatives of the Government, the Ministry of Defense of Russia, executive authorities of Moscow and the Moscow region, heads of public organizations of veterans, editors-in-chief of printed publications.

Responsibility for attacks on the historical memory of Russians

On May 5, 2014, the President of the Russian Federation signed Federal Law of the Russian Federation No. 128-FZ “On Amendments to Certain Legislative Acts of the Russian Federation.”

Federal z The law was adopted by the State Duma on April 23, 2014, approved by the Federation Council on April 29, 2014, published by Rossiyskaya Gazeta on May 7 of this year.

The federal law is aimed at countering attempts to falsify military history and attacks on the historical memory of Russians in relation to military-historical events.

The federal law introduces criminal liability for denial of the facts established by the verdict of the International Military Tribunal for the trial and punishment of the main war criminals of the European Axis countries, approval of crimes established by the said verdict, as well as for the dissemination of knowingly false information about the activities of the USSR during the Second World War.

Increased criminal liability is provided for the above-mentioned acts if they are committed by a person using his official position, using the media, or artificially creating evidence for the accusation.

In addition, the Federal Law establishes criminal liability for the dissemination of information expressing obvious disrespect for society about days of military glory and memorable dates of Russia related to the defense of the Fatherland, and for desecration of symbols of Russia's military glory committed in public. In accordance with the Federal Law, legal entities will bear administrative liability for committing these acts.

Book cover

The appearance of a monograph by the Crimean local historian, candidate of historical sciences V.E. Polyakov could not help but attract attention. It should be noted here that this is not the first time that this author refers to the history of the partisan movement in the Crimea. Over the past five years, he has published more than two dozen articles and one popular science book, which deal with various aspects of this topic. For a number of reasons, the scientific creativity of V.E. Polyakova receives negative feedback from his colleagues, which, however, does not prevent him from considering himself an expert on the history of the Crimean Peninsula during the period of Nazi occupation.

V.E. Polyakov likes to respond to criticism that his previous publications were popular in nature, so it is unethical to approach them with the standards generally accepted in the scientific community. But this time his research is strictly academic in form, he has a scientific editor, three reviewers with the rank of Doctor of Historical Sciences. Finally, this monograph was recommended for publication by the Academic Council of the Crimean Engineering and Pedagogical University, where V.E. works. Polyakov. That is, quite a lot of people are already responsible for the facts and conclusions contained in it with their scientific authority.

“Raze Leningrad from the face of the earth”: plans of the German leadership

Fragment of the diorama "Siege of Leningrad"

It is well known that German troops failed to take Leningrad, but on September 8, 1941, on the 79th day of the war, they captured Shlisselburg (Petrokrepost) on Lake Ladoga and blocked the city. The almost 900-day blockade began. Leningrad and its inhabitants were destined for a terrible fate.

On July 8, 1941, a meeting of the Supreme Command of the German Armed Forces (OKW) took place. Colonel General F. Halder noted in his diary after the meeting: “The Fuhrer’s decision to raze Moscow and Leningrad to the ground is unshakable in order to completely get rid of the population of these cities, which otherwise we will feed during the winter. The task of destroying cities must be carried out by aviation. Tanks should not be used for this.” On the same day, a similar entry appeared in the military diary of the OKW General Staff. As H. Pohlmann notes, according to Hitler’s will, “the city founded by Peter the Great was supposed to disappear from the face of the earth.”

On July 16, M. Bormann records similar instructions from Hitler, made during the “meeting with the Fuhrer,” which was attended by A. Rosenberg, H. Lammers, Field Marshal W. Keitel and other senior officials of the Reich: “The Finns are claiming the area around Leningrad, the Fuhrer I would like to raze Leningrad to the ground and then hand it over to the Finns.” German historian P. Jahn emphasizes that the goal of destroying Leningrad is based, in any case, not on one economic strategy - to seize Soviet grain to supply Germany. And not only for military purposes, we note. Hitler's decision, made on July 8, further stated that the destruction of Moscow and Leningrad would mean "a national disaster that will deprive not only Bolshevism of its centers, but the whole of Muscovy." The destruction of Leningrad was aimed at causing political, moral and psychological damage to the Soviet people.

Everything is completely clear. However, both in the West and in Russia there are authors who reject such an obvious intention of the military-political authorities of Germany regarding Leningrad.

A list full of distortions of history

At the end of 2009, the Sevastopol publishing house "Weber" published a directory of captain 1st rank in the reserve V.P. Makhno entitled “A complete list of associations and formations of the Third Reich from citizens of the USSR and emigrants, as well as from residents of the Baltic states, Western Belarus and Ukraine.” As can be understood from the title of this book, it is dedicated to one of the most difficult problems of the Second World War - the collaboration of Soviet citizens with the military-political structures of Nazi Germany.

The problem of collaboration in itself has scientific relevance. For obvious reasons, it has long been one of the taboo topics in Russian historiography. But even now, twenty years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, many aspects of the history of collaboration remain insufficiently studied. On the other hand, over the same period, this problem has grown greatly in breadth, it has significant specialized literature in different languages, and the number of facts introduced into scientific circulation has grown by orders of magnitude. All this puts on the agenda the appearance of general, reference works from which the necessary information could be easily extracted. But, and here it should be objectively admitted, there are negligibly few reference books on such an important problem.

Stalingrad cannot be returned; leaving Volgograd: history at the epicenter of politics

This week, Russian society has become more active in deciding where to put the missing comma in the amphiboly “Stalingrad cannot be returned; Volgograd cannot be left.” Moreover, one of his surveys, in which more than 150 thousand people took part by February 6, showed the following. To the question " Do you want Volgograd to be renamed Stalingrad?" answered:

• Yes, everyone knows the city exactly as Stalingrad - 55%
• Yes, but only during celebrations of historical events - 12%
• No, I am categorically against it - 21%
• I find it difficult to answer, this should be decided by city residents - 12%

As you can see, the absolute majority of Russians support the idea and decision of the Volgograd City Duma to rename the city on memorable days into the “hero city of Stalingrad.” Moreover, this particular decision of the local authorities is quite moderate and should suit the sensible majority of Russians.

However, someone is obviously not satisfied with such a reasonable compromise. Therefore, once again the history of the Great Patriotic War, the Soviet Union and its supreme power finds itself at the epicenter of modern politics. It is mercilessly and uncompromisingly used to gain political weight, and in most cases, at the expense of unfounded criticism of others. Among the latter (criticized) is the current Russian government, which confirms the target setting of the activities of falsifiers of history - undermining the stability and unity of modern Russian society.