http://www.thought-criminal.org/article/node/922



At the beginning of this school year, school pupils in Russia will be getting a new history textbook in which the policies of Josif Stalin are portrayed in a positive light, and which offers an interesting interpretation of the Finnish-Soviet Winter War of 1939 - 1940.
The book also gives the impression that Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania joined the Soviet Union voluntarily.

The Russian Ministry of Education and Science recommends the book Istorija Rossii, on the history of the 20th and early 21st century, for use in upper secondary schools. The Russian government has been dissatisfied with how Russian history is currently taught in the country’s schools. The winners of a contest for writing a suitable textbook were a group led by Dr. Nikita Zagladin.
Other writers include Sergei Kozlenko, Sergei Minakov, and Yuri George Petrov.

According to the new book, the administration of Stalin had many of the characteristics of the traditional despotism of the days of Ivan the Terrible and Peter the Great. Stalin’s administration also "solved the problems of the modernisation of the state through the concentration of power and repression".
Once a modern industrial foundation was achieved in this way, "the character of Soviet society began to change, and the result of this development was the acceptance of the democratic values characteristic of developed states".

Tsarist Russia is portrayed as a state undergoing strong development, which did not fall far behind other great powers. Nicholas II is seen as a tragic figure, and the Lenin quotes are replaced by the words of Anton Denikin, the general of the "whites".
Meanwhile, a handbook for civics teachers at the upper secondary school level quotes President Vladimir Putin as saying that the dissolution of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical disaster of the 20th century.
Stalin is described as the "most successful" of the Soviet leaders, and his severe measures are understood as a way to turn Russia into a great power.

There is a chapter on Stalin’s terror in the history textbook, which focuses on the period between 1935 and 1937. The book mentions 800,000 executions and 18 million who were locked up in camps, but it does not give the total sum of the victims of the terror which continued until the 1950s.
The book sees the forced collectivisation of agriculture as an unavoidable step toward an industrialised state. The destruction of the "kulaks", and the Ukrainian famine and its million victims are not mentioned at all.

Concerning the year 1940 the book notes that Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania "joined the Soviet Union", (voshli v sostav). In this connection it is not mentioned that the Red Army occupied the Baltic countries, that their leaders were imprisoned, and that the occupier organised "elections". (Another history textbook, previously approved for use at the upper secondary school level, describes this in greater detail.)
The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939 is mentioned in the book without legal or historical assessments.
The policies of the Western powers are seen to be partly to blame for the events, and "many experts" are said to be of the opinion that the Soviet Union had no option but to agree to a pact with Hitler. By doing so Stalin managed to improve the country’s security.
Finland rejected proposals by Soviet diplomats to move the border for the sake of the security of Leningrad. The Soviet Union would have taken "the prosperous area of Vyborg" in return for another area twice as big in Kostamuksha.
The book further wrote that the Soviet Union began the war against Finland on the pretext that the Finnish side had opened fire. A Soviet government was set up in Karelia, led by Otto-Ville Kuusinen. The writers concede the patriotic fighting spirit of the Finns, the slow progress of the Red Army, and the massive losses.
The Finnish chain of fortifications, the Mannerheim Line, was difficult to breach, and in addition, Britain and France were beginning preparations to attack to help Finland. "Even Germany openly showed sympathy toward Finland."

The final result was that "the hope that emerged in Comintern for the Sovietisation of Finland was not realised". In the peace agreement the Soviet Union got a protective zone for Leningrad and guaranteed itself free access to the Gulf of Finland.
On the 1990s the book notes that the declarations of independence by the Soviet republics did not yet mean that they wanted to disengage from the Soviet Union.

[size=13pt]Stalin's new status in Russia [/size]

By Richard Galpin
BBC News, Moscow





The former Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin may have killed millions of his own people but this weekend he could be chosen by Russians as their greatest-ever countryman.
Inspired by the British competition 100 Greatest Britons, one of Russia's biggest television stations Rossiya has been conducting a nationwide poll for much of this year.
From an original list of 500 candidates now there are just 12 names left from which viewers can select their all-time hero.
The winner will be announced on Sunday.



More than 3.5 million people have already voted and Stalin - born an ethnic Georgian - has been riding high for many months.
In the summer he held the number one slot but was knocked down several places after the producer of the show appealed to viewers to vote for someone else.
Amongst the others on the list are Ivan the Terrible, Lenin, Catherine the Great and Alexander Pushkin.
Mistakes 'forgiven'
The fact that Stalin has been doing so well comes as no surprise to members of the Communist Party, which remains one of the biggest political parties in the country.

"Stalin made Russia a superpower and was one of the founders of the coalition against Hitler in World War II," says Sergei Malinkovich, leader of the St Petersburg Communist Party.
"In all opinion polls he comes out on top as the most popular figure. Nobody else comes close. So for his service to this country we can forgive his mistakes."
Not only is Mr Malinkovich prepared to forgive Stalin's "mistakes", he also wants the man who is regarded as one of the most bloodthirsty tyrants of the 20th Century to be made a saint.
As I was interviewing him, he held a small neatly framed icon of Stalin's face.
Last month an Orthodox priest also displayed an icon of Stalin in his church near St Petersburg.
Although he was eventually forced to remove it, he vowed he would not be silenced and went on to describe Stalin as his "father".
Many in Russia do still revere Stalin for his role during World War II when the Soviet Union defeated the forces of Nazi Germany.
But now there is a much broader campaign to rehabilitate Stalin and it seems to be coming from the highest levels of government.
Archives seized
The primary evidence comes in the form of a new manual for history teachers in the country's schools, which says Stalin acted "entirely rationally".

Stalin's profile on the poll's website does not shy away from his crimes
"[The initiative] came from the very top," says the editor of the manual, historian Alexander Danilov.
"I believe it was the idea of former president, now prime minister, Vladimir Putin.
"It fits completely with the political course we have had for the last eight years, which is dedicated to the unity of society."
But the campaign goes further than reinterpreting history for schoolchildren. It is also physical.
Earlier this month, riot police raided the St Petersburg office of one of Russia's best-known human rights organisations, Memorial.
Claiming a possible link with an "extremist" article published in a local newspaper, the police took away 12 computer hard-drives containing the entire digital archive of the atrocities committed under Stalin.
Memorial's St Petersburg office specialises in researching the crimes committed by the Soviet regime.
"It's a huge blow to our organisation," says Irina Flige, the office director.
"This was 20 years' work. We'd been making a universally accessible database with hundreds of thousands of names.
"Maybe this was a warning to scare us?"
Irina Flige believes they were targeted because they are now on the wrong side of a new ideological divide.
New nationalism
The new ideology is "Putinism" which, she says, has evolved over the past two years and is based on a strident form of nationalism.
What we have now [in Russia] effectively is the KGB in power

Orlando Figes
British historian
It seems Russians are to be proud of their history, not ashamed, and so those investigating and cataloguing the atrocities of the past are no longer welcome.
"The official line now is that Stalin and the Soviet regime were successful in creating a great country," says Irina Flige.
"And if the terror of Stalin is justified, then the government today can do what it wants to achieve its aims."
The outrage at what has happened to the Memorial archive spreads beyond Russia's borders.
The British historian Orlando Figes worked with Memorial when he was researching his latest book The Whisperers: Private Lives in Stalin's Russia.
"By conservative estimates 25 million people were repressed in the Soviet Union [under Stalin] between 1928 and 1953," he says.
"That means people executed, arrested and sent to prison camps or turned into slave labourers or deported.
"Virtually every family was affected by repression."
"What we have now [in Russia] effectively is the KGB in power," he adds.
"Opposition forces and awkward historians reminding the Russian population of what the KGB did 50 years ago is inconvenient for these people."
So it seems whoever is voted the country's greatest citizen on Sunday, it is Joseph Stalin who is the biggest winner this year as he is rehabilitated in Russia's brave new world.

you forget basic principle of LIFE: two sides to a coin.

The Russian people have made their choice; however much we dislike it, it is still their choice!

RichyBlacK:

The Russian people have made their choice; however much we dislike it, it is still their choice!

i doubt u would be this nice if the country in question was Israel or the US

bawomolo:

i doubt u would be this nice if the country in question was Israel or the US

Haba. After all the clueless and war monger Bush was elected (read rigged) into office twice!!!!!!!!!!!

Benjamin Netenyanhu's brother was killed while working as a mercenary at the 90 minutes at Entebbe attack. I believe he was the only casualty and yet his brother was elected PM in Israel.

roflmao!!! I can't even comment. It is ok for russia to FORCEFULLY declare Stalin a hero?? roflmao!!!

Kobojunkie:

[b]rof[/b]lmao!!! I can't even comment. It is ok for russia to FORCEFULLY declare Stalin a hero?? [b]rof[/b]lmao!!!

The amount of time you spend rolling on the floor, you must be reeking of dirt by now.

The amount of time you spend rolling on the floor, you must be reeking of dirt by now.

LOL. That's priceless

sorry to ressurect this thread,

But this kind of stuff makes me so angry. People must realize that everyone is intitiled to their own opinions, but NOT thier own truth. With the rise of obviously biased news outlets like Fox, And Msnbc. and revisionist texbooks around the globe. i fear that this new generation will be so brainwashed that they will loose the ability to think for themselves. so sad

4 Play:

[size=13pt]The amount of time you spend rolling on the floor, you must be reeking of dirt by now.[/size]

Classic.