Paul
Goble
Staunton, January 3 – Many are
familiar with Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s reference in the GULAG Archipelago to “millions
and millions” of Russians having been confined to Stalin’s camps, but few are
aware, Mikhail Sinelnikov-Orishak says, that this number comes not from a
demographer or historian but from an anti-Bolshevik émigré who worked for the Nazis.
According to Sinelnikov-Orishak, a
Saratov political scientist who is a frequent guest on Moscow television talk
shows, Solzhenitsyn relied for this point on the writings of Ivan A. Kurganov,
a bookkeeper who fled with the Germans and worked in the Nazi propaganda ministry
during the war (svpressa.ru/blogs/article/253550/).
The political scientist/commentator
thus brings together two themes now dominant in Russian propaganda: the continuing
centrality of World War II in Russian life almost 80 years later and the
defense of Stalin against the historical record of his crimes against the
peoples of the Soviet Union and the world.
By linking these two things together,
Sinelnikov-Orishak and those behind him clearly hope to discredit both research
showing how many people Stalin victimized by suggesting that it is somehow
linked to the Nazis and those who continue to maintain that the Soviet dictator
imprisoned and killed so many.
Sinelnikov-Orishek says that his
words of course do not mean that there weren’t any repressions at all. He and those
in his camp won’t deny that, at least not yet, but rather they mean that the
numbers Solzhenitsyn and other researchers have advanced should be ignored
because of their “Nazi” birthmarks.
The Russian writer devotes most of
his time to trying to discredit Kurganov (1896-1980) who he says is not
recognized by anyone as a scholar worthy of attention. That is nonsense.
Kurganov was the author of several respected and widely used books, including
perhaps most prominently, Women in the USSR and The Nations of the USSR
and the Russian Question.
No comments:
Post a Comment