Medinsky Appointment Signals Putin Likely to Target Historians Next, Martynov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 30 – Vladimir Putin’s decision to put former culture minister Vladimir Medinsky in charge of a commission consisting of security service officers to enforce a common view of Russian history strongly suggests that the Kremlin will be expanding its repressive moves from activists and journalists to professional historians, Kirill Martynov says.

            That likelihood, the political editor of Novaya gazeta says, is indicated by Medinsky’s notorious behavior as culture minister and his oft-expressed view that foreign structures are seeking to harm Russia by calling into question its glorious past and must be exposed and their impact on Russian writers eliminated (novayagazeta.ru/articles/2021/07/31/poveliteli-istorii).

            Russia is now in “a pre-war state” as far as history is concerned, Martynov continues. Nothing must be allowed to cast doubt on the greatness of Russia and anything that appears less than great in its past must be explained away or minimized. In short, from his perspective, “the only problem” Russia has is “Russophobia and harmful myths” about the Russian past.

            Moreover, Medinsky has cast himself as a defender of Russia’s own mythology, insisting that it doesn’t matter so much whether the details are true as whether the story the authorities want presented as in the case of the 28 Panfilov soldiers sends the right message. He thus will defend officially approved myths and attack facts that call these myths into question.

            “Many are asking what will take place next after the destruction of the political opposition and the labelling of a majority of independent media outlets ‘foreign agents.’ The new commission under Medinsky gives the answer: the next target will be the historians” and they will be charged with being foreign agents or violating the enlightenment statute.

            What this means, Martynov says, is that “entire eras” are now boing to be “taboo” for Russian historians. Russian-Ukrainian relations obviously but “Russian colonialism on the whole” too. As long as Medinsky is in charge, there won’t be any honest studies of the Afghan or Chechen wars, the Circassian genocide, or most aspects of World War II.  

The Procrustean bed into which Putin wants to put Russian life now is now being extended into the past. And the restrictions will be far worse than they were in Stalin’s time when serious historians could study many things removed from his concern or in Brezhnev’s when they could write more honestly about many more things as long as they cited Marx, Lenin and the current Soviet leader.

Under Putin and Medinsky, that isn’t going to be enough to avoid the horrific attention of the Kremlin and its agents.