Russians are trying to face their Stalinist past -- Democrats R Us Returns

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Date Posted: 15:03:09 10/30/09 Fri
Author: Bob
Subject: Russians are trying to face their Stalinist past

...as this article from today's NY Times shows: "MOSCOW � Russian President Dmitri A. Medvedev on Friday warned that Russians have lost their sense of horror over Stalin�s purges, and called for the construction of museums and memorial centers devoted to the atrocities, as well as further efforts to unearth and identify the dead. Mr. Medvedev made the comments on his video blog, on the occasion of a holiday devoted to the memory of victims of repression. He warned that revisionist historians risked glossing over the darker passages of the Soviet past, citing a poll that showed that 90 percent of young people can not name victims of the purges. 'Even now we can hear voices saying that these numerous deaths were justified by some supreme goals of the state,' Mr. Medvedev said.
Historians estimate that 20 million people were killed under Stalin, mostly through forced collectivizations and party purges.

Though he reiterated his worry that Russia is demonized in contemporary histories of World War II, Mr. Medvedev added, 'it is just as important to prevent the justification, under the pretext of putting historical records straight, of those who killed their own people.'
Under Mr. Medvedev�s predecessor, Vladimir V. Putin, Russian opinions of Stalin became far rosier. Government-endorsed textbooks now balance Stalin�s atrocities with praise for his achievements � especially victory over Hitler � and recent polls show that most Russians believe Stalin did more good than bad. Meanwhile, leaders have railed against Eastern European historians who paint Soviet forces as occupiers, and in May Mr. Medvedev created a commission to prevent such attempts to 'falsify history.'

Arseny Roginsky, chairman of the human rights organization Memorial, said Mr. Medvedev�s speech struck directly at 'the center of the contemporary discussion of Stalin and Stalinism � the question about victory and the price of victory.' Though Vladimir V. Putin spoke with compassion of Stalin�s victims on the same holiday in 2007, Mr. Medvedev went much farther by offering concrete proposals about museums and the search for mass graves, Mr. Roginsky said."

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