Yuri NIKIFOROV World War II History: Manipulation Tricks
The concept that historical studies can be regarded as a subclass of belles-lettres became widespread in West Europe and the US in the second half of the XX century. In the framework of the view, a historian depicting the past is free to cast his narrative into the form of tragedy, comedy, satire, etc. The approach became almost universally adopted since the publication of Hayden White's Metahistory in 1973. Equating history to literature automatically renders the problem of falsifications meaningless: a historian can generate his own vision of the past and in the process his fantasy need not be constrained by the requirement of correspondence to empirical reality. In contrast, the Russian historical method is based on the assumption that the mission of historical studies is to adequately reconstruct the past and to relate its picture to the readership without groundless distortions bred by individual perceptions. The process does include the phase of creative writing as a natural component, but this aspect of a historian's work should not dominate. The objective of historical studies since their very origin (Thucydides) used to be to learn the truth about the past, and the methods of extracting objective knowledge have been polished for millenniums. There exist strict criteria which make it possible to assess the realism of historical research and to tell serious studies from forgery. The falsifications of the history of World War II, its causes, origin, outcome and consequences employ a broad range of manipulative techniques including repulsively dirty tricks and downright lies. The purpose of the falsifications is generally the same in the majority of cases – to distort the historical reality and to undermine the historical memory of the Russian people. We are confronted with recurrent attempts to offer the society “an alternative reading” that would potentially induce an overhaul of the traditional views on the origin of World War II, the circumstances under which it was unleashed, and the role of the war as a whole and its Eastern front in particular in the XX century history. Analysis of this stream of revisionism shows that typically it comes at the cost of openly neglecting the basic historical research principles and criteria normally observed by the community of historians and philosophers. In most cases what we encounter is the creation of myths disguised as academic research. History as the area of academic research has at its disposal an established apparatus of critical assessment of historical evidence. Critical examination of data sources is an indispensable element of a historical study claiming any extent of academic validity. Those who falsify history of course tend to avoid such scrutiny. Their interpretations rely on sources which are either dubious or obviously unauthentic, such as, for example, Stalin's alleged August 19, 1939 speech at the Politburo meeting which a number of authors attempted to present as evidence proving that the USSR played a key role in unleashing the war. Any serious historian would easily find out that no secret meeting of the Politburo took place that day. What is being demonstrated is a record in French left by an unknown individual, and the “document” was unearthed from the archive of the 2nd Bureau of the French General Staff. Moreover, the text was written on a form of the Vichy military ministry. Another example is the attempt to float the myth about the pre-war cooperation between NKVD (the Soviet secret police) and Gestapo aimed at struggling against “the world Jewry”. It was realized in the form of disseminating obviously fake papers alleged to be top secret documents previously concealed in archives by “official” historians. Another trick from the same arsenal is the arrangement of false cause-effect relations by means of manipulating the chronology of events. For example, a key role in unleashing World War II is ascribed to the signing of the August 23, 1939 Soviet-German Treaty. The manipulation is based on viewing the deal not as a link in a sequence of cause-effect relations, but as an isolated act unrelated to the signing of the Munich Treaty and to a number of other previous developments. Arbitrarily tearing apart the fabric of the historical narrative, some authors chose 1939 as the starting point in the description of the set of circumstances which eventually led to the war, ignoring the preceding events such as the signing of the Munich Treaty. In quite a few history textbooks the 1938 crisis around Czechoslovakia and the 1939 Soviet-German Non-aggression Pact are discussed in separate paragraphs. As a result, students are led to believe that there existed no direct connection between the Munich Treaty and the outbreak of World War II. It seems that so far the society in Russia remains unaware of the fact that nowadays the front line of the information war passes across school textbooks. Extensive potential for falsifications is carried by attempts to limit the explanation of historical events to discussing intentions, motivations, and plans of particular individuals. The approach makes it possible to churn out moral judgments instead of supplying actual explanations. Ascribing a set of personality traits to a historical figure (and thus expressing negative or positive perceptions) an author who intends to falsify historical events explains the steps taken by the figure on this basis. So, phenomena from the realm of psychology – intentions, feelings, emotions – are built into the description of physical events. For example, certain intentions are ascribed to Stalin and subsequently the notion is used as an established fact to present cause-effect relations that never existed in reality. This is done by the authors who deem it possible to charge the Soviet leadership with deliberately unleashing the war, alleging that it regarded a global conflict as a prologue to a revolution in Europe. The claims that in 1941 the USSR was bracing for an attack against Germany – as Stalin's attempt to defeat capitalism militarily, in line with Lenin's ideology - are phenomena of the same kind. Such ideas are currently fed to the public in massive quantities. Finally, it is necessary to mention the campaign of “history demythologization” which began in the late 1980ies and specifically targets the symbols cherished by the Russian national memory. As an example, I can cite an episode which is not related to the commencement of World War II but – due to the endeavors of those who are eager to falsify history – literally became entangled with it. For several years, especially on the Victory Day, we are forced to face an avalanche of “revelations” about the atrocities perpetrated by Soviet soldiers in the defeated Germany. Historians make no attempts to deny that servicemen from the Soviet army and the armies of the allies committed murders, robberies, and rapes. Documents have been published in Russia which showed that – as it inevitably happens during any war – a certain number of crimes against the civilian population did take place. Problems arise when the facts are interpreted and conclusions are drawn on their basis. We permanently encounter the tendency to highlight the crimes committed by the Red Army soldiers rather than by any others. A whole campaign is aimed at creating an impression that violence against civilians is characteristic of the conduct of Russian soldiers due to their souls having been crippled by “Stalin's totalitarianism” or to their “barbarian Asian backgrounds”. This is the way the situation is portrayed in the book written by British historian E. Beaver whose logic is that a soldier with a torch dragging women out of basement hideouts epitomizes the army which had liberated Europe. Two, three, or ten facts can be supplied as an illustration, but it should not be difficult to find out that the command of the armies of the allies in the Western occupation zones also had to work hard to prevent and to punish the violence against civilians perpetrated by their servicemen. Overall, it becomes impossible to grasp an integral picture of the situation: fragmentary data is available in literature, but for some reason American historians are in no hurry to compile an array of criminal episodes to demonstrate that a tide of violence swept over the US occupation zone. Such biased approach would not be welcome in the sphere of serious historical research, but fits well with propaganda campaigns. Russia's foes favor the notorious citation about “the unpredictability” of its past. They readily resort to dirty tricks, and some day we will certainly hear that Russia has no history at all. Unless we make the process stop, the society in Russia is eventually going to find itself deprived of the historical memory. Former French President F. Mitterrand said that a nation which does not study its history is a nation shedding its own identity. The words are worth remembering. The national mentality and the national idea cannot exist without a historical foundation. The battle over history is a fight not so much over Russia's past as over its future. http://en.fondsk.ru/article.php?id=2426
