Putin very much prefers not to see Russia's history commemorated. People might get ideas.

[DetlefK]

https://www.salon.com/2017/11/12/how-does-an-authoritarian-regime-celebrate-a-revolution_partner/

Perhaps because if you wish to project an image of a strong state and united people, then it’s awkward to toast the overturning of a seated government and beginning of civil war. All the more when Bolshevik actions in 1917 can be compared to those of Euromaidan protestors in 2014 Ukraine, who ousted a pro-Russian president in a move the Kremlin condemned as “an anti-constitutional takeover and armed seizure of power.”

While he’s capable of acknowledging the complexity of the Soviet origin story, Putin apparently sees no need to broadcast such confusion. Instead, he promotes an idea of “Russian greatness” in which history is used selectively, not to inform as much as to inspire. The Russian Revolution, however politically inconvenient, is no exception.

...

To the extent that the Kremlin is acknowledging the upcoming centennial at all, it is with this theme of solidarity in mind. On Oct. 26, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs tweeted that it will host an international conference titled “100 Years of the Russian Revolution: Unity for the Future.” The message of the event is clear: Focus on achievements to come rather than past conflict.

...

For the president, the Soviet era wasn’t about repression. Nor was it about the upending of traditional order. Instead, he portrays it as a giant modernization project, marked by the defeat of Nazi Germany, the launching of the first satellite into space, and advances in education and industry.

But in contemporary Russia, the aristocratic era that the Bolsheviks swept away isn’t depicted as all that bad, either.

...

The horrific violence involved in transforming this imperial empire into a Union of Soviet Socialist Republics tends to be glossed over.

...

Soviet censors used to argue that open discussion of past wrongdoing could serve only to demoralize the people, tarnish their achievements and weaken the regime. Kremlin pronouncements today remain in line with such principles.

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This year the Kremlin did not participate in local services commemorating the anniversaries of two hostage tragedies and a nuclear submarine accident that took place during Putin’s presidency. All three incidents involved controversial government responses that the Kremlin has never acknowledged as flawed. In April, Moscow officials angrily rejected a finding by the European Court of Human Rights that Russia had been guilty of “serious failings” in its handling of one — a shootout at an elementary school in Beslan, in which 330 people were killed.

This strategy of denial extends into the cultural sphere. For example, a new British film, “Death of Stalin,” hasn’t yet been licensed for screening in Russia — but it’s already received blistering reviews in the Russian press. Various sources have deemed the political satire “more like a circus performance of clowns than a movie,” a “provocation” and “a new form of psychological warfare.”

In contrast, the minister of culture recently extolled an upcoming, domestically produced movie called “To See Stalin,” about the man who designed the Soviet T-34 tanks in WWII. He called it “a great example of correct Russian film.”

...

As Putin remarked last December in regard to 1917: “It is not permissible to drag the schisms, animosity, insults, and callousness of the past into our contemporary life.”





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Millions starved to death in Russia in 1923, because of the failed agrarian policies of the Bolsheviks. I wonder how many Russians know this.

Or how many people remember the 2002 hostage-crisis in a Moscow theater? The one where the 130 hostages were killed by russian SWAT-teams who flooded the building with toxic gas?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow_theater_hostage_crisis

Or how many Russians know about the russian movie "Leviathan"?
It's a movie about an average guy fighting a corrupt mayor. The movie was trashed by russian critics for making Russia look bad.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2802154/

[Nitram]

1. Our own conservatives and authoritarians never look back at crimes of failings in US history.

Instead, they either downplay them or claim they never happened. They replace the facts of our history with mythological examples of our superiority and greatness.