What is the purpose of this project and why has it emerged at this very time? Russian historian Vladimir KRAVTSOV comments to The Day:
“The events themselves caused these plans to emerge. You know the way Moscow behaves with respect to Ukraine, Europe, and the US, and the way it threatens the Baltic countries. There are so many lies. The euphoria that arose following the seizure of Crimea is now on the decline. People begin to understand that all this is not to the benefit of Russia. Therefore, this propagandist and ideological background should be supported.
“I think these actions are aimed, above all, at the domestic – Russian – public because the international arena knows perfectly well what the history of the USSR, pre-revolutionary Russia, and post-Soviet Russia is. They are very well aware of this, so it will be impossible to convince them of this. But inside the country, it’s necessary to keep up the euphoria caused by the national leadership’s wrong actions.”
Besides, a monument to Ivan the Terrible was recently unveiled in the Russian city of Oryol. Does this fact signal a change in Russia’s dominant historical paradigm?
“The monument in honor of Russia’s millennium was put up in Novgorod back in the tsarist era. And no place was found for Ivan IV the Terrible among the statues that surround this monument because tsarist autocracy considered him too odious a figure.
“This is the first time in the history of Russia that a monument to Ivan the Terrible was erected. He has a too long trail of crimes behind him, although some opponents of the extra-systemic opposition claim that, you see, Ivan the Terrible wiped out fewer people than any other cruel ruler in Europe. This is, of course, a lie. Maybe, there were really fewer executions on Red Square, but suffice it to recall the drowning of 60,000 Novgorod residents in the river Volkhov, when Ivan the Terrible came to conquer this city. For the Novgorodian land did not want to be part of Russia – it was forcibly dragged there.
“Does this mean a change of the course inside the country? This course is constantly changing. At any rate, as long as the Constitution is not being adhered to and has been turned in empty piece of paper, we can say for sure what kind of a policy it is. Of course, thank God, it does not come to Stalin-era-scale repressions. But everything can happen, for we are all living under the same sky. But, on the other hand, I don’t think the leadership will dare resort to Stalinist-type repressions. I don’t think it is possible.”
The Russian government uses history to propagandize the interpretations of history it likes. Why has history become an instrument and the Russian academic community accepted this?
“History as a science has essentially never existed in Russia on a large scale, at least officially. Only selectively, a few representatives of the Russian historical discipline have followed a scientific path.
“Take, for example, Lomonosov. He was one of the first falsifiers of Russian history. He believed that Ukrainian was a dialect of the Russian language and Ukrainians were a Russian sub-ethnos. But could this be true when there were no Russians yet, while Ukrainians had already been formed basically? And, all of a sudden, they turn into a sub-ethnos of the Great Russian people. Naturally, it is no science. Pardon the expression – it is not I who coined it, – history was turned into a ‘whore’ for the authorities of first the Soviet Union and now Russia. It can be treated in any possible way.
“As a matter of fact, there is no historical science in our country. This discipline works on the principle of ‘telephone law’: they phone from a proper place – the Kremlin or Lubyanka – to a person in charge of this discipline and say: you should do this and conclude that. In other words, in our country the conclusion precedes the fact, not the other way round. This means that first a conclusion is drawn at a certain office and then facts are manipulated to suit this conclusion. It has always been so, and I, as a historian, can confirm this on many examples.
“Therefore, it would be naive to expect any progressive steps on the part of the Russian historical community. They will be doing what certain offices will tell them to.”
In that case, do you believe in the revival of historical science in Russia, with due account of the current tradition of falsification?
“History as a science must emerge, not revive, in Russia. It has never existed. There were some beacons who took a scientific position, such as Klyuchevsky and Solovyov. There were also luminaries of this kind, such as Hrushevsky, a historian by God’s grace, in Ukraine and some in the other former Soviet republics. But, on the whole, there was no historical science as such. But, for a science to remain a science, to be unbiased, and not to depend on the authorities’ will, there must be certain conditions.”
