New cult: Stalin will be shown not as a tyrant, but as a "defender" in new Russian textbooks

Ukrainska Pravda
Mon, August 21, 2023 

Under the leadership of current President Vladimir Putin, Russia is trying to impose a positive image of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin on society by amending history textbooks to show that he led Russia to victory and defended the country's interests.

Source: Medusa

Details: At a press conference dedicated to the 80th anniversary of the Battle of Kursk, Mikhail Myagkov, scientific director of the Russian Military Historical Community, said that the new unified textbook on Russian history presents the role of Joseph Stalin "objectively".

He contrasted the book with previous textbooks, including those allegedly "funded in the 1990s by the Soros Foundation".

According to Myagkov, in the textbooks of the 1990s, Stalin "was a tyrant, a beast, an inept commander who overwhelmed the enemy with corpses [of USSR soldiers]", and the "criminal Stalin’s regime" was a thread connecting many textbooks.

Modern "experts" have presented Stalin's role in the new unified textbook "properly, objectively", a representative of the Russian Military Historical Community claims.

According to Myagkov, the new textbook presents Stalin as a man who held the position of commander-in-chief, and no major operation took place without his participation; as a man who "nominated the commanders of victory".

Myagkov emphasised that Stalin "clearly defended the interests of Soviet foreign policy".

New textbooks on general history and Russian history for grades 10 and 11 were presented in early August.

Vladimir Medinsky, the head of the Russian Institute of Education and Research and an advisor to the Russian president, took part in the creation of the textbooks.

Earlier it was reported that the sections on the 1970-2000 period were completely rewritten in these textbooks, and a section on the war against Ukraine, called a "special military operation" by Putin, was added.

Why it is important: In the past, Soviet and post-Soviet authorities have tried to dispel the cult of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, but in recent years, Putin has been trying to clear Stalin’s name by ignoring his agreements with Adolf Hitler and the torture of his own countrymen.

Stalin is seen as an example for Putin, and against the backdrop of the war against Ukraine, the Russian dictator is increasingly invoking the image of his predecessor.

The cult of Stalin's personality began in the Soviet Union in the mid-1930s and lasted until 1956, when it was officially dispelled at the XX Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

In the following years, the USSR got rid of the legacy of Stalin's personality cult, and his body was taken out of the Mausoleum and buried near the Kremlin wall on the night of 31 October 1961.

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