Memory of August 1991 Coup in Russian Politics

Commemorating the anniversary of the August 1991 failed hardliner coup was a key focus of an opposition demonstration in Moscow on 22 August. The rally was held at the site of the deaths of the White House defenders killed during the August days.

Amended history textbooks for Ukraine's 11 year-olds

According to Ukrains'ka pravda, Ukraine's controversial education minister Dmytro Tabachnyk has begun to 'rewrite' history for the country's 11 year-old pupils. Comparing the 2005 and 2010 editions of the fifth-form textbook Introduction to the History of Ukraine, journalist Katerya Kapliuk has noted a number of amendments and excisions in the new editions pertaining to, inter alia, the 1932-33 Terror-Famine (Holodomor) and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA). A few of the most prominent deletions, according to Kapliuk:

A passage about the Battle of Kruty (1918), in which hundreds of students held off the entrance of thousands of Bolshevik troops into Kyiv;

A reference to Bolshevik violence against Ukrainian 'patriots';

A reference to Holodomor as man-made or 'artificial' [shtuchnyi];

A photo of UPA commander Roman Shukhevych, as well as an elaboration of UPA's 'two-front struggle' against Nazis and 'Soviet soldiers and partisans';

Passages about and photos of the 2004 Orange Revolution -- which, according to Ukrainian Ministry of Education official Oleksandr Udod, is too difficult for fifth-formers to understand. The full article can be read here.

Image above: Ukrains'ka pravda.

Belarusian NGOs Call for 'International Katyń Initiative'

A delegation of Belarusian NGOs, visiting Katyń to mark the European Day of Remembrance for Victims of Stalinism and Nazism (23 August), has announced the creation of an 'International Katyń Initiative'.

10th International Katyń Motorcycle Marathon to begin this weekend

Bikers are gathering in anticipation of the start of the 10th International Katyń Motorcycle Marathon in Warsaw this Saturday.

Post-Smolensk Crash Tensions in Poland

Tensions surrounding the aftermath of the Smolensk plane crash hit a peak today in Poland as crowds gathered to prevent the government from relocating a crucifix erected outside the Presidential Palace in Warsaw to commemorate the crash victims.

Kosachev offers another sign of shift in official Russian position on the Soviet past

On 29 June 2010, an article by Konstantin Kosachev, Chair of the State Duma Committee for International Affairs, argued that the damage to Russia’s reputation was beginning to outweigh the advantages brought by defending the Soviet past on the international arena.


In the article, Kosachev called for a new strategy to be devised to handle issues relating to Soviet history. He suggested the formulation of a kind of ‘historical doctrine’, comprising a set of principles outlining very clearly where Russia stands with regard to the Soviet past, and couched in terms that would be easily comprehensible to Russia’s foreign partners.

Kosachev proposed that such a doctrine would, for example, draw a sharp distinction between historical evaluations of Soviet actions at the domestic level, and at the foreign policy level. The former should be the business of each individual post-Soviet state; the latter should be ‘the subject of historical analysis, but not of political initiatives’, with no unilateral revisions to be permitted.

He argued that such a strategy could help Russia to deflect East European attempts at provoking Russia into aggressive responses on the historical front, as well as protecting Russia against possible future demands for compensation for the victims of Soviet crimes.

The article is available here.

Karaganov comments on Katyn and Stalinist past

On 22 July the prominent Russian politics and foreign affairs analyst Sergei Karaganov published an article in the official Russian newspaper Rossiiskaia gazeta titled ‘The Russian Katyn’, in which he called upon Russia to ‘find within herself the strength to admit that the whole of Russia is one big Katyn, strewn with the mostly nameless graves of millions of the regime’s victims’.

Should Russia apologise for Holodomor?

'No,' says a (slim) majority of Russian respondents to a poll released yesterday by the Levada Centre. In response to the question 'In your view, should Russian leaders apologise to the Ukrainian people (Ukrainskomu narodu) for the "Holodomor" of the early 1930s, as they did recently to the Polish people for the tragedy of Katyn?', Russians replied:

7% Definitely yes

16% Probably yes

28% Probably no

24% Definitely no

25% Difficult to say

The poll can read another way: 48% of respondents were not opposed to the idea of an official apology to Ukrainians, with 23% either completely or somewhat supportive of one. As for Russian views of the reasons for the 'mass famine in Ukraine' in 1932-33, the responses were also remarkable:

27% hold that it was caused by 'unfavourable weather conditions';

35% hold that it was caused by 'mistakes made during the process of collectivization';

14% hold that it was caused by 'premeditated (prednamerennye) actions by Soviet authorities that sought to break the resistance of Ukrainian peasants who did not want to go to collective farms'; and

25% could not say.

The details of the Levada poll can be read here.

'Не умер Сталин'

Но как тут быть, когда внутри нас
Не умер Сталин?

But how are we to live here, when inside us
Stalin is not dead?

Boris Chichibabin, 1959

The image above comes from Wednesday's match between Metallurh FC Zaporizhzhia and Chornomorets' FC Odesa. The sign, which reads 'Zaporizhzhia against Stalin,' is a response to the recent erection of a monument to Stalin by the Communist Party of Ukraine in Zaporizhzhia.

Metallurh won the match, 1:0.

Stalin Monument Unveiled in Zaporizhzhia

Well, they succeeded. Today the Communist Party of Ukraine unveiled a three-metre monument to a uniformed and decorated Iosif Stalin in Zaporizhzhia, the first erected since Ukraine's independence. Video of the ceremony -- and the attendant protest -- follows below.



The weather was unusually hot in Zaporizhzhia today, and UNIAN is reporting that an elderly woman died during the unveiling ceremony. Three veterans of World War II were also hospitalized.