At some point in our lives we all have the urge to rewrite history.
“The dog ate it,” revision starts early. And if not tempered by a healthy conscience can get dangerously out of hand.
Russia’s Vladimir Putin is taking it to the extreme in his effort to rewrite history as far as it impacts his reign.
The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 is a particular burr in his saddle, to which he now claims Russia as an innocent victim.
Those violent crackdowns on pro-democracy demonstrations? Misunderstood.
Putin is now taking it as far as to retroactively punish those who somehow played a role in holding Russia accountable.
For instance, last month Putin ordered the arrest of a retired Lithuanian judge who sentenced former Soviet officers for their role in a brutal crackdown against pro-independence protesters in Vilnius, the Lithuanian capital, on Jan. 13, 1991.
Fourteen protestors were killed that day — including a young woman crushed by a tank — and hundreds injured in Russia’s attempt to maintain control over the small country.
According to Putin, the judge, a 70-year-old woman named Kornelija Maceviciene, as well as two other judges, erred in their decision to prosecute those who ordered the assault.
The verdicts were “clearly unjust,” a Moscow court recently determined, and ordered Judge Maceviciene arrested while the two other judges were declared criminals and placed on Russia’s wanted list for “persecuting” Russians.
This is but one instance of Putin’s efforts to recast history so that it portrays Russia the victim of a massive smear campaign.
In short, it’s propaganda.
Putin’s other goal is to brainwash citizens into believing the war against Ukraine is justified because it prevents a broader conflict if Ukraine were to join NATO.
Ukraine’s further alignment with the West, “would perhaps be the end of civilization,” newly issued school history books quote Putin. “It could not be allowed.”
Putin’s censorship is hardly unique.
Efforts to sanitize the Holocaust, slavery, racial, ethnic and gender discrimination, and other atrocities abound.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is on a crusade to banish any “woke” curricula in public schools. The result is the removal of thousands of books from school classrooms and libraries and the outright elimination of textbooks including those concerning history, social studies and even math.
