Holocaust denial in Russia

Soviet historiography lacked both special monographs and publications of collections of documents devoted to the genocide of the Jews of the USSR ^[1] . The Holocaust was hushed up for ideological reasons ^{[2] [3] [4]} . According to some historians, the main reason that the Soviet Union was silent about the Holocaust was state anti-Semitism ^{[5] [6] [7]} . The historian Sergei Kudryashov, speaking about the occurrence of the silence of the Holocaust, noted that any emphasis on the great sacrifices of the Jewish population, in his opinion, seemed to belittle the suffering of other peoples ^[8] .

At the same time, some scientists believe that there was no Holocaust denial in the Soviet Union ^{[9] [10] [11] [12] [13]} . So, Daniel Romanovsky believes that “the more characteristic of the USSR was not Holocaust denial, but its trivialization” ^[14] . Other scholars write that both the suppression of the Holocaust itself and the concealment of documents about it that occurred in the 1950s and 1980s can be qualified as a form of denial ^{[15] [16] [17]} . As the Brief Jewish Encyclopedia writes, revisionists in the Soviet Union passed the Nazi genocide of Jews in silence, removing it from history ^[18] . Maria Altman notes that Western scholars call the first Soviet denier Lev Korneev ^[19] , who accused the Zionists of significantly exaggerating the number of Jewish victims and used some elements of Holocaust denial for ideological purposes ^[20] . Lyudmila Dymerskaya-Ziegelman believes that these ideas were borrowed by Soviet propagandists from Western neo-Nazi literature ^[21] .

The historian professor Yaroslav Gritsak writes that the Holocaust was one of the main victims of the Soviet policy of eliminating the historical memory of the Jewish people: according to the Soviet version, the Nazis and their accomplices did not kill Jews because they were Jews, but because they were Soviet citizens ^{[ 22]} .

According to the professor of the University of Michigan, Zvi Gitelman, Soviet historiography, not only “kept silent about the Holocaust,” but, moreover, completely refused to recognize its “uniqueness” against other atrocities in that it did not single out information about the extermination of Jews by the Nazis as an independent research problem ^[1] . Pavel Polyan writes that until the end of the 1980s, the Holocaust as a historical phenomenon remained a taboo subject for Soviet historians ^[23] , until that time archives were closed to scientists ^[5] .

Silence of this topic in the USSR had an extremely negative impact on Russian society, authorities and science ^[24] . According to Ilya Altman , in Russia this influence was greater than anywhere else in the post-Soviet space in Europe ^[25] . In addition, the erosion of confidence in Soviet historiography and the forced revision of attitudes toward Russian history had an impact on popular consciousness ^{[26] [27]} .

The main reasons for the spread of Holocaust denial in post-Soviet Russia, Maria Altman calls ^[28] :

• many years of silence and the actual denial of the Holocaust in the USSR by society and the state;
• a policy of anti-Semitism and a lengthy “ fight against Zionism ”;
• the consequences of totalitarianism and the collapse of the dominant ideology ;
• imperfect legislation and the weakness of civil society in Russia;
• the lack of the Holocaust in the education system, the lack of publications on this topic and the underestimation of its importance by democratic forces;
• the spread of nationalist ideologies and the deep roots of anti-Semitism in public consciousness.

She, speaking of the spread of Holocaust denial in Russia, noted that the generation of post-Soviet Russia is more prone to such ideas due to the lack of a Soviet educational system that instilled strong anti-fascist views ^[29] .

Silence

The silence in Russia over the decades of the Holocaust led to serious problems with history books ^{[30] [31]} . A number of researchers from leading institutes of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Russian Jewish Congress have made claims on this issue to the authors of school history textbooks. Researchers argue that in almost all textbooks published before 2004, the Holocaust was either not reflected at all, or was not shown as “the only case in world history when a certain state made an attempt to completely destroy an individual people” ^{[30] [32]} .

Speaking at a conference dedicated to the 60th anniversary of the release of prisoners of concentration camps and ghettos, the Israeli ambassador to Russia Arkady Milman privately expressed bewilderment that Russian history textbooks do not mention the Holocaust of the Jewish people ^[33] . According to a sociological study conducted in Russia in 1996, 91% of Russians surveyed did not know the meaning of the term “ Holocaust, ” and 49% did not hear anything about Auschwitz , Dachau, and Treblinka ^[34] .

In 2003, the theme of the Holocaust was included in the draft state standard for historical education, as a result of which its inclusion in textbooks became mandatory. In 2010, a unified educational module on the Holocaust was developed, recommended by the Russian Ministry of Education and Science. Educational and methodological recommendations for teachers on the study of the Holocaust have been published; questions about the Holocaust are included in the Unified State Examination (2011). Holocaust teaching is being extended as part of optional extracurricular activities. Large-scale contests of students and students are held. Moreover, in Russia there is no state program for teaching the Holocaust ^[35] .

Cultural scientist Ksenia Poluektova-Krimer believes that there is no collective national memory of the Holocaust in Russia, and very little time is devoted to the Holocaust in educational programs ^[36] . As noted by S. A. Kropachev, the number of Russian publications, memoirs and documents devoted to the Holocaust is constantly growing, in addition, there has been a circle of researchers who deliberately deal with this issue ^[37] .

According to the sociologist Boris Dubin , despite the presence of a considerable number of Russian historical works devoted to the Holocaust and some works of art, “in fact, the Holocaust as a topic does not exist in Russian mass culture, such an event simply does not exist”, and the USSR’s victory in the Great Patriotic War takes its place the war ^[38] .

Denial

According to Maria Altman, the silence of the Holocaust, which, in her opinion, was the result of state anti-Semitism in the USSR , after its collapse, in turn, contributed to the emergence of nationalist and pro-fascist movements in Russia ^[39] . Publications with the Holocaust denial were preceded by the propaganda of the ideas of Nazism, the publication of biographies of the leaders of the Third Reich and the like ^[40] . However, according to Stella Rock and Stephen Atkins, one of the constraining factors to its distribution is the memory of the Great Patriotic War and the negative attitude of the population towards Nazism ^{[41] [4]} .

One of the first Russian deniers, Stephen Atkins calls the leader of the anti-Semitic radical right-wing organization “Memory” Konstantin Smirnov-Ostashvili ^[4] . In the mid-1990s, literature appeared that denied the very fact of the Holocaust or questioned its significant aspects ^[42] . The growth of such publications may have been stimulated by information from 1996 on material compensation to prisoners of Nazi camps by Switzerland . From September 1996 to February 1997, about 200 thousand copies of Jürgen Graf 's book “The Holocaust Myth” ^[43] were distributed in Russia. In the same 1996, Richard Harwood's pamphlet, Six Million - Lost and Found , was published in Russian ^[44] .

The historian Maria Altman highlights the following trends in the description of the Holocaust among national patriots ^{[16] [45]} :

• its direct or complete denial;
• doubts about its existence - in general or on individual facts;
• downplaying;
• distortion of events and facts;
• misinterpretation of the term;
• Holocaust justification.

From about 6,000 articles in the national-patriotic press from 1992 to 1998, only 36 mention or consider the Holocaust, but they all deny or downplay it. For example, the newspaper "Our Fatherland" from St. Petersburg with a circulation of 9,000 copies in No. 58 for 1996 wrote that the "legend" about the Holocaust was used by the Zionists to create a guilt complex among the Germans and gain sympathy from other peoples ^[46] .

For the most part, materials used by Russian Holocaust deniers are borrowed from the West, which is confirmed by surveys of organizations ( Memorial , the Moscow office of the Anti-Defamation League , etc.) ^[47] , as well as a number of scientists (Stella Rock ^[43] , Ilya Altman , Semyon Charny ^{[3 ]} and Pavel Polyan ^[48] ).

Russian deniers emphasize that the genocide of Soviet Jews, although on a much smaller scale than scientists say, took place, but no one killed Jews in other countries. Modern deniers derive many of their ideas from Soviet anti-Zionist literature of the 1960-1980s ^{[3] [49]} . Instead of direct manifestations of anti-Semitism, deniers prefer to attack the Jews as "Zionists." Members of the Communist Party spread the idea that Hitler acted in alliance with the Zionists or was deceived by them. The head of the Pamyat NPF Dmitry Vasiliev , bringing this idea to its logical conclusion, claims that the Nazi elite led by Hitler consisted of Jews ^[50] . Oleg Platonov contrasts the “Russian Holocaust” with the Jewish one as a statement about the mass killings of Russians under the leadership of Jews and a hint of a Jewish conspiracy to destroy Russia ^[51] . Similarly, allegations are made about the Holocaust of the Cossacks by Jews, etc. ^[52]

One of the main stands of Russian deniers since 1996 was the newspaper “ Duel ” ^[53] . From 2003 to 2006, the website “Holocaust Revision” (www.revisio.msk.ru), created by N. V. Salamandrov, was in operation. The ideas of the deniers are reflected in such resources as Russky Vestnik , Russkaya Liniya , Left Russia and others. ^{[54] [3]} The editor-in-chief of the Duel, Yuri Mukhin, actively promoted the version that Hitler’s goal was to evict European Jews to Palestine . In 2004-2005, the books of Mukhin and Graf were published by Eksmo Publishing House and ended up in major stores ^[55] .

Israeli historian Daniel Romanovsky believes that Russian Holocaust deniers (in particular, Vadim Kozhinov ) are distinguished by a low intellectual level compared to like-minded people from the USA and Europe and the absence of any independent fresh ideas ^[14] . Among the Russian Holocaust deniers are also called Stanislav Kunyaev , Oleg Platonov , Boris Mironov , Alexander Prokhanov and some others ^{[56] [57] [3] [58]} . Historians note that Holocaust denial unites such dissimilar phenomena as neo-Nazism , neopaganism , Orthodox fundamentalism , monarchism, and radical Islamism ^{[3] [53]} .

Attitude of the authorities

In May 1997, Tatyana Zhvanetskaya, a member of the expert public commission of the Mutual Understanding and Reconciliation Fund, noted that it was difficult to issue compensation to many former ghetto prisoners and simply hiding Jews. The reason for the non-recognition of the victims of the persecution of Jews hiding during the occupation was the lack of an “official German document on the“ final solution of the Jewish question ”at the Foundation under the Government of the Russian Federation ^[59] .

In February 2009, an article by the activist of this organization, Nikita Tomilin, entitled “The Holocaust Lesson in Gaza” appeared on the official website of the youth organization of the ruling United Russia party, which contained the main theses of Holocaust deniers. Representatives of "United Russia" dissociated themselves from the article, and it was removed from the site ^[60] .

In September 2009, the Russian Foreign Ministry condemned the attempts by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to deny the Holocaust. According to representatives of the Foreign Ministry, “such statements about the Holocaust, wherever they come from, sin against the truth and are completely unacceptable”, offend the memory of all victims of the Second World War and those who fought against fascism ^[61] .

In November 2012, at the opening ceremony of the Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center , Russian President Vladimir Putin said ^[62] :

We must clearly understand that any attempts to reconsider the contribution of our country to the great victory, to deny the Holocaust - a shameful page in world history - is not just a cynical and unprincipled lie, it is the oblivion of the lessons of history that can lead to a repetition of the tragedy.

In 2014, Vladimir Putin called Holocaust denial a criminal practice ^[63] .

In January 2015, on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the liberation of prisoners from the Auschwitz concentration camp and the International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the Federation Council issued a statement urging state and public figures to “hold accountable those who allow Holocaust denial and genocide against“ non-Aryan “Peoples” ^[64] . The chairman of the Federation Council, Valentina Matvienko, in this regard called the denial of the Holocaust a crime before memory ^[65] .

Harassment

According to Pavel Polyan, the penetration into Russia of the ideas of Holocaust denial did not initially meet with any interest, much less opposition from the authorities. So, a 2007 poll among Russian deputies of the State Duma showed a unanimous rejection of the introduction of a special rule criminalizing the denial of the Holocaust . According to Russian parliamentarians, this problem should not be singled out as a denial of other crimes of fascism ^[66] .

However, shortly afterwards, legislative initiatives began to appear to ban Holocaust denial. Draft laws providing for liability for the denial of the crimes of Nazism in general or the Holocaust in particular have been repeatedly submitted to the State Duma of the Russian Federation. So, on May 6, 2009, a bill was introduced with the addition of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation article 354 ¹ , providing for responsibility for the rehabilitation of Nazism, including the approval, denial of the crimes of Nazism against the peace and security of mankind, committed publicly ^[67] . The explanatory note to him indicated that acts denying the facts of the genocide committed by the Nazi regime are subject to unconditional criminalization ^[68] . However, due to negative reviews, this bill was not adopted until 2014 ^[69] .

In 2013, an extensive bill was introduced on the inadmissibility of the rehabilitation of Nazism with a clear ban, including the denial of the Holocaust ^[70] . However, as of December 2015, it was not considered by the State Duma.

The amended version of the 2009 bill was re-submitted to the State Duma on February 27, 2014. In the new version, it provided for criminal liability, including for the public denial of the facts established by the verdict of the International Military Tribunal for the trial and punishment of the main axis war criminals in European countries ^[71] . This bill was adopted by the State Duma in April 2014 and entered into force on May 16, 2014. As a maximum punishment for committing an act, the new law provides for imprisonment for 5 years ^[72] .

The wording of part 1 of article 354 ^{1 of the} Criminal Code of the Russian Federation with regard to establishing liability for “denying the facts established by the verdict of the International Military Tribunal for the trial and punishment of the main war criminals of the European axis countries, approval of crimes established by the specified verdict”, according to the director of the Information and Analytical Center “Sova " Alexander Verkhovsky is typical for this kind of standards ^[73] , which criminalize various forms of historical revisionism and especially the denial of the Holocaust, but ka Generally, they do not call the Holocaust directly, and can be applied to a wider range of statements ^[74] .

Some of the denials' publications, in particular the book “The Holocaust Myth,” were banned from being distributed in Russia as extremist ^{[75] [76]} . In addition, public actions related to Holocaust denial (including posting relevant materials on the Internet) can be considered as inciting hatred or enmity or humiliating the dignity of a person or group of people on a national basis (Article 282 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation ) ^{[77] [78 ] ]} , but often continue to go unpunished ^[79] .

The emergence and cooperation of Russian nationalists and neo-Nazis with Western colleagues became possible after the collapse of the USSR. Such contacts with Western deniers were initiated in the early 1990s. In November 1992, members of the Pamyat organization were to take part in the international anti-Zionist conference in Sweden, which was canceled at the last moment by the government of that country. At this conference, reports were planned by David Irving , Robert Forisson, and Fred Leichter ^[43] .

In 1997, Oleg Platonov was the first Russian denier to take part in the annual conference of the American Institute for the Revision of History, and in the same year joined the editorial board of the journal Journal of Historical Review ^{[80] [81]} . From 1995 to 2000, Jurgen Graf, Carlo Mattogno , Russell Granata, and one of the leading publishers of revisionist literature Ernst Zündel visited Moscow several times ^[43] . Zundel noted the active position of Russian deniers ^[80] .

On January 26–27, 2002, Moscow hosted the “ International Conference on Global Problems of World History, ” which was attended by activists well-known in the world revisionist movement, such as Jürgen Graf, Ahmed Rami , David Duke and Russell Granata. The conference was sponsored by the Barnes Review magazine , whose publisher is Holocaust denier and racist Willis Carto ^{[82] [83]} . Russell Granata argued that it was in Russia that Holocaust deniers managed to find understanding and support ^[84] .

The Institute for the Revision of History published an article on the “revisionist breakthrough in Russia,” describing a special issue of the Russky Vestnik newspaper on the denial of the Holocaust, Jürgen Graf and Oleg Platonov as editors of this special issue, as well as a number of other revisionist publications ^[85] .

In Russia, Juergen Graf is hiding from criminal prosecution by Swiss justice ^[53] .

in Russian

• Altman M.M. Section 3. Denial of the Holocaust in Russia // Denial of the Holocaust: history and current trends / I. A. Altman (composition.). - M .: The Holocaust Foundation , 2001. - S. 51-71. - 88 p. - (Russian Holocaust Library). - 1,500 copies - ISBN 978-5-8989-7008-6 .
• Altman M. M. Holocaust Denial in Russia // Holocaust in the USSR: Encyclopedia / Ch. ed. I.A. Altman . - M .: ROSSPEN , 2009. - S. 707-713. - 1143 s. - 1000 copies. - ISBN 978-5-8243-1296-6 .
• Altman I.A. , Charny S.A. Holocaust denial in Russia // Jewish observer. - Jewish Confederation of Ukraine, 2006. - No. 3/118 .
• Altman I.A. Chapter 1. The Holocaust as an object of study. § 2. Historiography and sources // Holocaust and Jewish resistance in the occupied territory of the USSR / Ed. prof. A. G. Asmolova . - M .: The Holocaust Foundation , 2002. - S. 14-26. - 320 p. - ISBN 5-83636-007-7 .
• Verkhovsky A. M. Criminal law of the OSCE countries against hate crimes, incitement to hatred and hate speech. - M .: Center "Owl", 2014. - S. 110-111. - 280 p. - P. 978-5-98418-032-0.
• Polyan P.M. Between Auschwitz and Babi Yar. Reflections and research on the Holocaust. - M .: ROSSPEN , 2010 .-- 583 p. — ISBN 978-5-8243-1504-2 .

in other languages

• Il'ja Al'tman . Der Stellenwert des Holocaust im historischen Gedächtnis Russlands (нем.) // Erinnerung an Diktatur und Krieg: Brennpunkte des kulturellen Gedächtnisses zwischen Russland und Deutschland seit 1945.(Quellen und Darstellungen zur Zeitgeschichte. Hrsg. vom Institut für Zeitgeschichte. — Band 107.) / Hrsg. von Andreas Wirsching, Jürgen Zarusky, Alexander Tschubarjan, Viktor Ischtschenko. — München: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2015. — S. 213—225 .
• Atkins SE Russian Holocaust denial // Holocaust denial as an international movement . — ABC-CLIO, 2009. — P. 137—138. — 320 p. — ISBN 9780313345388 .
• Rock S. Russian revisionism: Holocaust denial and the new nationalist historiography // Patterns of Prejudice. — 2001. — Октябрь ( т. 35 , № 4 ). — С. 64—76 . — ISSN 0031-322X . — DOI : 10.1080/003132201128811296 .
• Rock S. «Revisionists of the World Unite!» Collaborative Myth-Making in Russia Today (англ.) // Холокост и дело Еврейского антифашистского комитета. Материалы IV международной конференции «Уроки Холокоста и современная Россия» / под ред. И. А. Альтмана. — М. : Научно-просветительный центр «Холокост» , 2003. — P. 125—131 .