Category Archives: History

Uncertainty with Vladimir Medinsky’s Dissertation Continues

The doctoral dissertation controversy of Vladimir Medinsky, Russian Minister of Culture and Chairman of the Russian Military-Historical Society that supported the recent publication of Ivan Serov’s controversial memoir Notes from a Suitcase, continues to be uncertain. In April 2016, two Russian historians, Drs. Vyacheslav Kozlyakov and Konstantin Yerusalimsky, specialists on the Russian history of the 15th-17th Centuries, and… Read More »

Memorial Society and its Members Persecuted

Russian authorities have recently intensified attacks on Memorial, the Russian human rights organization whose main objective is to preserve the original memory of political repression in the recent past of our country. On December 7, 2016, the Tverskoi Regional Court in Moscow ruled that the International Society Memorial (the historical and educational branch of the Society) should pay a… Read More »

Sokolov Wins Libel Case, “Discovery in the Wall” Debunked

On December 23, 2016, the third court session of the case against the Russian historian Boris Sokolov and Moscow radio station Ekho Moskvy took place in Krasnopresnensky Regional Court in Moscow. The lawsuit was filed by Vera Serova, the granddaughter of the first KGB Chairman Ivan Serov, and Aleksandr Khinstein, the editor of Ivan Serov’s Russian memoir Notes… Read More »

Unearthing the Responsible

For four years, Denis Karagodin, a graduate from the Philosophical Faculty of the Tomsk University (Siberia), searched for the names of every person involved in the execution of his great-grandfather Stepan, in 1938, from a NKVD woman-typist to the NKVD investigators who signed the death sentence. The story of the local peasant Stepan Karagodin in those years was quite… Read More »

Names of NKVD Tortures and Executioners from 1935 to 1939 Are Exposed

On November 24, 2016, the Moscow human rights group, “Memorial”, published a book on the web, authorized by the “Memorial” member Andrei Zhukov, entitled “Staff of the State Security of the USSR. 1935-1939”. This reference book includes biographies of 39,950 NKVD (People’s Interior Affairs Commissariat) officers who were promoted to special state security ranks from 1935 to mid-1939. Under the… Read More »

A New State Ideology?

On November 18, 2016, in Moscow and the city of Volokolamsk near Moscow ceremonial events were held in honor of the 75th anniversary of the beginning of the counter-offensive of the Red Army near Moscow in 1941. Vladimir Medinsky, Russian Minister of Culture, opened an exhibition “War and Myths” in Moscow central exhibition hall “Manezh”, and gave a… Read More »

Skier in a Hat

On November 4, 2016, the National Unity Day, a gigantic monument of Prince St .Vladimir, who Christianized Kiev Rus in 988, was unveiled on the Boroditsky Square in front of the Kremlin. At the opening celebration President Vladimir Putin, Russian Patriarch Kirill, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, head of the Foreign Intelligence Service Sergei Naryshkin, Minister of Culture Vladimir… Read More »

History Redefined as Propaganda

Vladimir Medinsky, Russian Minister of Culture and “Doctor” of Sciences, continues to insist on his understanding of history as propaganda instead of science. On November 3, 2016, he said on Russian TV: “My opponents do not like my concept. I say that historical events and figures should be assessed from the point of view of the national interests… Read More »