Meet Medinsky, the Goebbels of Resurgent Russia.A Profile of Putin's Controversial New Culture Minister.(
CC).By Tom Balmforth.
The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact "deserves a monument." The U.S.S.R. never occupied the Baltic states, it just "incorporated" them. An infamous picture of a Nazi-Soviet military parade in Poland in 1939 was "photoshopped." Anti-Semitism in Tsarist Russia has been "greatly exaggerated."
Alternative history? Speculative fiction? No, these are actual snippets from the academic writings of Russia's new culture minister, Vladimir Medinsky.
Kremlin allies have praised the controversial author's unexpected May 21 appointment. Andrei Isayev of the ruling United Russia party calls Medinsky "an energetic man, a good manager and ideologue." Likewise, Yelena Drapeko, who sits on the State Duma's Culture Committee, says he is "entirely qualified" and "professional."
But among the opposition and many scholars, his appointment has been condemned and met with a blend of shock and disappointment.
The bespectacled 41-year-old academic and author of more than a dozen history tomes has been accused by his peers of everything from dubious scholarship, to plagiarism, to outright propaganda.
Mark Solonin, a historian and specialist on World War II, likens Medinsky to the Third Reich's notorious propagandist, Joseph Goebbels, and calls his appointment an insult to Russia's rich cultural heritage.
"
They have selected a fairly mediocre propagandist and, what's more, a propagandist of the shameless Goebbels variety," Solonin says.
"
The fact that they are appointing that kind of propagandist to the post of culture minister in a country that gave the world Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenev, and Tolstoy--this, of course, is a certain challenge and a certain signal. What did they want to say with this message?"
A prolific writer, Medinsky is best-known for his best-selling series "Myths," in which he purports to debunk stereotypes purportedly dreamed up by foreigners to besmirch Russia and its people. One title, for example, is titled: "On Drunkenness, Laziness and Cruelty."
One of the more controversial volumes, "War.
Myths of the USSR. 1939-45," has been derided by Aleksei Isayev, a World War II historian, as "agitprop" and "nonsense."
The books have nevertheless been huge hits with the public. In 2009, the daily "Kommersant" reported the series had become the "most widely circulated history book in modern Russia."
They were also well received by the Kremlin. In 2009, Vladislav Surkov, who was then deputy Kremlin chief of staff and the regime's informal ideologist, said of the first volume of "Myths," "The concept of the book is very divisive and contentious, but it is absolutely to the benefit of Russia."Analysts are divided, and puzzled, over the motivations behind such a controversial appointment.
Sociologist Olga Kryshtanovskaya, a member of United Russia and expert on political elites, says she knows the reason Medinsky was appointed but "cannot tell the press."
Political analyst Mikhail Vinogradov of the Petersburg Politics Foundation notes that United Russia promised its leading members ministerial positions. He also suggests that Surkov, now the government's chief of staff, has close ties to Medinsky and could be behind the appointment.
Perhaps the simplest explanation is given by Vladimir Pribylovsky, head of the Moscow-based Panorama think tank. The Kremlin, he suggests, simply couldn't find anybody else.
"It's not the kind of position that people fight for. It's not easy to find a person for this post," Pribylovsky says. "
Perhaps there was a competition between fools and they simply chose the most patriotic one."
Hmmmm.......Did he happen to be a member of the Rodina or Motherland-National Patriotic Union party?Read the full story
here.
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