By Vestnik Kavkaza
Moscow states that one of reasons for its activities in Ukraine is an attempt to prevent the spread of nationalism there. Yuri Nikiforov, the executive secretary of the Association of Historians of the Second World War under the National Committee of Russian Historians, tried to explain the developments in the sphere in Ukraine and Russia.
“In Ukraine a whole generation of young people got textbooks which were aimed at formation of Ukrainian identity based on historic myths about ancient origin of the Ukrs, about a unique Aryan [nation] which resisted the Russians. The main idea was that the Ukrainians are not Russians,” the historian says.
Nikoforov answers the question whether such a danger can threat Russia: “It can, if relevant money is invested, if we ignore the pseudo-historians and Internet resources which tell people that the Cossacks are a freedom-loving nation, while the Russians are successors of slaves, that the Cossacks who live on the Don and the Kuban Rivers are not Russians, but people who never knew what slavery was. There are such resources in Internet, there are such magazines which are published in Russia for budget money. An ethnic Cossack magazine is aimed at explanation to young people that the Cossacks are an ethnic group with ancient roots, that the Cossacks lived back in the 6thcentury.”
The historian believes these facts are similar to mythology which has been implemented in Ukraine for building Ukrainian identity which is based on Bandera heroes, rather than those who captured Berlin within the Red Army. “The same could be implemented and it is being implemented, while we think that history is historians’ business, rather than society’s business. If we cannot resist development of color revolutions and destabilization of the situation professionally, it seems history is a game.”
However, Nikiforov believes that history is an effective instrument of society’s management, an instrument of pitting different social groups, stirring up religious, ethnic, other conflicts. “It is not about up-to-the-minute mottos, but about preparation. And after it, they could be thrown at a crowd. The technologies are logical continuation of what has been grown during 10-15 years.”
“The Russian historians have been living in more comfortable, privileged conditions in recent 20 years, than historians of Moldavia where the struggle for people’s souls is going on, where protecting truth is connected with serious problems which could appear at work or simply on the streets for the person,” Nikiforov is sure. “Our modern times involve historic configuration into information wars; and we feel sorry about our colleagues from other countries. Considering the events in Ukraine, it is clear that anticommunism, antisovietism, the ideas of the Russian ideology in the 1990s are only a mask for Russophobia and National Fascism.”
