Putin backs WW2 myth in new Russian film - BBC News - 0 views
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Putin backs WW2 myth in new Russian film
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A new film showing Red Army soldiers outnumbered by invading Germans but battling on heroically has become part of the Kremlin's campaign to restore Russian pride.
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week, alongside Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev, in the Central Asian leader's capital Astana.
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The Kremlin promotes the idea of World War Two as a heroic victory that united the Soviet state against fascism - and still unites Russia today against a similar threat they say has resurfaced in Ukraine.
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The 28 were immortalised - posthumously decorated as Heroes of the Soviet Union - and Soviet children learnt about their last stand in school.
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According to the Soviet mythology, 28 soldiers from the Red Army's 316th Rifle Division, mainly recruits from the Kazakh and Kyrgyz Soviet republics, stood unflinching against the advancing might of Hitler's Wehrmacht.
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The USSR suffered the heaviest losses in the war - more than 20 million civilians and military - though scholars dispute the exact toll.
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When, in June last year, Russian State Archive director Sergei Mironenko, citing historical documents, said the story was in fact a myth, he earned a sharp rebuke from Culture Minister Vladimir Medinsky.
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n February 2013, President Putin ordered a single history syllabus for schools, offering a standardised narrative. A new state "History" TV channel was launched that year too.
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Mr Putin and other officials have repeatedly talked about the need to counter the "falsification of history" or "rewriting history". They oppose interpretations of World War Two or other episodes of Soviet history that deviate from officially approved narratives.
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Mr Medinsky, the culture minister, defended Panfilov's 28 Men, saying "even if this story was invented from start to finish, if there had been no Panfilov, if there had been nothing, this is a sacred legend that shouldn't be interfered with. People that do that are filthy scum."
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t was accused of smearing the memory of WW2 veterans by asking whether residents of wartime Leningrad could have been saved by surrendering the city to Nazi forces.
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Under this law, Vladimir Luzgin, a blogger from Perm region in the Urals, was fined 200,000 roubles ($3,200; £2,500) for reposting an article about the war on the Russian social network VK (VKontakte), the daily Kommersant reported in July.
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The court said Luzgin had falsified history by stating "that the communists and Germany jointly attacked Poland, unleashing World War Two, or in other words, that Communism and Nazism co-operated honestly".
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Nazi Germany and the USSR signed a non-aggression pact in August 1939 - the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. In a secret protocol, they agreed to carve up Poland between them.
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In another incident, last year, the authorities in Sverdlovsk region banned the works of two British historians - Antony Beevor and John Keegan - saying they were imbued with Nazi propaganda. The Vedomosti daily described (in Russian) the order to remove the books from public libraries as "full of nonsense from start to finish".
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Many Russians may not know how the state embroidered the tale of Panfilov's men - but many may not care either.