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Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Another Original LR Translation: Lies for the Youngest (by our Original Translator)

Lies for the Youngest

Yezhednevniy Zhurnal

December 25, 2007

Editorial

What is it they say about great events? First time as tragedy, second time as farce. And indeed, everything is being repeated: already we have almost Soviet rhetoric, almost the same “enemies of the people” [dissidents], almost the same Oktobryata [“children of the October Revolution] in the “mishki” [Nashi’s new patriotic organization for children], and now there will be an almost Soviet version of history. It is now clear that the authorities have no intention of limiting the distribution of pseudo-historical propaganda through the central channels of power. The Ministry of Education and Science is expected to approve a new list of high school textbooks for the coming school year. According to the newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta, among these new textbooks will be the infamous “Russian History, 1945-2007”, developed on the basis of Aleksandr Filippov’s “Book for Teachers”.

The textbook has already been published in a first run of one thousand copies. After approval by the staff of the Ministry of Education it will be sent to no less than five regions, where it will undergo a one-year trial period. At the end of this period it will be officially recommended to schools. Filippov is deputy directory of the National Center for Foreign Policy, which is associated with Gleb Pavlovskiy’s Foundation for Effective Policy [a well-known Kremlin think tank]. It should be noted that the most scandalous chapter, “Discussion of Stalin’s Role in History”, in which the Great Purges are presented as “the formation of a new ruling class, adequate to the tasks of modernization in conditions of resource shortages”, was not included in the textbook. But the portion concerning “The Putin Era” remains. As in the teacher’s edition, the replacement of directly elected regional governors with appointed ones is presented as having been due to the “unpreparedness of the regional executives to effectively deal with crisis situations”- as demonstrated, in the opinion of the authors, by the Beslan hostage crisis. The “Yukos affair”, the authors believe, “decisively buried the oligarchs’ hopes of preserving their control over the Russian government.”

December 26, 2007

Irina Karatsuba, Historian:

This past summer I read this textbook in detail and took part in a round table discussion organized by the journal “Bolshoi Gorod” in which the textbook was discussed. After studying Filippov’s textbook and discussing it with the authors, I came to the inescapable conclusion that this was without doubt a paid-for textbook, written on someone’s orders, phony all the way through. It is based on one very dangerous idea, which can be summed up succinctly as, “The State is everything, the individual nothing.” Regarding the current regime, the textbook is absolutely servile, stating simply that Putin is the second most effective leader the country has ever had, after Stalin. And this is the crowning glory - there is nowhere higher to go. For this reason, of course, its introduction into schools in any capacity (and I think it will be introduced, as the leading textbook) can bring only harm.

The textbook automatically brings to mind how we all once studied. Soviet textbooks contained not a word of truth, of course, and no one took them seriously, nor did they expect to learn anything from the subject of history, but searched for the truth instead on their own. I recall how a textbook I was once studying (I graduated from high school in 1977) said that “the careerist Ezhov and the political adventurist Beria, using some of Stalin’s personal marks, fabricated accusations that resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of Communists.” Reading this, at age 16, I thought to myself: But how could these two people, with the help of a third, kill tens of thousands of people… What kind of regime was this? I think this is about the line of thought that will be followed by those who study from Filippov’s textbook.

But for me, as a professional, this is of course sad, because it is not just a step backward, but ten steps backward in comparison with the textbooks that were written at the end of the 1990’s and the beginning of this decade. And I am very bitter about how the textbooks of Dolutskiy and other authors are being replaced with nonsense like this.

This event is not, of course, unique. It is part of a general process of searching for a new Russian identity. A reconsideration of the Soviet period is taking place, expelling the odious waste of “the terrible 1990s” (although the current occupants of the our political Mount Olympus during the same 1990s all occupied high-profile posts) - this is all part of the creation of a myth about ourselves. But this myth is phony through and through, and worse than that it is immoral, because it sanctifies the spilling of blood and use of violence. It just perpetuates a falsehood. All of which brings to mind the words of the 16-th century Russian essayist Ivan Peresvetov, who wrote to Ivan the Terrible, “In Russian czarism there is belief, but no truth. But God does not love belief. He loves the truth.” Immortal words.

I would also recall the words of Petr Chaadaev, who wrote in 1837 that “The era of blind belief has passed. I think that now the truth is our greatest obligation to the Motherland.” Alas, this was such a premature hope, because even today this “now” has not yet arrived. But what will become of our Motherland, and of the truth, if this “now” never arrives?

Of course, the universities cannot be separated from society as a whole, and this false conception of history is beginning to penetrate them as well. One of the authors of the textbook, Leonid Polyakov, is professor of at the Higher School of Economics. This is a person who has said the most incredible things lately, such as that “we really never know what happened in the past”, and we need a positive myth about ourselves… In other words, we should just make ourselves look good, tell ourselves falsehoods - that this will help us. I do not understand how it is we can build something on falsehoods that will help us. But beyond this it becomes an issue of individual honesty, and I cannot believe that the majority of my colleagues, in either the universities or schools, will be inclined to teach according to the Filippov textbook. On the contrary, I have seen only shock, deep shock, in reaction to this textbook. The academic and teaching communities will oppose this textbook; they are already opposing it.

Irina Karatsuba is an historian and associate professor in the Department of Regional Studies at Moscow State University.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

“In Russian czarism there is belief, but no truth. But God does not love belief. He loves the truth.”
Does anybody think Peresvetov could write these 'immortal words' in 16th century? In Russian? In any case, he wrote something different.

Artfldgr said...

It is now clear that the authorities have no intention of limiting the distribution of pseudo-historical propaganda through the central channels of power.

Ah, when was that not clear? It’s been clear since day one, but not to those that have decided not to accept reality. Even more clear to those that decided to hear the defectors and then check what they were asserting against speeches in Russia. Hmmm… they jive, and so its no surprise given that there wasn’t any de-stalinization or de-communization.

And Nashi and Mishki are too much like the Nazi Socialist lebensborn programs (of which the boy scouts and girl scouts is nothing of any similarity contrary to old soviet propaganda).

The “Yukos affair”, the authors believe, “decisively buried the oligarchs’ hopes of preserving their control over the Russian government.”

So we better not hear propaganda that states that they are still in some form of control. that statement above makes it history, the past, that they HAD control. but even that’s an assumption. When an owner takes his dog off the leash to run around, and the dog does all afternoon and come back, did the dog really control his day? When the leadership of russia took the leashes off the oligarchs and such, they ran around and did what oligarchs do, but the fact that they could just call them in and imprison and replace them, meant that there never really was any control for the oligarchs. Just enough semblance of control to make them the patsies.

I came to the inescapable conclusion that this was without doubt a paid-for textbook, written on someone’s orders, phony all the way through.

That’s ok, the text books in America are the same way… so now what?

it is based on one very dangerous idea, which can be summed up succinctly as, “The State is everything, the individual nothing.”

That’s ok, that’s what our democrats are saying and other similar things too.

"We can't be so fixated on our desire to preserve the rights of ordinary Americans..." -- Bill Clinton

“Many of you are well enough off that the tax cuts may have helped you. We're saying that for America to get back on track, we're probably going to cut that short and not give it to you. We're going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good.” -- Hillary Clinton

“We must stop thinking of the individual and start thinking about what is best for society.” -- Hillary Clinton

After all, its about convergence right?

America became more like the soviet union so we could all merge into one government, but they didn’t accept, think, want, or care that russia could turn around and go back, an the US couldn’t do that once it went half way to fascism from freedom towards communism.

Russia lied and said it will turn itself from a pickle to a cucumber. And so it watered itself down and became less sour, but it can’t change from a pickle to a cucumber. The west said ok. We will turn ourselves from a cucumber to a bit of a pickle. The problem was/is that the US can’t turn itself back now that Russia reneged (Again) on an agreement!

So what’s the inevitable when the dangerous thoughts in a Russian text book for kids is the policy of the leading candidates for president and openly the point of one of the two parties (and a hidden point of the other one)?



Individual's Day Is Over, Says Geo. W. Perkins; And the Process of Curtailing His Privileges in Favor of the Community Is Still Only in Its Infancy, According to Him
April 1 1917
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9907E4D8143AE433A25752C0A9629C946696D6CF


http://www.edletter.org/past/issues/2001-ma/forum.shtml
excerpt


The next grand movement of the 1930s is the social reconstruction movement. Now we have had the child-centered movement, which is highly individualistic and non-conformist, giving way to the social reconstruction movement. And this happens because in the late 1920s there's a discussion group at Teachers College, and the leading
progressive educators

they are very upset about the direction of American society. It's too conformist; it's too bourgeois; it's too self-interested. All of these sorts of things--and it's puritanical. There are all of these terrible social movements in the country.

So they began to look with interest about where we could find a better society. And
John Dewey goes to visit the Soviet Union. John Dewey returns from the Soviet Union in the late 1920s, and he writes a series of six articles about what he has seen.


[Bella dodd pointed out that they infiltrated the US schools (she was head of the New York State Teachers Union and CPUSA national council and in a position to know), and that pragmatism, and progressive education was a key to hiding communist indoctrination. She denied Dewey’s philosophies were communist, but never knew that later Dewey, the father of American education, turned out to be a communist spy as detailed in the venona transcripts. (more was found out from the mitroken archives and from defectors and converts like dodd. Just read her School of Darkness where it details the conspiracy. Dodd also points out that the feminist movement was also a soviet construct in the US]


And he's absolutely bowled over. This is a very exciting place-because guess what? It turns out not to be an economic revolution, not to be a political revolution. It's an educational revolution. And educators are leading the revolution. So he thinks this is really good, because now you have educators planning and leading this new society, and young people really caught up in the idea of reconstructing society and building this new social order.

And Dewey's enthusiasm is very contagious. So his disciple, William Heard Kilpatrick, goes to the Soviet Union. He also is very taken. The first thing that he discovers is that everyone in the pedagogical institutes is reading his books. That is a turn-on for an academic, let me tell you. He knows this is a good revolution because they're reading him.

And then Kilpatrick is followed by George Counts. Counts is a prairie populist on the faculty at Teachers College, a sociologist. And Counts is just bowled over. He goes there, he schleps a Ford to the Soviet Union in the late 1920s, and he travels thousands of miles across the Soviet Union, talking with people in rural areas and in the cities.

[its from this that Ford family started working for one world government and communism. They created the Ford foundation which kicked the capitalist part of the family out and is the largest not for profit working the west. He also created the council of foreign relations, of which every president has been a member and ALL current candidates are as well. they also started the trilateral commission that uses a trisckelon, if you look at it. the organizations are fascist since they marry the state and corporate interests which coporatism is fascism, not capitalism]

And he comes back and he writes a book called A Ford Crosses Soviet Russia, which is a wonderful book that I highly recommend; it's very entertaining. But he becomes totally enthralled with the Russian Revolution, and he begins writing books about the need for collectivism. He gives a famous speech at the Progressive Education Association in 1932- here's the Progressive Education Association devoted to child-centered education, to individualism, to non-conformity, to the teacher as a guide and not a teacher, a facilitator not an instructor. We've all heard that.

[this destroyed Americas lead in education, engineering, business, and politics]

So he comes to them and he says, "Dare the school build a new social order?" And he chastises them. He says, "You've all been selfish. You've all been devoted to the welfare of your own children and you've all been too individualistic. The age of individualism is over. The age of collectivism is now opening. Are you prepared to do what's necessary to build this new collective social order and stop worrying about indoctrination? Don't worry about indoctrination. We must indoctrinate children." George Counts is a very powerful writer, a powerful speaker.

The meeting stops. They cancel every other session. This is the only thing that matters. Dare the school build a new social order? Well, a new journal is founded at Teachers College called The Social Frontier. And in the educational world, at least that part of it that reads The Social Frontier at Teachers College and Chicago and Stanford and Harvard, everybody is all engrossed in this idea. Can we now indoctrinate children? Is it right to indoctrinate? What are the ethics of indoctrination? Is it time for collectivism? Why isn't the American public interested in what we're saying?



Dewey was a spy… the progressive education was to create indoctrination in our schools and so forth. which is did. So really is the soviets going back to the group a problem, or is the fact that they are doing it after America has started caving the problem?


If one listens to Golitsyn, then one might be concerned that the soviet union became freer as the US lost its rights and freedoms and copied the laws and schools of the totalitarian state (before it showed its colors). After all, no fault divorce, and the other things are an invention of lenin within 2 years of the revolution and resulted in children being raised in creches and being available for birth to death indoctrination sans parental interference in things like KGB or GRU schools.

Now that the US has gotten rid of most of the pesky laws of individualism, habeus corpus, posse commitatus, internal passports, kelo makes no more private property (but since it’s a fascist state, its taking the property for companies. A bit of change and it takes it for itself), delegation of powers in violation of the state, a progressive tax (bet you didn’t know that was soviet), and more…

Maybe the reason they are going back is that they don’t have to hide it any more. after all, once gun control is in, and a few other points, there will be no way for the American people to fight the conversion. And they certainly are not fighting the change.

Basically the idea now is to make health care and such so expensive that the baby boomers who did not save a dime like their parents will suffer, and since the baby boomers are dying off their attitude is that they don’t care! ask them if you don’t believe me, they are still trying to party like their childhoods.

75 million baby boomers is enough to create a socialist America… after all they are the socialist generation that came after the generation that gave them freedom and such from Hitler. This is why they were mentally destroyed, made flabby, stupid, falsely idealistic, and so forth.

We let it happen… (and feminism was THE major push since with the eradication of family, everyone gets fat, the state gets the kid from cradle to grave, the state gets more workers, health declines as no one is watching it at all, divorce and such destroys dynsastic power the only threat, etc).

La Russophobe said...

ANONYMOUS:

Our Original Translator responds as follows:

I appreciate your concern for the accuracy of the quote/translation, but it was unclear to me which you were challenging. The Russian was as follows: «В русском царстве вера есть, а правды – нет, а Бог не веру любит - правду». I will be the first to admit that 16th century Russian usage is sometimes as baffling for me as Shakespearean English probably is for you. If you could edify me with a better translation, I would be eternally grateful. On the other hand, if your disagreement is with the author, please let me know, and I will attempt to look up the original text by Peresvetov.

I did a little digging, and came up with the following scholarly analysis of the quote in question (http://www.stetson.edu/~psteeves/classes/cherniavsky.html), which I think should put to rest the doubts of "anonymous" on both points -- translation and authenticity -- of the quote:

From "Ivan the Terrible as Renaissance Prince" , by Michael Cherniavsky, Slavic Review, 1968, 195-211:

*****

The chief function of the ruler was pravda, justice, according to Peresvetov. Justice, however, meant more than judging quickly, impartially, and sternly all those who come to seek it. It was not just legal but also social; it meant protecting the poor against the rich and powerful, it meant the extermination of corruption, it meant rewarding the worthy, those who served the state well. And Peresvetov placed it completely outside the traditional medieval Christian context: His example was the Islamic sultan, Mohammed the Conqueror in the "Tale of Mohammed," who was made to say, "God loves justice above all things"; Peresvetov went even further when he made a Christian prince, Peter of Wallachia, exclaim, "God does not love the faith [of the prince, He] loves justice."

*****

However, I am grateful to "anonymous" for having led me to learn about the evolution of the meaning of the word "pravda" in Russian over the years. I imagine it would probably help explain a lot about Russians' sometimes eccentric views about what constitutes the truth. (Simply "that which leads to what I think is a just outcome?" -- Could be!)

Warm regards.

OT

Anonymous said...

Why does nobody openly quote this textbook, if it is so shocking? Can one imagine a situation, when a witness simply repeats 'He did such a terrible thing, you honour!' and everybody finds this evidence sufficient?

La Russophobe said...

Because it's in Russian and the Kremlin is not happy to talk about its propaganda.

Why does nobody openly quote it to defend it, if it is not shocking?

Anonymous said...

Free access to the book on the publishing house's webpage:
http://www.prosv.ru/umk/istoriya/index.html