Do not believe your eyes

The author of a note on the Free Idel-Ural Telegram channel reports that Udmurtia will no longer celebrate the anniversary of the Izhkar-Votkinsk uprising (also known as the Izhevsk-Votkinsk anti-Soviet rebellion in Soviet historiography).

More than a hundred years ago, the Red Terror and the misanthropic program of the Bolsheviks prompted more than 1 million people to revolt in the territory of Udmurtia and neighboring regions. The active rebel movement was one of the reasons for the emergence of the Udmurt Republic – the Bolsheviks were forced to make concessions to the population in order to reduce protest moods. And today we learn about the decision of the authorities to erase this significant event from the memory of the Udmurts. “A little later they will say that there was no uprising at all, this is all the invention of Western propaganda. And then they will even begin to imprison for any mention of this”, the author of the note writes.

That is right, the Russian state security agencies together with the official propaganda machine, have always acted like this!

One can only remember how the whole world was lied to for forty years that there was no secret appendix to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, that Polish officers were not shot at Katyn. For thirty years they denied the shooting of the demonstration in Novocherkassk, and so on. In the same way, they will erase from memory any facts about the events of the national liberation struggle, opposition actions, the Russian-Ukrainian war, etc. 

The principles of modifying Russian history do not change! They have long been tested, approved as reliable and recommended for use.

In Novocherkassk in June 1962, the action of the workers of the Novocherkassk Electric Locomotive Plant named after. C.M. Budyonnyi and other citizens, in response to price increases, was suppressed by the police, the army and the KGB of the USSR, and all information about the Novocherkassk events, including the number of dead and wounded people, was classified as secret by decision of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The participants in the suppression of the uprising were under an obligation of non-disclosure (as in the example below).

“Non-disclosure note. I, a policeman of the Kamenskiy city police department, am making this non-disclosure note that I undertake to fulfill the government task and keep its fulfillment as a state secret. If I violate this present agreement, I will be subject to the highest measure of punishment – execution. 4:30 p.m. June 4, 1962.”

Nevertheless, on October 19 of the same year, an article about the events appeared in the American Time magazine. Prior to that, there were also short articles in British and French newspapers and on Radio Liberty. An awl, as you know, cannot be hidden in a bag. But the Soviet government, nevertheless, continued to lie to its citizens for decades and decades.

Let’s take another example. In September 2012, the organization Tatar Patriotic Front “Altyn Urda”” (Golden Horde) was registered in Tatarstan. It was in opposition to the current Russian government, as the members of the organization believed that the government of the Russian Federation was not fulfilling its obligations to preserve the indigenous peoples. It conducted courses of the Tatar language, history and Islamic education “Bez Tatarlar”. The movement regularly participated in rallies and actions to protect the rights of the Tatar nation, for example, in a rally for the preservation of education in the Tatar language. But such a heart of free-thinking and potential resistance was dangerous for the authorities of the Republic of Tatarstan. Therefore, in September 2013, the Prosecutor’s Office of the Republic of Tatarstan issued a warning to Rais Suleymanov, the head of the organization, shortly after which he was removed from the post of head of the Volga Center for Regional and Ethno-Religious Studies of the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies. A number of steps were taken to indirectly influence the activists of the movement. In short, there was an ethnic and patriotic organization, and then it disappeared! Forget about this one. Everything is good in our republic! There were not and are no Tatar patriotic fronts. And they cannot exist. Today, even the Wikipedia article about the Tatar Patriotic Front “Altyn Urda” in the best KGB traditions is marked in red and recommended for removal.

In the same way, for example, the story of Danis Safargali, who was sentenced in August 2017 to three years in a general regime colony for “inciting hatred on the  nationality basis,” was “recommended for removal” from the collective memory of the Tatars. There was no Safargali! There was a criminal interfering with the creative work of the citizens of Tatarstan. Throw this criminal out of your memory!

According to the same principle of silencing, the materials about the World Congress of Tatars on Wikipedia are marked with a number of restrictive and warning notes. One gets the impression that everything possible has been done to put pressure on Wikipedia in order to arouse in advance distrust and suspicion of the material posted in the reader. The fact is that in 2022, at the VIII Congress of the World Congress of Tatars, against the backdrop of Russia’s attack on Ukraine, in just one minute a resolution was adopted approving the actions of Vladimir Putin, the President of the Russian Federation, on “Protection of people in Donbas, restoration of peaceful life, demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine.” The votes against and abstentions were not taken into account, the chairman of the Milli Shura National Council, Vasil Shaykhraziev, said that the resolution was adopted “unanimously”, despite the fact that there were negative shouts from the seats in the hall, and several people left the congress in protest, including Fauzia Bayramova. A number of foreign representatives of Tatar organizations did not come to the congress, expressing their dissatisfaction with the prepared draft resolution, which, according to journalists, could lead to a split in the Tatar nation. Of course, in the republican media, the results of the congress were presented as a manifestation of complete unanimity and support for the invasion of Ukraine. Again hushing up, twisting, disinformation in the traditional style of the Federal Security Service manuals.

It is interesting to observe how today the Russian official media practically do not inform the population about drone attacks on cities and ships? People in the country are little aware of this. Few people are interested in Telegram channels, and in case of something these channels can also be called “enemy” or “unreliable”. One can  trust only Konashenkov from the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation. So it turns out that people living in Moscow with the population of 14 million are not very aware of hits in the City. Indeed, in accordance with the manuals, it should be said that it was not Russia that attacked, it was the whole world that attacked it and the whole world wants to tear it to pieces and share Russian wealth. But there seems to be no war, just somewhere far away there “special operation” is successfully going on. At this time, the authorities are “tightening the screws” against internal not even the opposition, but the slightest manifestations of an alternative opinion.

It has long been noted that Russia is afraid of its past, its historical memory, which has been soiled, rewritten, and retouched. Therefore, it does its best to keep history under control. “There was nothing, everything is in order, everything is fine, we are on the right track. If you see something else, it means you thought it was. Just do not try to interfere – our management will take care of everything. Remember: everything is fine!”

Russia, USSR, history, Udmurtia, Tatarstan