And the grandson will go against the grandfather: what threatens the ban on identifying the roles of the USSR and Germany in the war

As you know, President Putin officially yesterday, in the list of instructions following the meeting of the Council for Culture and Arts,proposed to legally prohibit the "public identification of the role of the USSR and Nazi Germany in World War II". At a meeting of this council in October 2020, this initiative was taken by State Duma deputy Yelena Yampolskaya.

This news caused a mixed reaction on social networks.

In his publication, journalist Dmitry Kolezev points to the “source of inspiration” of the patriot Yampolskaya, who came up with this historically strange initiative:

"You'd be surprised, but the reason for this initiative of Yelena Yampolsky was the reading of two popular books on psychology: "The high art of indifference" and" Everything sucks" written by blogger Mark Manson (you've probably seen these books in bookstores or compilations). It was from these books that Yampolskaya pulled out two quotations and presented them to the president:

1. “The Poles suffered a lot of calamities, rapes and murders: first by the Nazis, then by Soviet soldiers”;

2. "The Soviets were worse than the Nazis"

Yampolskaya called it "brazen, offensive nonsense".

(For correctness, I will give the second quote in an expanded form: "Indeed, at first the Soviets were worse than the Nazis. They already knew and practiced this trick: to overthrow someone else's government and subjugate the people to their false ideology").

“It seems to me that we have a moral right to tighten the law when it comes to desecrating our historical memory”, - Yampolskaya said at a council meeting. Putin agreed and now this instruction has appeared.

Already by this example, we see that the new legislative norm will not only affect those who write or read on historical topics: there will be another censorship restriction, which will now have to look back on authors, publishers and sellers of any cultural work, from comics to scientific literature.

These examples show how broadly the future law is supposed to be interpreted. Any reference to the "non-heroic" actions of the Soviet command, troops and ordinary soldiers may fall under the law. Although it seems to be obvious that any war is fraught with excesses, in any mass of soldiers there will be rapists, robbers, or at least cynical speculators (read, for example, about the behavior of American soldiers in liberated Paris). If you do not talk about these sad episodes of the war, a simplified, lightened image of war as such can be formed in the public consciousness. This means that society will be more tolerant of wars and aggressive actions of the state in the international arena.

I am afraid that discussions about the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, the partition of Poland, the ambitions of the Soviet leadership to expand the zones of influence of the USSR, etc. will also fall under taboo.

Should we forget about these topics that are unpleasant to our ear and mind? In no case, because, as in individual psychology, an attempt to shut up and forget the past will only cause social frustration. The past needs to be worked through, first of all - just talk about it openly, without restrictions and prohibitions, allow yourself to remember and realize. A full discussion will help you gradually separate truth from falsehood. And this truth, even being bitter, must be accepted. Then you can live calmly on, as Tomas Gross wrote, without looking back at the past in uncertainty and anxiety, without experiencing a vague fear of being exposed..."

And journalist Kirill Shulika drew attention to a funny paradox in this story:

“It's a great idea to form a historical perspective based on prohibitive laws. In fact, however, the law will prohibit giving positive assessments of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. I wonder if their grandson Nikonov votes for this in the State Duma too?"