The target was Igor Dolutsky . . . who . . . taught at a Moscow high school. In the mid-1990s, Dolutsky had written one of the first of the post-Soviet history textbooks to address the previously secret flaws in the Soviet past. His book, National History, 20th Century, was now in its seventh edition and was often recognized as a leader in the now-crowded field. . . .

Uncompromising in his democratic politics as well as rigorous in his historical standards, Dolutsky had written a book suitable for citizens of a country determined never to go back to the Soviet past. The problem, of course, was that this was not a settled question in Putin�s Russia. . . .

At first, nothing happened, just a disquieting incident in September 2003, when Putin�s then chief of staff Aleksandr Voloshin, and his press minister, Mikhail Lesin, visited an exhibition of textbooks in Moscow. The two officials approached the chief editor of Mnemozina publishing house, and to her delight, they asked for a copy of Dolutsky�s history book by name. She gave them the only copy she had, the one on the display stand. At the time, the editor simply believed it was terrific recognition for Dolutsky. Too excited to sleep, she called him that night around 2 a.m. �She said, �Igor, we are so happy,�� Dolutsky told us later. He knew better, �I said, �Now we are going to have a huge problem,��

The problem came without further warning in November when Education Minister Vladimir Filippov declared that Dolutsky�s book was being reviewed by an expert council . . .  The ministry told Russian reporters that the textbook was way out of line in its criticism of Putin. �The textbook elicits contempt, natural contempt for our past and for the Russian people,� the ministry�s top textbook official said. Dolutsky was speaking about the controversy on the radio station Ekho Moskvy the day the news broke when he learned that Putin himself had weighed in. The president had made a speech to a gathering of Russian historians at which he said that inculcating patriotism was the proper job of a history textbook. Such books should �not be a field for a new political and ideological battle,� he said, but should �foster a sense of pride for one�'s history and one�s country.� Suddenly, just two weeks before the Russian parliamentary elections, the teaching of history had become a political cause celebre.

No one at the ministry would tell Dolutsky what exactly was wrong with the book. But his initial impulse was to fight; by inclination, he was still the dissident he had been back in Brezhnev times . . .  He had no compunction about appearing on whatever programs would have him to complain about the campaign launched against his book. In one appearance, he called it an �election-year gift� to Putin—and by the way, he added, he though Yavlinsky was right about the �police state.� He was sure he had rattled the authorities. �They were scared,� he said later, �of all this noise I was creating.�

Butt then a contact at the Education Ministry leaked a marked-up copy of Dolutsky�s textbook to an editor at his publishing house. They never found out who exactly had highlighted the objectionable passages in the book, but were stunned to see sentences underlined on nearly every page. This was not just a matter of a few critical comments about Putin, it turned out, but a wholesale revision of the Soviet era�s history. Here, in paragraph after paragraph, they were seeing what the new policy of patriotic education meant in practice. �The main idea of the criticism is that I�m undermining the rue values of the Russian people and imposing liberal values that are not typical for the Russian people,� Dolutsky said.

It started on the very first page of the ministry�s marked-up copy, where Dolutsky had mentioned the Soviet massacre in the Katyn Forest of as many as fifteen thousand Polish officers during World War II, a tragedy that officials had blamed until recently on the Germans. On page eight, he described the Soviet �occupation� of the three Baltic countries at the start of World War II that lasted until 1991 and asked students if they understood what attitude Latvians, Lithuanians, and Estonians might have toward Russians as a result. He portrayed Stalin as a willing dupe of Adolf Hitler in passages that were marked, and mentioned that 160,000 Soviets had been shot in the early stages of the war for �panic and cowardice� in another sentence that drew objection. His comments about the key wartime role played by the United States and Britain were highlighted, as was a question to students asking them to ponder why Germans were greeted as liberators in parts of Soviet territory such as western Ukraine. More black marks appeared next to his description of the deportation of the entire Chechen people during the war. When it came to the book�s account of mass arrests and killings inside the Soviet Union, entire pages were singled out, among them those noting Stalin�s postwar turn toward anti-Semitism.

On page ninety-six, Dolutsky quoted from the official history textbook of the 1980s,

( pages 364 - 367 )

http://www.guardian.co.uk/russia/article/0,2763,1122403,00.html
The Kremlin has been careful to create a popular mandate for the revision. According to the Kommersant newspaper, Mr Putin writes in the letter: "I share the feelings and opinions of the veterans of the great patriotic war [the second world war]. I order in that in the shortest period of time scientists and historians be invited to consider the situation with history books for middle schools. The results of this work should be reported by February 1."

Comment   No one would deny the major contributions by the Russian (or, then, "soviet") soldier towards the military defeat of the Hitlerite Reich. Unfortunately, this issue has been counfounded with the issues one might have with the character of his leaders.

Did the reportedly protesting veterans know the facts of the history of the Bolshevik regime themselves ? They could not have been taught, in their school days, anything other than hash that had been fed them by the Kremlin-controlled propagandists.

Such protests as referred to above may have been quite genuine. But to deny the atrocities, large and small, due the Bolshevik rule / misrule in the subjugated Russia (etc., etc.) would open the door to continuation of more or less "the same", world-wide.

Baker, Peter. Title(s) Kremlin rising : Vladimir Putin's Russia and the end of revolution / Peter Baker and Susan Glasser. Publisher New York : Scribner, c2005. Paging 453 p. : ill. ; 24 cm. Notes "A Lisa Drew book." Includes bibliographical references (p. [433]-436) and index.