Surprise, surprise! Censorship has once again reared its ugly head in Russia. Fortunately, this time the international historical community isn’t taking it lying down.In May, the president of the Russian Federation, Dmitrii Medvedev, announced the creation of the Commission to Counteract Attempts at Falsifying History to Damage the Interests of Russia, a 28 member panel charged with investigating historical works and debate and determining whether or not they are harmful to the country’s reputation. Works found to be “unfavorable” to Russia are to be suppressed and those responsible for them may face criminal charges or fines. No specifics were given as to exactly what sort of “falsifications” the commission would be looking into.
Perhaps one of the most troubling aspects of the commission is its makeup – of the 28 members, only 3 are historians (one archivist and 2 researchers). That means that the other 25 people responsible for categorizing historical works as “harmful” or “unfavorable” to Russia are bureaucrats and politicians. I’m sure that I’m not alone in questioning what qualifications those men and women who have been appointed by the government have to judge the merit of historical debates and pass judgement on those that take part in them.
Further, anyone who feels strongly about the freedoms of speech, thought and expression will likely take issue with this blatant attempt at censorship. In fact, historians both in Russia and abroad were quick to express their discontent with the new initiative. In the United States, Arnita Jones, executive director of the American Historical Association (AHA), has responded to the commission’s creation by writing an open letter to President Medvedev. In the letter (a link to which can be found here), she implores the president to reconsider the commission and support free and open debate amongst the members of the historical community. She argues (quite eloquently, I think) that:
"Any limitation on freedom of research or expression, however well intentioned, violates a fundamental principal of scholarship: that the researcher must be able to investigate any aspect of the past and to report without fear what the evidence reveals."
The AHA’s position on Medvedev’s commission is clear – it impedes intellectual freedom, seeks to influence the course of historical research and fosters an environment in which dissent, and therefore debate, are unwelcome. Since all of these conditions are intolerable, the commission must be disbanded.
Personally, I find the most interesting facet of the AHA’s argument against the commission to be one that I had not previously perceived as a connected issue – they have linked their stance on the commission with their stance on criminalizing Holocaust denial. While the AHA vehemently opposes the work of Holocaust deniers (as do I, just for the record), they do support their right to conduct research and enter into scholarly debate on the topic without fear of legal repercussions.
This is a fascinating argument. I have never questioned the fact that the Supreme Court of Canada and the Canadian Human Rights Tribunals have consistently found against Holocaust deniers. In fact, in the past these decisions have made me proud to be a citizen in a country that has taken a stand against what I see to be both ludicrous and hateful claims. However, the more that I consider it, the more I believe that the AHA might have it right. If we, in Canada, make certain interpretations of historical evidence related to the Holocaust illegal, how soon before we make similar restrictions against other topics? How soon before we move from criminalizing only truly hateful claims to the point where we start restricting historical debate on topics that are only mildly distasteful or tarnishing to Canada's reputation? Where do you draw the line? And, perhaps more to the AHA's point -- who should draw that line?
I worry about the work that this commission will do. It seems to me that it’s a pretty slippery slope from attempting to suppress the out-and-out fiction to calling something fiction so that you can get away with suppressing it.
