Holocaust Deniers in Russia Now Face Five Years in Prison
Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a law on Monday making the denial of Nazi crimes and distortion of the Soviet Union’s role in the World War Two a criminal offence punishable by up to five years in jail.
The law, described by critics as an attempt to curb freedom of expression to appease conservative Russians, the ex-KGB spy’s main support base, also criminalises the public desecration of war memorials.
The Kremlin has used World War Two as a pillar to unite a society that Putin has said lost its moral bearings following the 1991 Soviet collapse.
It has become increasingly risky for Russians to dispute an official line that glorifies the wartime achievements of the Soviet leadership and plays down its errors.
The new law would ban “wittingly spreading false information about the activity of the USSR during the years of World War Two”.
Russian officials and media have raised the spectre of Nazi Germany repeatedly during Moscow’s confrontation with the West over Ukraine, calling the overthrow of a Russian-allied president in February a coup carried out in part by “neo-Nazi” forces.
Independent channel Dozhd (TV Rain) was taken off the air earlier this year after asking viewers whether Leningrad, now St Petersburg, should have been given to German troops to save lives during its 872-day siege during World War Two.
Viktor Shenderovich, a blogger critical of the authorities, came under fire from Kremlin supporters in February after comparing the Sochi Olympics to the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games, used by Adolf Hitler to burnish the image of the Nazi Germany.
In a comment posted when the legislation was first introduced, veteran TV host Vladimir Posner said he believed its aim was “to shut the mouths of journalists, historians and writers”.
He said he feared it would “practically ban criticism of Stalin” for “grave mistakes that led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of our soldiers”.
It was unclear whether the wording of the bill had been changed since its introduction and Posner could not immediately be reached for comment.
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Some Western observers are offering that Putin is the ‘Savior’. His BRICS agenda has the stench of the banking elite altering perspective to fool the mob….c’mon do you think that after some six centuries of pillaging the people that these International Bankers would step aside for BRICS. According to Prof. Quigley in Tragedy and Hope, these banking families attained banking control supremacy post the Russian Revolution that they had sponsored!
In the Russian Revolution and in WW2 the Russians committed some of the most horrendous crimes against their fellow man.
Tom Goodrich wrote a book titled “Hellstorm” that documents these atrocities against the German people.
Robert Wilton wrote a book “The Last days of the Romanovs” that explained the ethnic cleansing of white christian Russians. We understand that it was some 60 million plus.
Putin is not what he seems as he has now closeted the Russian atrocities against the German people to protect these depravities whilst offering a ‘Big Bear skin protective to the Zionists that control him and perpetuated these atrocities in that era!…. shsss!…. history is in the hands of the victor….. Zionism!…… Gus