Building Patriotism In Russia With Lies

THERE IS A CERTAIN KIND OF HISTORY, called "hagiography". Hagiography is history about a topic, a country or person, for instance, which the author abviously admires, and wishes to say only positive things about. Every country, every person, every historian, practices hagiography, which is human nature, and fine, but unfortunately, not honest. Hagiography is never honest, because human beings and countries are not all good, not all positive, and hagiography makes it seem as if they are. Honest history is perhaps not as pleasant as hagiography, but it certainly is more instructive. No nation in world hisotry has created and embraced as much national hagiography as the United States of America. The plight of America's poor, past and present, is largely forgotten, because America is great, and America's poor do not make America look great. So effective has hagiography been, indeed, in rallying American patriotism, that Russian head of state (dictator) Vladimir Putin intends to imitate America, and produce a Russian version, a Russian body of hagiographic history. Putin wants writers and publishers of Russian history text books to clear up ambiguities; in other words, to make Russia's past, russwia's heritage, Russia's culture, look less violent, and more virtuous. Hagiographic Russian history. That, dear friends, is hard to do. Anyone who has ever studied Russian history in even the most superficial fashion becomes aware that Russian history is incredibly brutal and violent, full of wars of all sorts, filled with abuse of the powerful few of the hapless many. (see serfs: Russian). This misery ans suffering and violence is what makes it so exciting, and interesting. But it aint pretty. And, it seems that Vladimer Putin wants to make sure that Russian school shildren are taught a version of Russian history which reflects a bit more favorably upon that history. Does he intend to purge the history books of Stalin's purges? What about Ivan the Terrible and his penchant for pulling wings off birds and dropping them from heights? For that matter, what about Putin's own dictatorial police state, which stifles all opposition? Mums the world, most likely, in Putin's new history books. Warning: hagiography has been partly responsible for producing a nationalistic, arrogant, aggressive culture in America, and, could very easily do the same in Russia, which, like America, is a land whose enormous flaws serve mainly to demonstrate the strength of its virtues.