Russia is launching an official drive to try to reverse what it sees as an anti-Russian view of 20th century history, but critics see it as an attempt to cover up the unpleasant reality of the communist past.

Kremlin leaders have clashed with former Soviet vassals such as Ukraine and the Baltic states for confronting the Kremlin's interpretation of the 20th century when large swathes of Europe were occupied by Soviet troops for decades.

"I order the creation of a presidential commission to counter attempts to harm Russian interests by falsifying history," President Dmitry Medvedev said in the decree published by the Kremlin on Tuesday.

The commission will seek to work out ways to counter "falsified historical facts" that belittle the international prestige of the Russian Federation, the decree said.

Russia says its former allies have forgotten the sacrifices made by the Soviet Union during World War Two, which cost about 27 million Soviet lives.

But most of the countries formerly occupied by Soviet forces say Russians have failed to come to terms with their imperial past and the crimes committed under Soviet dictator Josef Stalin.

Oleg Orlov, a leader of the Memorial human rights group in Moscow, said Medvedev's commission was an attempt to impose a state controlled view of historical truth.

"This is part of a movement to halt any objective view of what really happened in Russia's past, above all under Stalin," Orlov told Reuters.

Some Russian historians say Stalin's legacy was airbrushed under former President Vladimir Putin, who once served as a KGB spy in East Germany.

The 28-member commission is headed by Kremlin chief of staff Sergei Naryshkin, includes two senior spies, the armed forces chief of general staff and is mostly made up of state officials. Just two academics are members.

"An officially approved state history is the typical attribute of a totalitarian state, or in Russia's current case, the hangover of totalitarianism," said Orlov.

"This is an attempt to put a lid on any proper, objective look at history inside Russia while throwing down the gauntlet to our former partners in the Soviet Union, above all Ukraine and the Baltic states," he said.

Moscow's role in Ukraine's famine of 1932-33, in which historians believe 7.5 million died, has been the source of simmering row between the two countries. Soviet authorities denied for decades that the famine occurred.

For decades the Soviet Union said the Nazis were responsible for the murder of thousands of Polish police officers during World War Two. Moscow only admitted responsibility for the massacre at Katyn as the Soviet Union crumbled.

Russian histories of World War Two still give little attention to the 1939 pact between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany which divided Eastern Europe into spheres of influence.


Reuters