La « Commission de lutte contre les tentatives de falsification de l'histoire au détriment des intérêts de la Russie » : « grand machin » inutile ou nouvel instrument de censure ?

On 1 5 May 2009, President Medvedev issued decree number 459 creating "The Presidential Commission of the Russian Federation for Countering Attempts to Falsify History to the Detriment of Russia's Interests". As the French state had done a few years earlier, the Russian state expressed its wish to write its definitive national history to serve as the point of reference in terms of accuracy both at home and abroad. In Russia itself, public opinion immediately cried out against such an unconstitutional initiative ; it was considered as an attempt to establish a new dogma. This seemed all the more to be the case as the senior civil servants making up the bulk of the Commission lacked appropriate training in historical scholarship. In its own way, Russia joined the debate on national history initiated in France in July 1 990 when the first so-called "memory law", or Gayssot law, was passed. The debate ended in July 2009, when the President of the National Assembly gave a speech inviting the State to forego further attempts to write scholarly history, highlighting the tension between a national history or narrative on the one hand, and a scholarly history on the other. Both the French and the Russian states have in their own way claimed their right to write national history and also to control others attempting to do so. They have also tried to interfere in the writing of scholarly history. Faced with the outcry triggered by their initiatives, both states have had to retreat. The French state tiptoed back and left all existing memory laws in place. The Russian state in the end decided against decreeing a memory law similar to the Gayssot law and, instead, set up the aforementioned Commission. The latter subsequently toned down attempts to monitor the writing of historical manuals. Nevertheless, Russia has not altogether ceased to keep an eye on the production of scholarly history. This is evident in the bizarre "Suprun" affair : recently a historian in Arkhangelsk was being interrogated by an (hopefully overzealous) FSB officer. Suffice it to say that both France and Russia have maintained an ambiguous position about the matter of national historiography. Drawing on quotations from philosophers, pamphleteers and nineteenth and twentieth century historians with an interest in this issue, this article aims to analyse some specific, recent, examples in France and Russia. We shall ultimately assess contradictions with regard to the issues of legitimacy and "hostility" as universal problems that emerge in the production of national narratives and historical scholarship.Comte Philippe. La « Commission de lutte contre les tentatives de falsification de l'histoire au détriment des intérêts de la Russie » : « grand machin » inutile ou nouvel instrument de censure ?. In: Revue Russe n°37, 2011. L’auto-construction de l’image de la Russie et de la France au fil du temps. pp. 113-129