"The Great Forgery, or a Brief Course in the Falsification of History" by Igor Shumeiko, summary

This book is a study of the substitution of historical facts with political interpretations. Created in 2010, the author explores the psychological roots of long-standing conflicts. Due to differences in mentality, the same diplomatic events receive contrasting assessments in Europe and Russia. The historical analysis covers a long period from the Middle Ages to the Cold War.

Interpretations of World War II and the Yalta System

European countries regularly shift responsibility for collaboration onto the Soviet Union. This manipulation of narratives amounts to playing with legal documents. Czech factories produced thousands of tanks and self-propelled guns for the Wehrmacht. Prague enterprises supplied the Nazis with maneuverable spotter aircraft. Today, European researchers prefer formal excuses. Occupied countries absolve themselves of blame for arming Hitler’s army. Old military equipment is now considered purely German product. The author mocks the official history of the Škoda factory. The destruction of the last Czech-made tank near Moscow is presented as the end of historical responsibility.

Eastern European states are actively criticizing the Yalta system. Politicians ignore their own pre-war concessions to Nazi Germany. The Lithuanian leadership voluntarily surrendered the major Baltic port of Klaipėda to Hitler at the first demand. Wilhelm Keitel recognized Czechoslovakia’s military might at Nuremberg. Mountain fortifications made the republic an absolutely invulnerable target. Hitler’s generals received the country as a gift thanks to the Munich Agreement. The Versailles treaty system triggered the outbreak of World War II. The bipolar world order of Yalta cemented the post-war status quo and gave the young states real borders.

The origins of the continental split

The divergence between Europe and Russia began in 1054. Then, the Christian Church split into Western and Eastern branches. The rise of the Roman popes was determined by their initial position on the fringes. All active spiritual life was then in full swing in the East. The Fourth Crusade of 1204 devastated the wealthy Orthodox city of Constantinople. The Roman hierarchs planned the complete spiritual eradication of Eastern Christianity from Novgorod to Byzantium. The Crusaders wanted to take only Jerusalem from the Muslims.

The choice of Prince Alexander Nevsky determined the Eurasian destiny of Rus’. The commander formed a political alliance with the East for military defense against the West. Rus’ took over the baton of statehood from the weakening Golden Horde. A unique state model allowed for the rapid development of vast territories in the Urals and Siberia. The empire absorbed nomadic tribes without the wholesale extermination of indigenous peoples. The Cossacks reached as far as the Far East.

Europe retained a deep, subconscious fear of Batu Khan’s invasion. The average Westerner measured Russia by their own standards. Europeans saw before them a terrifying, boundless expanse. The French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau criticized Peter the Great’s reforms. The Enlightenment thinker believed that the tsar had disrupted the nation’s natural path of development. The German thinker Gottfried Leibniz viewed the Russian state as a blank slate for grandiose cultural experiments.

Russian wars and geopolitics

The continental wars of the Russian Empire are classified into five categories. The internal conflicts of the Ulus of Jochi ensured the legitimate transfer of the Volga region and Siberia to the control of Moscow’s rulers. Campaigns to restore the ancient Russian perimeter united the related populations of Lithuania and Poland. The Swedish and Turkish campaigns inherited from pre-Mongol Rus’ continued old geopolitical objectives. Global conflicts transformed on Russian soil into severe national confrontations.

The fifth type of military clashes is imitative, European-image-based actions. Monarchs’ involvement in European affairs inflicted colossal damage on the empire. Alexander I and Nicholas I paid with Russian blood to save foreign regimes. The suppression of the Hungarian rebellion in 1848 protected the Austrian Habsburgs. State resources were wasted on geopolitical PR. Instead, they should have been building railways to the Pacific Ocean.

Freedom of choice and mentality

Russian and Western perceptions of personal freedom differ greatly. European democracy requires constant organizational effort. Citizens are obligated to uphold the mechanisms of power and maintain strict social discipline. Russians highly value freedom of choice, coupled with the right to renounce that choice itself. The need to formulate a political opinion daily is perceived as a tedious chore.

Western rating agencies consistently classify Russia as an autocracy. Human rights activists ignore the historical patterns of the peasant mentality. The Russian farmer thought in concrete terms and personal connections. The villager did not operate with abstractions like law or civil society. The peasant relied on the monarch’s personal justice. The common man eschewed the mechanical procedures of voting.

False historical walls

Former Soviet republics construct ideological constructs to justify their own Russophobia. Georgian leaders forget the threat of complete demographic collapse in the eighteenth century. The Persian Shah Abbas exterminated and enslaved hundreds of thousands of residents of Kakheti. The remnants of the fragmented Georgian kingdom voluntarily submitted to the scepter of the Russian autocrat. Russian garrisons stopped the Persian and Turkish invasions. Later, Caucasian military and cultural figures realized their powerful potential in the vast imperial expanses. Contemporary Georgian leaders call the rescue from imminent destruction an occupation. A local conflict in 2008 was cynically exploited by American political strategists to support candidate John McCain.

Latvia and Estonia legally equate the Soviet period with the Nazi occupation. Politicians deliberately ignore objective military indicators. The Soviet command formed fully-fledged Latvian and Estonian guards rifle corps. The national units were equipped with their own heavy artillery, armored regiments, and independent air squadrons with local pilots.

The Nazis trusted Baltic SS volunteers only with light firearms. German officers used local battalions as punitive forces or cannon fodder. Viktors Arajs’s Latvian command voluntarily burned synagogues and methodically executed civilians in Belarus and Russia. Legionnaire revolts against the German command were easily suppressed by tanks. Occupation museums in Tallinn and Riga one-sidedly demonize Soviet power. National exhibits obscure the crimes of local units and obscure the heroic deeds of the Soviet corps.

Energy and social pressure

The European Energy Charter camouflages the resource-centric interests of Western countries. Oil and gas are condensed solar energy. Russia lacks effective wind and solar power generation opportunities due to its harsh climate. Europe demands unimpeded access to other countries’ pipelines. Politicians disguise these appetites with slogans about ecology and equality. Gazprom’s loud accusations of massive methane leaks are refuted by precise measurements from mobile railway laboratories. The greenhouse gas is emitted by Siberian swamps, not old highways.

The Jewish question long served as a lever of informational pressure on Russian policy. Anti-Semitism on the western fringes of the empire was fueled by the Polish economic system. Polish lords leased taverns and Orthodox churches to Jews on long-term leases. The leaseholders collected exorbitant debts and taxes on religious rites. Peasant revolts blindly attacked the tax collectors themselves.

The Russian authorities attempted to solve this complex problem through peaceful agricultural labor. The state allocated large tracts of fertile land in Novorossiya to Jews free of charge for agricultural development. Western European countries had been exterminating Jews in ghettos for centuries, but cynically accused the Russian Empire of violating civil liberties.

Internal historical mystifications

Domestic amateur researchers create fantastical concepts to artificially extend Russian history. Anatoly Fomenko and Gleb Nosovsky’s mathematical "New Chronology" arbitrarily compresses centuries. The authors identify completely different historical figures based on convoluted formulas. The Swedish King Charles X is declared to be Alexander Nevsky. The Classical era is transported to the Middle Ages based on details in Renaissance paintings. Such theories, without evidence, reject genuine archaeological remains.

History has seen its share of talented literary hoaxes. The poet Yevgeny Vashkov masterfully forged a pre-revolutionary notebook containing supposedly unknown lines from Nikolai Nekrasov’s poem "The Torches." The forgery was purchased by the poet Demyan Bedny and published in the country’s leading newspaper. A chemical analysis revealed the ink was from the 20th century, putting an end to the grand deception.

Yuri Mirolyubov’s text offers a fictitious picture of the Eurasian wanderings of the Slavic tribes. The manuscript is compiled in an artificial language with gross grammatical distortions. The legend of Colonel Izenbek’s discovery of ancient tablets is full of inconsistencies. Neo-pagan books postulate absurd hypotheses about wars with ancient China seven thousand years ago and spaceships. The hoaxers are trying to compensate for historical inferiority complexes. The real, thousand-year-old chronicle of Rus’ possesses genuine grandeur and has no need for dubious, fantastical additions.

The finale of the consumption race

The Soviet Union achieved nuclear parity but lost the consumption race to the West. Its planned economy, based on mobilization, hopelessly lagged behind rapidly changing global fashion trends. The American way of life was obsessively promoted as a universal consumer ideal.

Citizens of the Soviet state did not suffer from hunger or lack of clothing. Public discontent was fueled by constant shortages of goods and a dearth of stylish clothing. The intense desire to acquire high-quality imported goods gradually eroded the state ideology. The current global crisis of overconsumption threatens resource depletion and environmental catastrophe for the entire planet. The endless pursuit of comfort suppresses spiritual asceticism and leads consumer civilization to a dead end.