Falsification of history: examples. Counteraction of falsification of history

There is every reason to believe that the falsification of history began as early as the earliest civilizations. As soon as humanity began to store information about its past in one way or another, immediately those who were profitable to distort them were found. The reasons for this are very different, but in essence it is the desire to illustrate by the examples of the past years the contemporaries of the truth of ideological and religious teachings that existed at that time.

The main methods of historical falsification

Falsification of history is the same fraud, but on an especially large scale, since it often becomes victims of whole generations of people, and the damage caused by them has to be filled in for a long time. Historical falsifiers, like other professional rogues, have a rich arsenal of techniques. By issuing their own speculation for the information allegedly taken from existing documents, they usually either do not indicate the source at all, or they refer to what they invented themselves. Often, as evidence, there are known fakes published before.

But such primitive methods are characteristic of amateurs. True masters, for whom the falsification of history has become the subject of art, are engaged in faking primary sources. They own "sensational archaeological discoveries", the discovery of previously "unknown" and "unpublished" chronicle materials, diaries and memoirs.

Their work, reflected in the Criminal Code, certainly includes elements of creativity. Impunity of these false historians is based on the fact that for their exposure, a serious scientific examination is needed, which in most cases is not carried out, and sometimes is also falsified.

Fakes of Ancient Egypt

It is not difficult to see how long the old tradition is based on the falsification of history. Examples from ancient times can be a confirmation. A striking evidence is the monuments of ancient Egyptian literature that survived to our time. In them the deeds of the pharaohs are usually depicted in a clearly hypertrophic form.

For example, the ancient author claims that Ramses II, participating in the battle of Kadesh, personally destroyed a whole horde of enemies, thus ensuring his army victory. In fact, other sources of that era testify to the very modest results achieved that day by the Egyptians on the battlefield, and about the dubious merits of the pharaoh.

Falsification of the imperial decree

Another obvious historical forgery, which is appropriate to recall, is the so-called Constantine gift. According to this "document", the Roman emperor Constantine, who ruled in the IV century and made Christianity the official religion of the state, transferred the rights of secular power to the head of the church. And later they proved that its manufacture belongs to the VIII-IX centuries, that is, the document appeared at least four hundred years after the death of Constantine himself. He for a long period was the basis for papal claims to supreme power.

Fabrication of materials against the disgraced boyars

Falsification of the history of Russia, executed for political reasons, is visually demonstrated with the help of one document relating to the period of the reign of Ivan the Terrible. By his order, the famous "Face Vault" was compiled, which includes a description of the path traveled by the state from the most ancient times to the present. This multi-volume folio ended with the period of the reign of Ivan himself.

In the last volume it is said that the boyars, who fell into the Tsar's disfavor, were ruthlessly accused of numerous crimes. Since the rebellion of the sovereign princes, which occurred allegedly in 1533, is not mentioned in any more of the documents of that era, there is reason to believe that it is fiction.

Historical fakes of the period of Stalinism

Large-scale falsification of Russian history was continued in the Stalin era. Along with the physical violence of millions of people, including party leaders, military leaders, and representatives of science and art, it was practiced to remove their names from books, textbooks, encyclopedias and other literature. In parallel, the role of Stalin in the events of 1917 was extolled. The thesis of his leading role in the organization of the entire revolutionary movement was steadily taking root in the minds of the broad masses. This was a truly great falsification of history, which left its imprint on the development of the country in the coming decades.

One of the main documents that formed a false picture of Soviet history for Soviet citizens was the "Short Course of the History of the CPSU (b)" edited by Stalin. Among the myths included here that have not lost their force to this day, absolutely false information about the victories of the "young Red Army" stands out on February 23, 1918 near Pskov and Narva. Despite the most convincing evidence of her unreliability, this legend is still alive today.

Other myths from the history of the CPSU (b)

From this "course" the names of all figures who played an important role during the revolution and the Civil War were purposely excluded. Their merits were attributed personally to the "leader of the peoples" or to persons from his closest circle, as well as to those who died before the start of mass repression. The true role of these people was, as a rule, very insignificant.

As the only revolutionary force, the drafters of this dubious document represented exclusively the Bolshevik Party, while denying the role of the remaining political structures of the time. All prominent figures who were not among the Bolshevik leaders were declared traitors and counter-revolutionaries.

It was a direct falsification of history. The examples given above are far from a complete list of deliberate ideological fabrications. It got to the point that the history of Russia of the past centuries was re-written. This primarily affected the periods of the reign of Peter I and Ivan the Terrible.

Lies - the tool of Hitler's ideology

The falsification of world history was included in the arsenal of means of propaganda for fascist Germany. Here it has acquired a truly all-encompassing scale. One of its theorists became the ideologist of Nazism, Alfred Rosenberg. In his book The Twentieth Century Myth, he argued that the blame for the defeat of Germany in World War I lies entirely with the betrayal of the Social Democrats, who smashed their victorious army in the back.

According to him, only this prevented them, having sufficient reserves, to crush the enemy. In fact, all the materials of those years show that by the end of the war, Germany had completely exhausted its potential and was in a critical situation. Joining the Entente of America inevitably doomed her to defeat.

During the reign of Hitler, the falsification of history reached ridiculous forms. So, for example, by his order, a group of theologians engaged in the interpretation of the texts of Holy Scripture with the aim of changing the generally accepted idea of the role of Jews in biblical history. These, let's say, theologians agreed before they began to assert with all seriousness that Jesus Christ was not a Jew at all, but arrived in Bethlehem from the Caucasus.

Blasphemous lies about the war

An extremely unfortunate fact is the falsification of the history of the Great Patriotic War. Unfortunately, it took place also at a time when the past of our country was completely controlled by the ideological department of the CPSU Central Committee and in post-communist times, laying the burden of freedom on the shoulders of the people and their ideologues, the ability to use which was destroyed in the years of the totalitarian regime.

In the midst of new historical realities, public figures emerged , equating freedom and permissiveness, especially when it came to achieving certain immediate goals. One of the main methods of political PR of those years was the indiscriminate ohanivanie of the past, which reached the point of completely denying its positive aspects. It is no accident that even those components of our history that were formerly considered sacred were subjected to bitter attacks of the leaders of modern times. First of all, this is a shameful phenomenon, such as the falsification of the history of war.

Reasons for resorting to lies

If during the years of the ideological monopoly of the CPSU history was distorted in order to elevate the role of the party in defeating the enemy and depict the readiness of millions of people to die for the leader of Stalin, then in the post-perestroika period there appeared a tendency to deny the mass heroism of the people in the struggle against the fascists and to belittle the significance of the Great Victory. These phenomena are two sides of the same coin.

In both cases, deliberate lies are placed at the service of specific political interests. If in the past years the communists took it into service in order to maintain the authority of their regime, today those who are trying to gain their political capital try to use it. Both are equally indiscriminate in their means.

Historical falsification today

The pernicious tendency to reshape the history, marked in documents that have come down to us from ancient times, safely migrated to the enlightened twenty-first century. Despite all opposition to the falsification of history, attempts to deny such gloomy pages of the past as the Holocaust, the Armenian Genocide and the Holodomor in Ukraine continue. The creators of the so-called alternative theories, unable to deny these events as a whole, try to raise doubts about their authenticity, refuting the insignificant historical evidence.

The relation of art to historical certainty

The deliberate distortion of history is reflected not only in the works of party ideologists, but also in works of art. This should not be surprised, because it is fully a reflection of real life. However, the situation here is somewhat more complicated. Unlike science, art admits in the depiction of historical events a certain fiction, of course, only if the work of a writer or artist does not pretend to be documentary.

It should be noted that in recent years, in addition to the usual science fiction, a genre called fantasy has spread widely. As in one, and in another case, the plots of works often develop in a historical canvas, distorted by the author in accordance with his artistic plan. Such an artistic phenomenon is singled out by art critics as an independent subgenre, called an alternative history. It can not be regarded as an attempt to falsify real events, but should be perceived only as one of the artistic devices.

The fight against counterfeiters is a universal cause

Among the most effective ways to counteract attempts to falsify the history of our homeland, it is first of all necessary to name the commission created under the President of the Russian Federation, whose tasks include combating this disastrous phenomenon. An important role in this direction is played by the social organizations that are being created on the ground. Only by joint efforts can we put a stop to this evil.