Historical Accuracy, Enforced

On August 8, a court in St. Petersburg banned three books by Viktor Suvorov: "Icebreaker: Who Started World War II?," "M-Day: When Did World War II Begin?," and "Cleansing: Why Did Stalin Behead His Army?"

The court argued that the books "reinforce the negative image of the USSR and spread lies about the activities of Soviet government agencies and individual officials," and fly in the face of the testimony of veterans and the Nuremburg Trials.

Suvorov's works are infamous for presenting a Second World War narrative that is sharply at odds with the Kremlin's telling. According to Suvorov, who served for decades in the Soviet army and military intelligence before defecting to the West, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin worked closely with Hitler and Nazi Germany to engineer a Europe-wide conflict that would end in the USSR's favor. He argues that the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop pact was deliberately engineered by Stalin to provoke Hitler into attacking Poland, thus starting war with the U.K. and France. Once all parties were exhausted, the USSR could attack Europe and add its entirety to the Soviet sphere. Thus, Hitler's attack of the Soviet Union in the summer of 1941 was a pre-emptive strike to cripple the Soviet Union, which itself was gearing up to attack Germany later that year.

Supporting Suvorov's theories are documented instances of cooperation between Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia in the 1920s and 1930s, increased Soviet militarization during the period, and several other factors.

While Suvorov's theory is, admittedly, a little "out there," the sharp response by Russian authorities highlights the sacred-ness of the Second World War as a cultural touchstone. In the Kremlin's telling, Russia was purely a victim of World War II, and it was Stalin who bravely led the Soviet people to a costly victory. To compare him to the Nazis and imply that he would collude with them is sacrilege.

The banning of the three books also continues a crackdown on media and dissent in the wake of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.