President Vladimir Putin has put the blame for Russia’s defeat in the First World War on Bolsheviks’ policy that he called ‘national treason’.
Speaking in the Upper House of the Russian Parliament Putin said the Bolsheviks, especially the ruling elite of the party, betrayed Russia’s national interests and allowed Germany to win the war with Russia even though eventually Germany was defeated. The President added that Bolsheviks had been so reluctant to admit their mistakes that in the Soviet period the First World War was called “the Imperialist War” and the authorities deliberately ignored the heroism of Russian soldiers in art and propaganda. Putin added that in reality the First World War was not an imperialist one. The topic was raised when the upper house discussed the possibility of funding the maintenance of the Russian necropolis in Serbia – the burial place of at least 3,000 Russians, including 124 generals of the Tsarist Army. Putin stressed he supported the idea to fund the monument. President Putin traditionally opposes the Communist Party of the Russian Federation – the heirs to the CPSU, but at the same time he has called the breakup of the Soviet Union ‘the biggest geopolitical disaster of the century.” Recently Russia is taking steps against what it sees as the ‘revisionism of history’ – manipulations that question the universally accepted opinion on most questionable issues of the past.