Watching the
impossibly expensive Opening Ceremony of the Sochi Olympics on Friday, I was intrigued to see how the organizers of the event would present the entire span of Russian history (starting as far back as the 10th century, CE). After all, with a limited amount of time and space, the designers, much like textbook authors, would have to make
choices about what to highlight, as well as what to
include, and what to
omit.
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| Opening Ceremony, Sochi Olympics |
While the tsarist imperial period, starting with the accomplishments of Peter the Great, was impressively beautiful (see above), I was
most interested in how the Russians would deal with the period after the Russian Revolutions of 1917. As
USA Today put it in their recent headline,"
5 things you will, and won't see in opening ceremony", I, too, wondered how the Russians would present the long and rather recent Soviet period, which ended in 1991, in what is widely viewed as a
failure. For example, how would we "see"
Josef Stalin, the towering figure who not only presided over the rushed industrialization and agricultural collectivization of the USSR during the 1930s (
killing at least 20 million people), but also over the undeniable victory against Nazi Germany in the 1940s?
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| Soviet Cosmonaut Team, 1970s |
We wouldn't "see" him at all, apparently. He would be erased from the historical record, of course. Now, this is not the first time the Russians or the Soviets "photoshopped" their own history:
numerous examples abound. And a "
De-Stalinization" started as early as the 1950s. But to eliminate someone so influential so completely seems an insurmountable task, as opposed to these relatively smaller historical figures featured in this doctored photo.
But I would argue that Russia is an easy target for Americans: we've been at war with them since we refused to recognize the Soviet Union in 1917. A more interesting challenge would be to identify people and periods in
American history that have seemingly been whitewashed away from our collective memory.
What would you choose to write in the blank pages of American history?