Three Thousands Versts of Loneliness analyses Putin’s approach to Soviet and Russian history as revealed in his letter to Poland:

The ‘Putinite regime’ is commonly portrayed as if it were intent on overseeing Stalin’s rehabilitation, often with the implied aim of entrenching its own, purportedly authoritarian, project. As this weblog has consistently argued, the truth is more complicated, and the Kremlin’s attitude to history reflects, rather than engineers, the ambiguity which colours many Russians’ view of the past. Notoriously certain approved school textbooks in Russia now describe Stalin’s ‘managerial’ merits. However it is less frequently reported that the works of Solzhenitsyn also form an important component of the Russian curriculum.

Putin, in common with the majority of his countrymen, is not prepared to disown Soviet achievements in World War 2, or condemn every aspect of the USSR’s existence, simply because Stalin was a barbarous dictator. That position, however problematic one might find its maintenance, does not equate to the rampant neo-Stalinism, which western commentators are keen to insinuate…

Predictably most analysis will present Putin’s article as either a softening of the prime minister’s neo Stalinist stance, or a shameless attempt to rewrite history. The truth is that it is neither…

In fact Putin’s piece is entirely consistent with his approach to the past, which is in turn reflective of his nation’s relationship with its history.

Well, sure.

The problem with this general line of argument is that it fails to deal with the fact that so much of what Russians have been brought up to believe was simply lies poured out over decades by the Bolsheviks to justify their own grip on power.

Lies about Russia, lies about other people, lies about opponents, lies about allies, lies about the economy, lies about art, lies about science.

So it does not help us much if these lies are now turned into ‘ambiguities’ about history, which for one reason or the other have been internalised.

And these lies became really sophisticated. Not just facts presented as unfacts or vice versa. Part of their charm lay in the way they sought to put quite different things in similar or identical categories to sow confusion.

Thus this dreary communist talk of ‘double standards’ which again finds its way into Putin’s piece – any failing in others is proclaimed to undermine their moral credibility and thereby justifies any alleged moral failing on the Soviet side.

This amounts to saying that because there is no ‘real’ or ‘clear’ distinction between an angry guard killing a few prisoners and a leadership ordering the massacre of 20,000 prisoners, it is ‘hypocritical’ to go on about Katyn.

It surely is right to say that Putin is steeped in this sort of thinking. This in turn reflects the fact that hundreds of thousands of people who did well in the USSR security apparatus have taken advantage of the end of communism to make themselves powerful and rich. They have a personal reason to keep that sort of thinking alive and well, namely to divert attention from what the former system did under their leadership and that of their parents and relatives, and that’s what they do.

Nor does it follow that those of us who find it all deeply depressing are insisting on Russia grovelling and covering itself in sackcloth and ashes.

But there surely is room for a speech by a truly great Russian leader which says or even hints at some words of regret for all the victims in Poland of Stalinist oppression during and after WW2; which announces that all Katyn archives will be opened once and for all; and which says in unambiguous terms that even allowing for the historical context and the pusillanimity of so many others in Europe at the time, the fact that the USSR took advantage of Hitler’s aggressive ambitions to grab territory for itself then brutalise the people living on it was just Wrong.

Instead of which we get a long, evasive text which seeks to explain away Stalin’s crimes as somehow caused by other people or forces beyond his control. Far from saying that the Molotov/Ribbentrop Pact was immoral, Putin comes up with a complex sentence which, when disentangled, says in effect that it was a ‘wise’ move.

So, yes, PM Putin is attempting an ‘accommodation’ between Russia and its horrible history. But that does not mean that the specific accommodation he reaches in this case is fair-minded – or respectable.