Page 6 - Russian History Viewed through Distorted Mirrors, Vol. 1

Nicolai Levashov. Russian History Viewed through Distorted Mirrors. Vol. 1

Preface

Like any Russian, I have always been interested in the history of my Mother-
land. Whilst still a child, I became engrossed in historical novels as well as in books
on both Russian and other countries’ history and on “digesting” historical information
accessible to me, bewilderment and indignation filled my heart and mind. All people
or nations of the Earth, independent of their real role in the world’s fate, wrote their
Great History, using for this purpose, real events, folk legends and frankly fictitious
events. There would be nothing wrong with this, if it were not for one “but”: every-
thing that concerns Russia is filled with obvious hatred on the part of those who
wrote the history of the Russian people. In their opinion, the Slavs lived in earth pits
th
until the 9 century and were so primitive that they did not even have their own state
system and had to invite the Varangians to govern them. They also were terribly ig-
th
norant until in the 9 century two saints Cyril and Mefodiy created the Slavonic writ-
ten language on the basis of the Greek one and thus, gave the “light of knowledge” to
the dull Slavs. Moreover, the Mongol-Tatars had kept the Russian people in slavery
for three hundred years and only when Peter the Great “cut a window through” Eu-
rope and transformed Russia according to the European “image and likeness”, did
Russia become the Great Empire, etc. Any more or less educated person understands
perfectly that history is written according to the orders of those in power, and also
rewritten according to their requirements and wishes. Naturally, some appropriate

questions arise: who gave these kinds of orders; who were these “historians” and why
were they unable to create for those in power in the Russian state something similar
to what was created for the Jewish, Chinese, Greek, Roman and other peoples and
empires?
It appears that the modern history of the Russian people was actively created at
the time of the Romanovs dynasty which came to power in 1613, and the Bolsheviks
took the baton from them after the revolution of 1917. These are the “consumers” of
Russian history. Let us look at the performers. The Romanovs history of Russia was
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created in the 18 century by the “great Russian historiographers” – Gottlieb (Theo-
phil) Siegfried Bayer, Gerard Friedrich Müller, August Ludwig (von) Schlözer, all of

whom were German. They had never learnt Russian, but, nevertheless, they wrote the
history of the Russian State.
It is also somewhat difficult to find Russians amongst their “successors.” A pret-
ty interesting picture is observed – anyone who feels like it, be they German or Jew-
ish, can write the history of the Russian people, but not Russians. Is it really so, that
Russians are so primitive that they are unable to write their own history and have to
invite “historian-Varangians?!” It is not so, there were Lomonosov, Tatischev and a
great number of others at the time of the Russian Empire, and Gumilev, Gusev, De-
min and others during the Soviet and post-Soviet periods. Neither Lomonosov, nor
Tatischev could publish their historical works during their lifetime, they simply were
not allowed to. It was only after their deaths that their works were “creatively re-
made” and published by Bayer, Müller and C°. L.N. Gumilev spent his best years in a
concentration camp, and Fomenko and other historians are disregarded for one simple
reason: they are not certificated specialists.

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