Textbook revisionism Russian Security Council’s WWII essay collection reveals Kremlin mindset, three years into Ukraine war
In early May, Russia’s Security Council published a collection of propaganda essays dedicated to the 80th anniversary of the Soviet Union’s victory in World War II. Federal politicians, top security officials, and Kremlin aides contributed, and President Vladimir Putin even penned an address to readers. But in offering their takes on how Soviet leaders’ decision-making led to the defeat of Nazi Germany, these high-level Russian officials often attempt to rewrite or completely contradict the historical record. For Meduza, historian Alexey Uvarov breaks down the most striking (and unexpected) examples of how the collection manipulates Soviet history — and what it reveals about the state of mind of Russia’s ruling elite today.
This collection of articles, dedicated to “the 80th anniversary of the Great Victory,” belongs to a special genre of opinion writing that blends official historiography with an emphasis on statism and detailed ideological justifications for current policies.
As a rule, Russian politicians and officials at various levels turn to this genre in anticipation of ideologically important dates. Such texts are rarely read beyond their titles. They tend to be clumsily written, poorly formatted, and filled with long quotations from top officials. Nevertheless, they reflect the current state of mind of the Russian ruling elite — and, above all, of the security forces.
In which Sergey Naryshkin plays up the role of Soviet foreign intelligence
Russia’s Foreign Intelligence director, Sergey Naryshkin, titled his essay The Contribution of the Intelligence Service to the Soviet People’s Victory in the Great Patriotic War. In his telling, Soviet intelligence allegedly predicted the Third Reich’s attack on the USSR and made important contributions to the Red Army’s victory in the battles of Moscow and Kursk. Soviet intelligence services, he claims, also identified threats from Japan, “hostile actions by the allies,” and contributed to the Soviet nuclear project. A separate section is devoted to the work of Soviet intelligence behind enemy lines, the organization of partisan detachments, sabotage operations, and assassinations of Nazi agents.
The Kremlin crushed Meduza’s business model and wiped out our ad revenue. We’ve been blocked and outlawed in Russia, where donating to us or even sharing our posts is a crime. But we’re still here — bringing independent journalism to millions of our readers inside Russia and around the world.
Meduza’s survival is under threat — again. Donald Trump’s foreign aid freeze has slashed funding for international groups backing press freedom. Meduza was hurt too. It’s yet another blow in our ongoing struggle to survive.
You could be our lifeline. Please, help Meduza survive with a small recurring donation.
Naryshkin, who is also the chairman of the Russian Historical Society, has written a eulogy to the intelligence services that contains many manipulations, exaggerating their achievements while also justifying political repressions and military aggression. A graduate of the Soviet Academy of Foreign Intelligence, Naryshkin has long been involved in creating ideological myths related to Russia’s history. In January 2025, for example, he suggested that Ukraine would “inevitably collapse” and be “divided” among its neighbors.
In the article, Naryshkin accuses Western countries of having “pumped up” Germany with resources and weapons, alleging that this pushed Hitler to attack the USSR. However, he omits the fact that the Soviet Union maintained close economic ties with the Third Reich from 1939–1941, when Germany was already at war with Britain and France.
After signing the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact and trade agreements in August 1939, the USSR supplied Nazi Germany with strategic raw materials, such as oil, grain, cotton, and non-ferrous metals (including copper, nickel, molybdenum, and tungsten). The Politburo approved the last major batch on June 3, 1941 — just three weeks before Germany attacked the Soviet Union — and it included thousands of tons of metals needed for military production. The USSR received machine tools, aviation technology, military equipment, and even an unfinished heavy cruiser in exchange. In other words, in the lead up to its attack on the USSR, Germany was being “pumped up” by Moscow — and quite officially at that.
According to Naryshkin, Germany’s seizure of Poland laid the groundwork for its invasion of the Soviet Union. In reality, however, it wasn’t just the Germans who invaded Poland. In August 1939, the USSR and the Third Reich also signed secret protocols on dividing Eastern Europe, including Polish territory. Two weeks after Germany launched its offensive, the Red Army invaded eastern Poland.
Naryshkin goes on to claim that “in early 1940, [Soviet] foreign intelligence reported that England and France [were] putting together an armed coalition in support of Finland and preparing an attack on the Soviet Union.” He also alleges that London and Paris tried to “drag Nazi Germany into the coalition.”
This, too, is inaccurate. Britain and France were already at war with Germany in 1940, and were unlikely to have discussed an “anti-Soviet coalition” with Hitler. That said, plans to support Finland did exist. After the start of the Soviet-Finnish War in November 1939, London and Paris discussed sending in troops through Northern Scandinavia and carrying out strikes on Soviet oil facilities in the Caucasus. However, Finland’s allies were not planning a direct attack on the USSR. Rather, they were discussing a show of force, political pressure, and the possibility of limited intervention. All of these plans were ultimately abandoned when Finland and the Soviet Union signed a peace treaty in March 1940.
Though it’s widely believed that the Soviet leadership did not anticipate Germany’s attack in June 1941, Naryshkin suggests otherwise: allegedly, Soviet foreign intelligence “reported that the German army command was planning to defeat the Red Army within two to three months and wasn’t prepared to carry out large-scale offensive operations in the winter.”
This raises a simple question: If Soviet intelligence really reported this information to the country’s leadership ahead of time, then why was the Wehrmacht able to inflict catastrophic losses on the Red Army between June and October 1941, take hundreds of thousands of prisoners, and advance towards Moscow?
After World War II, the USSR established pro-Soviet communist regimes across Eastern Europe, including in Poland, Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Czechoslovakia. This was accompanied by repressions against political opponents, election fraud, and the elimination of independent political parties. According to Naryshkin, Soviet intelligence officers provided the information that “helped set the course with respect to countries liberated from German control.”
In which members of Russia’s Security Council praise the perpetrators of Stalinist deportations
In his essay, Russian National Guard Director Viktor Zolotov compares the experience of Soviet secret police (NKVD) troops during World War II with Rosgvardiya’s work in the Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine. He describes in detail how Rosgvardiya troops are engaged in guarding critical infrastructure, “fighting saboteurs,” and “maintaining public order” in the Ukrainian regions Russia claims to have annexed.
Zolotov invokes these historical analogies with the NKVD not so much for analytical purposes but rather to justify Russia’s contemporary repressive practices. “The Soviet NKVD’s agencies and troops in the liberated territories of European countries [...] protected communications and ensured public safety,” he writes. At first glance, this sounds rather neutral. But in practice, the NKVD’s “public safety” measures included mass arrests, population filtration, and suppressing any “disloyalty.” In some countries, this involved the violent overthrow of governments.
Recalling that NKVD troops were tasked with “organizing the resettlement of certain categories of citizens” from territories that Nazi Germany previously occupied, Zolotov emphasizes that Rosgvardiya troops play a similar role in Russia’s war against Ukraine. The term “resettlement” is a euphemism that conceals the Soviet Union’s forced deportations of entire ethnic groups, including Crimean Tatars, Chechens, Ingush, Kalmyks, Poles, Latvians, Lithuanians, Estonians, and other minorities. These deportations, which were carried out without trial, saw thousands of people taken away on freight trains, often in freezing temperatures, and without food or water. Families were torn apart, and many died on their way to exile. For some ethnic groups, the deportations meant the loss of their homeland, language, and historical memory.
The role of “multinational unity” in defeating Nazi Germany is the topic of not one but two essays in the collection, authored by Putin’s envoys to the North Caucasus and the Volga Federal District, Yury Chaika and Igor Komrarov. Both emphasize the heroism of the USSR’s various ethnic groups, their contribution to Soviet victory over the Third Reich, their work at the home front, and so on. Once again, this view of history leaves no room for the complexities of the Soviet Union’s nationalities policy, not to mention the deportations of ethnic groups the country’s leadership deemed “politically unreliable.”
In which Presidential Envoy Igor Shchyogolev denies historical facts even the Kremlin acknowledges
In his contribution to the collection, Putin’s presidential envoy to the Central Federal District, Igor Shchyogolev, examines the significance of the 1941–1942 Battle of Moscow in the context of the Great Patriotic War. In particular, he focuses on the Red Army’s heroism, the contribution of the people’s militia, the work of Moscow’s industry and press, as well as the role of the Orthodox Church, the creative intelligentsia, partisans, and volunteers in the defense of the city.
Shchyogolev’s essay is a textbook example of how contemporary state rhetoric tries to rouse patriotic feelings in Russian citizens. The text is full of grandiose language and moralizing. Presenting historical facts in a one-sided manner, Shchyogolev refrains from analyzing losses, contradictions, and ambiguous episodes. He concludes by directly linking the “spirit of 1941” with the government's current agenda, including the ongoing war against Ukraine.
The panic in Moscow as the German army advanced towards the capital in October 1941 is well-documented in memoirs and fictional works, though it remained a taboo topic in the country’s official historiography for many years. Shchyogolev, however, goes so far as to claim that there was no panic whatsoever, making a direct attempt at revising a historical fact that not even the latest Russian high school textbooks deny. (Notably, the history textbook for 11th graders was co-authored by Putin’s aide and lead negotiator in talks with Ukraine, Vladimir Medinsky)
The ensuing Soviet counter-offensive was an absolute success for the Red Army. For the first time during the war, the USSR was able to stop the Wehrmacht’s advance, pushing back German units 100 to 250 kilometers (62 to 155 miles). This was supposedly made possible by the element of surprise, fresh reserves, high morale, and the weakening of enemy forces, exhausted by previous battles and cold weather. However, the Red Army’s subsequent offensives in the winter and spring of 1942 ended in failure and heavy losses. Shchyogolev only mentions this in passing. The Soviet victory in the Battle of Moscow was important, but it was neither a strategic turning point nor the beginning of the expulsion of German forces from Soviet territory. It was merely a respite in a long, grueling war.
Alexey Uvarov for Meduza