Memory laws are government actions designed to guide their citizens’ interpretation of history. The laws assert a mandatory viewpoint of historical events and forbids any conflicting interpretation of the same historical event. We have criticized memory laws for being an enemy to free speech. We also know memory laws as government censorship.
In 1985, West Germany passed a memory law that would criminalize anyone who teaches, writes or speaks about Holocaust denial. Other countries soon followed suit and passed similar laws banning the denial of other historical horrors. This was considered a pleasant form of memory laws, though advocates of free speech advocated the laws were starting down a slippery slope we can’t recover from.
In 2014, Russia passed the “Law Against Rehabilitation of Nazism” memory law. The title of the law, like most law titles, is very misleading. The reasoning behind the law is that the Nuremberg tribunals passed judgement on all the World War II era atrocities of the 1930s and 1940s and any atrocities that weren’t tried, there is “false” information about the Soviet Union during World War II. This “false” information was therefore banned and it could criminally try a person for spreading this information. For added measure, Russia linked crimes not judged at Nuremberg is equivalent to a denial of Nazi atrocities, to make the law look more appealing.
Russia ended World War II as one of the “good” guys aka the Allies. The Allies were the group who brought down the evil Axis powers (Germany, Japan and Italy) and saved the world. The truth about Nuremberg is that it only prosecuted the evils of the losing side, the Axis powers. Anyone who was on the Allied side did not get prosecuted and even had a hand in picking the Judges to try the Axis war criminals. Needless to say, they did not prosecute all the atrocities of World War II in Nuremberg.
Under this new Russian memory law, they prosecuted a man for accurately blogging that Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union both invaded Poland. What the man wrote was accurate, but it conflicted with what Russia wanted its citizens to remember about the Soviet Union’s actions in World War II. Russia just wants its citizens to remember that the Soviet Union was a part of the “good” guys. In actuality, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union were in partnership at the beginning of World War II. It was only after Hitler double crossed the Soviets and invaded them that the Soviet Union joined the “good” side. Russian kids from 2014 onward won’t know any of this accurate information about the Soviet Union because of the memory law. Nor will they know of Soviet official’s hand in orchestrating the 1932-33 famine in Ukraine. Knowledge of all these events would give a person a clearer and accurate assessment of the Soviet Union, but that doesn’t matter to Russia. It just wants to sanitize and clear up its dirty history.
Similar laws have made their way to the United States. In 2021, many states, including Idaho, Iowa, Oklahoma, Texas and Tennessee, have passed their version of memory laws. The laws ban teaching about the enduring legacies of slavery and segregationist laws, or that any state or the U.S. is inherently racist or sexist. If you are a student of U.S. history or just a follower of this blog, you would know that racism and sexism are as important to American History as the Pilgrims, Revolutionary War, Declaration of Independence, Constitution and Civil War. To teach U.S. History without reference to these topics is the equivalent of teaching someone the Bible but only teaching them the Old Testament. You are only teaching them half of the story.
History is such an important subject for people to learn because we can gleam the lessons from past events and how human nature rarely changes so we can learn and not repeat the mistakes. History also gives a broad perspective on why things are the way they are today. When you restrict what they can teach in classrooms, everyone loses knowledge and historical perspective.
African Americans lose the knowledge of where their ancestors came from, the atrocities they had to endure, and the struggles to be seen as equals they had to endure. Native Americans lose the knowledge that they inhibited most of the U.S. and why that is not the case today. Mexican-Americans lose the knowledge that most of the current Western United States was once owned by Mexico and why that is not the case today. Women lose the knowledge that they were second-class citizens and property of their husbands and had very little rights and the fight they had to endure to win those rights. LGBTQ+ people lose the knowledge of the years of discrimination they faced and how they couldn’t express their sexuality freely like they can today.
When politics gets involved in school subjects, no good comes from it. The ability for children to become well rounded, learned citizens gets lost and we as a society lose. Then again, the goal of the U.S. educational system was never to make open minded free thinkers. It’s crazy how the same people who get so riled up about their freedoms and being forced to wear a mask for public health don’t care about being told their kids can only learn a limited perspective of history. It reminds me of the famous line from the movie A few good men, “you want the truth? You can’t handle the truth!”
Thank you for this blog post on memory laws. My Dad, John Patrick Cameron, was an amateur historian who taught me a lot about U.S. history and WWII. He passed in 2017, and I believe he would have agreed with your core point here – that we all lose when history is erased, and when lies (including lies of omission) are passed off to students as the truth.
I find a parallel within the rough terrain of extended families, and the interpersonal politics of who is privileged to curate family stories, that are then elevated by being heard and believed.