Press release, 10.11.2014
On November 10, 2014, YABLOKO launched a book on history based on the conference-debate “Historical Knowledge as a Factor of Development” conducted by YABLOKO, the Memorial human rights group and the Sakharov Centre on December 16, 2013.

Secretary of YABLOKO Political Committee Galina Mikhaleva who headed the editors collegiate emphasized that the situation in Russia has changed to worse within the year when the book was crated. “Now we deal with the situation when not only a single school history book can be developed, but literature and the Russian language books too. On the whole, the singe-mindedness is going to be introduced which is typical of an authoritarian regime with totalitarian elements”, she said.

“Our aim is to resist this [single-mindedness] since there should be diversity, ideological pluralism. Actually it’s written in the Constitution. Therefore we deal with historic issues, for it is a tasks of conceptualization, estimation of the historical past, learning lessons form it which is one of the most prior points. So, our book is launched on time”, she noted.

YABLOKO Political Committee member Victor Sheinis, who is the editor of the book, agreed with Galina Mikhaleva’s statement that that day they lived in a different country than a year before.

“The county is a hostage of the regime, the regime is a hostage of the leader, the leader is a hostage of the decisions which have been made within the past few months”.

Victor Sheinis remained the words of deputy head of Russia’s Presidential Administration Vechyaslav Volodin that without Putin there was no Russia. And Rudolf Gess used to say that without Hitler there was no Germany. “If Volodin had known these words he would have said something else instead. But the aspiration to appease the bosses is in the blood of this elite”, considered Victor Sheinis.