Shoigu proposed introducing criminal liability for denying the Soviet Union's victory in the Great Patriotic War

Sergey Shoigu proposed criminal liability for denying the USSR victory in the Great Patriotic War, saying it would help protect historical memory and the feat of Soviet people. Veterans and some politicians supported the idea, but critics warn it could become ideological persecution. In the Federation Council opinions were split, some called it necessary, others disputed it, but acknowledged the issue's importance for public and legal assessment.

The head of Russia’s Ministry of Emergency Situations, Sergei Shoigu, proposed adopting a law providing for criminal liability for denying the Soviet Union’s victory in the Great Patriotic War. He voiced this initiative on Tuesday at a meeting with veterans at the Stalingrad Battle museum-panorama.
Shoigu emphasized that in the post-Soviet space, the results of the Great Patriotic War, as well as the merits and feats of Soviet citizens, are being denied. According to Shoigu, adopting such a law would make it possible to “protect our history, the feat of our fathers and grandfathers.”
The veterans of the Great Patriotic War warmly supported the minister’s idea. In response to their questions, Shoigu assured them that such a bill would be prepared this year.
Russia’s Public Chamber believes Sergei Shoigu’s proposal deserves attention.
“This issue should receive not only a public but also a legal assessment. It is very important to show Russia’s and the USSR’s role in the defeat of fascism and, perhaps, to formalize it at the legislative level,” Anatoly Kucherena, head of the Public Chamber of the Russian Federation’s commission on oversight of law enforcement agencies and reform of the judicial and legal system, told Interfax on Tuesday. According to him, the Public Chamber is ready to take part in drafting a document on the USSR’s role in World War II.
If the relevant bill is submitted to parliament, experts believe it has a good chance of being adopted. Some faction leaders say they are ready to support this initiative in full.
For example, LDPR leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky said: “We laid down millions of soldiers, and now they will tell us that the USSR did not participate in this war at all; this is monstrous.” He believes that putting this issue on a legal footing is necessary so that those who make such statements on Russian territory feel accountable. “This also applies to the mayor of Tallinn and the president of Ukraine,” Zhirinovsky noted.
Independent politician and host of the Ekho Moskvy radio station Vladimir Ryzhkov spoke out categorically against adopting a law on criminal liability for denying victory in the Patriotic War. He believes that the article of the law would allow people to be prosecuted for ideological reasons.
“I see no point in adopting this amendment; we already have a confusing, overburdened, and in many cases ambiguous Criminal Code, and there is no need to introduce purely ideological articles into it,” he believes. “If there are historians who propose other interpretations, weighing the contribution of one power or another to the overall victory, then that is a matter for scholarly debate and symposia, but not for the prosecutor’s office,” Ryzhkov noted.
The Federation Council has given an ambivalent assessment of Shoigu’s proposal.
Deputy chairman of the committee on international affairs Vasily Likhachev also emphasized that the decisive role of the USSR in the victory in the Great Patriotic War is a universally recognized fact reflected in international legal acts and enshrined in the decisions of the Yalta and Potsdam conferences. At the same time, according to Likhachev, after the collapse of the USSR, Western and Baltic countries, as well as a number of international organizations, became involved in ideological and information wars, as a result of which there emerged a desire on their part to distort history and to speak sharply negatively about Russian history as a whole.
And the head of the Federation Council’s committee on culture, Alexander Dzasokhov, supported Shoigu’s position. In his opinion, attempts to diminish the USSR’s role in the Victory in the Great Patriotic War “are incitement to the disunity of peoples and should be punished appropriately.”