What is worrying Russia? Why is the country convinced that it is the victim of a campaign to make it look bad? President Dmitry Medvedev recently announced the setting up of a commission to counter the falsification of history. He said this was becoming increasingly “severe, evil, and aggressive”. “This is absolute poppycock,” says Robert Service, professor of Russian History at Oxford University. “History is all about argument. There is no absolute historical truth about anything big in history.” Tamara Eidelman, who teaches history at a Moscow High School, feels surrounded by nationalist sentiment. “So many people are speaking about strong, Orthodox Russia, military power,” she says.
