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Whitewashing is the act of glossing over or covering up vices, crimes or scandals or exonerating by means of a perfunctory investigation or biased presentation of data with the intention to improve one's reputation. [1]
The first known use of the term is from 1591 in England. [1] [2] Whitewash is a cheap white paint or coating of chalked lime that was used to quickly give a uniform clean appearance to a wide variety of surfaces, such as the interior of a barn.[ citation needed ]
In 1800, in the United States, the word was used in a political context, when a Philadelphia Aurora editorial said that "if you do not whitewash President Adams speedily, the Democrats, like swarms of flies, will bespatter him all over, and make you both as speckled as a dirty wall, and as black as the devil." [3]
In the 20th century, many dictatorships, authoritarian and totalitarian states used whitewashing in order to glorify the results of war. For instance, during the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia following the Prague Spring of 1968, the Press Group of Soviet Journalists released a collection of "facts, documents, press reports and eye-witness accounts." Western journalists promptly nicknamed it "The White Book", both for its white cover and its attempts to whitewash the invasion by creating the impression that the Warsaw Pact countries had the right and duty to invade.[ citation needed ]
In the study of reputation systems by means of algorithmic game theory, whitewashing refers to the abandonment of a tarnished identity and creation of a blank one, [4] : 682 which is more widely known in internet slang as sockpuppeting.
Some critics have accused Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow of being whitewashed due to the bias of its conceptual framework. It omits pertinent African American people and history, as well as politically radical ideas in favor of a more conventional and mainstream perspective. [5] [6]
According to the Eastern Europe and Central Asia desk director for the International Federation for Human Rights, Ilya Nuzov, Russia is trying to whitewash the country's repressive Stalinist past. [7] On August 30, 2021, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that the "attacks" on the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin are part of attacks on Russia's past and the results of World War II. [8] [9] Russian politician and former deputy of the State Duma Alexei Melnikov said that Lavrov "made an attempt to whitewash Stalin, which clearly, during the period of repressive measures carried out by the authorities, showed the kinship of the authorities with the Communist Party of the Russian Federation – the same Stalin admirers." Russian literary critic and culturologist Nikolai Podosokorsky noted that "the whitewashing of domestic ghouls only indicates that the current rulers feel a spiritual kinship with them." [10]
A satellite state or dependent state is a country that is formally independent in the world but under heavy political, economic, and military influence or control from another country. The term was coined by analogy to planetary objects orbiting a larger object, such as smaller moons revolving around larger planets, and is used mainly to refer to Central and Eastern European countries of the Warsaw Pact during the Cold War, as well as to Mongolia and Tuva between 1924 and 1990, all of which were economically, culturally, and politically dominated by the Soviet Union. While primarily referring to the Soviet-controlled states in the Central and Eastern Europe or Asia, in some contexts the term also refers to other countries under the Soviet hegemony during the Cold War, such as North Korea, Cuba, North Vietnam during Vietnam War, and to some countries in the American sphere of influence, such as South Vietnam. In Western usage, the term has seldom been applied to states other than those in the Soviet orbit. In Soviet usage, the term applied to the states in the orbit of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Imperial Japan, whereas in the West the term to refer to those has typically been client states.
Vyacheslav Mikhaylovich Molotov was a Russian and later Soviet politician and diplomat, an Old Bolshevik, and a leading figure in the Soviet government from the 1920s onward. He served as Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars from 1930 to 1941 and as Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1939 to 1949 and from 1953 to 1956.
Soviet empire, also referred to as Soviet imperialism, is a political term used in history and Sovietology to describe the actions, influence and hegemony of the Soviet Union, with an emphasis on its dominant role in other countries.
Lazar Moiseyevich Kaganovich, also Kahanovich, was a Soviet politician and administrator, and one of the main associates of Joseph Stalin. He was one of several associates who helped Stalin to seize power.
Mikhail Nikolayevich Tukhachevsky, nicknamed the Red Napoleon by foreign newspapers, was a Soviet general who was prominent between 1918 and 1937 as a military officer and theoretician.
Marshal of the Soviet Union was the highest military rank of the Soviet Union.
Genrikh Samoilovich Lyushkov was an officer in the Soviet secret police and its highest-ranking defector. A high-ranking officer of the NKVD, he played a role in perpetrating Stalin's Great Purge. When, in 1938, he suspected he would soon fall victim to the purge, he fled to the Japanese. Thereafter, he acted as a major source of intelligence for Imperial Japan about the Soviet Union. At the end of World War II, he was killed by the Japanese in order to prevent him from falling back into Soviet hands.
Stalinist architecture, mostly known in the former Eastern Bloc as Stalinist style or Socialist Classicism, is the architecture of the Soviet Union under the leadership of Joseph Stalin, between 1933 and 1955. Stalinist architecture is associated with the Socialist realism school of art and architecture.
Neo-Stalinism is the promotion of positive views of Joseph Stalin's role in history, the partial re-establishing of Stalin's policies on certain issues and nostalgia for the Stalin period. Neo-Stalinism overlaps significantly with neo-Sovietism and Soviet nostalgia. Various definitions of the term have been given over the years.
The June deportation was a mass deportation of tens of thousands of people from the territories which were occupied in 1940–1941: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, occupied Ukraine, and occupied Poland, and Moldavia by the Soviet Union.
Tankie is a pejorative label for communists, particularly Stalinists, who support the authoritarian tendencies of Marxism–Leninism or, more generally, authoritarian states associated with Marxism–Leninism, whether contemporary or historical. It is commonly used by libertarian socialists and left communists to criticize Leninists, although the term has seen increasing use by liberals and other non-leftists as well.
Russia–Vietnam relations date back formally to 30 January 1950, when the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics established an embassy to North Vietnam. Russia is a current ally of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. The Soviet Union was one of the first countries in the world to recognize and formally establish diplomatic relations with Vietnam, laying the foundations for strong and cooperative friendship between the two countries.
Russia–South Ossetia relations refers to the bilateral relationship between Russia and the Republic of South Ossetia, a disputed region in the South Caucasus, located on the territory of the South Ossetian Autonomous Oblast within the former Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic.
The Presidential Commission of the Russian Federation to Counter Attempts to Falsify History to the Detriment of Russia's Interests was a commission in the Russian Federation that was set up by a decree issued by president Dmitry Medvedev on 15 May 2009, officially to "defend Russia against falsifiers of history and those who would deny Soviet contribution to the victory in World War II". The commission was headed by Medvedev's Chief of staff Sergey Naryshkin. The decree establishing the commission was invalidated on 14 February 2012, and the commission thus ceased to exist. The commission has been described as a further regress toward Soviet and Stalinist practices, glorifying the Soviet Union and its crimes.
Matvei Davidovich Berman was a Soviet security officer and head of the Gulag Soviet prison camp system from 1932 to 1937.
The Edge is a 2010 Russian historical drama film directed by Alexei Uchitel. The film was nominated for the 2010 Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film and was also selected as the Russian entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 83rd Academy Awards but it didn't make the final shortlist.
The Unforgettable Year 1919 is a 1951 Soviet historical drama film directed by Mikheil Chiaureli.
Totalitarian architecture is a term utilized to refer to "the officially approved architecture of dictatorships, over-centralized governments, or political groups intolerant of opposition, especially that of Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, Stalinist Soviet Union, Communist China, etc. As an international style, it often drew on simplified Neoclassicism, and sculpture based on 19th century realism and Classicism for massive oversized State monuments.". Such architectural was intended to support the leaders and the ideology of the regime.
The anti-Stalinist left is a term that refers to various kinds of Marxist political movements that oppose Joseph Stalin, Stalinism, Neo-Stalinism and the system of governance that Stalin implemented as leader of the Soviet Union between 1924 and 1953. This term also refers to the high ranking political figures and governmental programs that opposed Joseph Stalin and his form of communism, such as Leon Trotsky and other traditional Marxists within the Left Opposition.
Rafael Abramovich Grugman is a Russian writer, journalist, engineer, programmer and college educator.
Media related to Whitewashing (censorship) at Wikimedia Commons
