Senators and experts discussed ways to counter historical revisionism and the distortion of historical truth.
A meeting of the Federation Council Commission on Information Policy and Media Relations, titled “22 June 1941: Eighty-Five Years Later – Fighting for the Truth: Countering the Distortion of History,” was chaired by Alexei Pushkov, Chairman of the Commission. The event marked the 85th anniversary of the beginning of the Great Patriotic War.
“The tragic milestone, the 85th anniversary of Nazi Germany’s attack on the Soviet Union, brings us back to the issue of defending historical truth,” the senator said.
He pointed to ongoing attempts in the West to rewrite history by promoting the notion that Germany and the Soviet Union bear equal responsibility for the outbreak of World War II: “This process involves the construction of an alternative version of the past based on selective or biased interpretations of historical facts.”
Alexei Pushkov highlighted the importance of preserving an objective view of historical events, particularly in the era of advanced information technologies and widespread manipulation of public opinion. He drew attention to the impact of global information flows on the shaping of public perceptions.
According to the senator, artificial intelligence systems often omit important details and historical context when generating responses to users’ queries, creating the risk of spreading pseudo-historical narratives among young people and the broader public.
“Artificial intelligence reproduces what is available on global networks, with a bias in favour of Western narratives. The historical context disappears, the background to the issue fades away, and a certain new historical reality is proclaimed – one that many accept as the truth. There is a fundamental difference between scholarly knowledge and public consciousness. Public consciousness is shaped by different tools. In the past, those tools were the media; today, they are the internet and artificial intelligence,” said the head of the Federation Council Commission on Information Policy.
Alexei Pushkov suggested that the defence of historical truth should be regarded as an integral part of the transition to a multipolar world. He called for actively resisting attempts to rewrite history to suit the political interests of the West.
“We are facing a very serious task – we must not allow a distorted version of history to take root in the global public consciousness. We need to project our understanding of history more effectively to the outside world,” he stressed.
The discussion was attended by Lyudmila Narusova, a member of the Federation Council Committee on Constitutional Legislation and State Building, other Russian senators, Director of the Foreign Ministry Information and Press Department Maria Zakharova, Director of the Institute of State and Law of the Russian Academy of Sciences Alexander Savenkov, Director of the Russian State Military Archive Vladimir Tarasov, Scientific Director of the Russian Military Historical Society Mikhail Myagkov, Chairman of the Board of the Russian Historical Society Ruslan Gagkuyev, as well as heads of leading Russian media outlets and experts.
The meeting participants agreed that safeguarding historical truth requires both collective efforts and the personal civic responsibility of every individual. Only in this way can the equitable and multifaceted development of the global community be ensured.