A regional government in Russia has banned the books of two British historians, claiming that their work spreads Nazi propaganda.
According to E1, a Russian news source, officials in the Sverdlovsk region said that books by Antony Beevor and Sir John Keegan "propagandize stereotypes formed during the Third Reich."
Before the start of every school year, officials check the content of libraries and computers in Sverdlovsk. Since this year marks the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II, officials paid special attention to "literature with information about the Great Patriotic War," as it is known in Russia.
"Many historians, both Russians and foreign experts, think that books by authors like John Keegan and Anthony Beevor mistakenly interpret information about the Second World War, contradict historical documents, and are imbued with the Nazi propaganda stereotypes," E1 reported.
Officials in the regional government claimed that Beevor’s books were "noticed by the global academic community due to the fact that they contain scenes of cruelty and violence from Soviet troops to the German population. The author’s most famous contention is that women in Germany were subject to mass rape from our [Soviet] soldiers."
"The news agency ‘Rosbalt’ published the opinion that these books develop Joseph Goebbels’ propaganda myth," the officials said.
In an interview with the Guardian, Beevor lamented the attempt to maintain a single version of the war.
"In some ways I am amazed that it has taken them so long," he told the Guardian. "What depresses me the most is that once again we are faced with a government trying to impose its own version of history. I am fundamentally opposed to all such attempts to dictate a truth, whether it concerns denial of the Holocaust or the Armenian genocide, or the ‘sacred victory’ of May 1945."
Beevor is known for his bestselling works Stalingrad, Berlin: The Downfall, and The Second World War.
The organization responsible for publishing Beevor’s books, George Soros’ Open Society Foundations, is one of 12 groups currently under investigation after being placed on the Russian government’s "patriotic stop-list."
If an organization is found to be "undesirable," it will be banned in Russia.