BREAKING DOWN DEMOCRACY: Goals, Strategies, and Methods of Modern Authoritarians In May 2014, Putin signed a new law that criminalized party, and especially Mao, were responsible. Often the purposeful distortion of the Soviet Union's role in they blame the weather. There are no official monu- World War II. It could easily be applied to historians ments to the victims, no days of commemoration, no who, for example, criticize Stalin's Great Terror and serious histories available to the general public, and its decimation of the military leadership in the years most significantly, no effort to place accountability before the war.'® Historians who make the “wrong” where it belonged. interpretations of the Hitler-Stalin pact, the huge casualties suffered by the Red Army, or the rape and Chinese leaders may be even more concerned about plunder committed by Soviet troops as they marched presenting the “correct” interpretation of history toward Berlin might also risk criminal penalties. than their Russian counterparts. An updated offi- cial version of the party history that was released in In late 2016 the Russian Security Council discussed 2011 took 16 years to draft, including four extensive the establishment of a new center to counter the rewrites. It was vetted by 64 state and party bodies, “falsification” of history. The council placed the pro- including the People’s Liberation Army. In telling the posal in the context of the country’s national security, story of the Great Leap Forward, the history admits pointing to “deliberate destructive activity by foreign that the project brought great suffering, but credits state structures and international organizations to Mao with wanting to “change a picture of poverty and realize geopolitical interests by means of carrying out backwardness and make China grow rich and strong anti-Russian policies." so that it could use its own strength to stand tall in the forest of nations.””? In other words, one of the A group of experts