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Historic Year Saw Battles Over History, Major Discoveries

Jamie Dettmer

   Who owns the past and whose version of history should prevail? The past
   year saw a widespread re-examination of long-established historical
   understandings, with historians themselves in some cases persecuted for
   their work.

   Russian historians who have been resisting the rehabilitation of Joseph
   Stalin and chronicling the Great Terror remain besieged. In July, one
   of their number, Stalin-era historian Yury Dmitriyev, was sentenced in
   Karelia to a three-and-half-year jail term, following his conviction on
   what supporters say are false and politically motivated sex-abuse
   charges.

   In the United States and Britain, as well as in other European
   countries, controversy intensified over statues and other monuments
   lionizing some of the "great men" of the past --from Winston Churchill
   to slave-trading municipal benefactors, from Belgium's colonialist King
   Leopold II to American Confederate generals.

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