British historian Orlando Figes

Luke Harding reports in The Guardian, “The distinguished Russian scholar Orlando Figes today revealed that his Russian publisher had cancelled a contract to publish his latest book on life under Stalin, saying it had apparently dumped the project because of ‘political pressure’.”

The Russian publisher, Atticus, sent Figes a “curt note” saying it had changed its mind about publishing The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin’s Russia, Figes’ book about Soviet-era repression. due to “the present economic situation.”

According to Harding, “Kremlin ideologists are attempting to rehabilitate Stalin and to portray him in textbooks and classrooms not as a tyrant but as a great, if flawed, national hero.” Observes Figes, “Obviously if you marginalise in national memory the history of repression, people have less reason to resist the return of authoritarian rule.”