content-documents/house-oversight-nov/30/HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_019266.md

---
title: "House Oversight: Estate Documents (Nov 12) (HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_019266)"
source: "House Oversight: Estate Documents (Nov 12)"
sourceUrl: "https://www.justice.gov/epstein"
date: "2026-01-01"
category: "House Oversight"
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BREAKING DOWN DEMOCRACY: Goals, Strategies, and Methods of Modern Authoritarians
In May 2014, Putin signed a new law that criminalized
the purposeful distortion of the Soviet Union's role in
World War II. It could easily be applied to historians
who, for example, criticize Stalins Great Terror and
its decimation of the military leadership in the years
before the war. 1º Historians who make the "wrong"
interpretations of the Hitler-Stalin pact, the huge
casualties suffered by the Red Army, or the rape and
plunder committed by Soviet troops as they marched
toward Berlin might also risk criminal penalties.
In late 2016 the Russian Security Council discussed
the establishment of a new center to counter the
"Falsification" of history. The council placed the pro-
posal in the context of the country's national security,
pointing to deliberate destructive activity by foreign
state structures and international organizations to
realize geopolitical interests by means of carrying out
anti-Russian policies."
A group of experts identified six topics from Russias
past that they claimed were being actively distorted
as part of an anti-Russia strategy. Among the topics:
the Soviet Union's ethnic policies, the Hitler-Stalin
pact, the Soviet Union's conduct during World War II,
the 1917 Russian Revolution, and the Soviet Union's
suppression of uprisings in Hungary, Czechoslovakia,
and East Germany during the Cold War20 In each case,
the most serious and respected historical accounts
have been written by foreign scholars, due largely to
the pressures, including outright censorship, brought
to bear on Russian historians during Soviet times and
more recently during the Putin era.
China: Evading the past
Mao Zedong's Great Leap Forward ranks among
the most deadly politically inspired catastrophes in
human history. From 1958 to 1962, Communist Party
authorities, under strict orders from Beijing, forcibly
herded millions of farmers into communes and then
proceeded to seize grain harvested in the countryside
to feed the urban population. The result, according to
long-standing estimates, was the death of some 30 mil-
lion people in the provinces. Historian Frank Dikötter,
who studied the archives in some of the most seriously
affected regions, has argued that the number of deaths
was at least 45 million, and others have cited higher
numbers. While most died of starvation, many were
tortured to death or murdered by local Communists.?1
To this day, Communist Party officials have refused to
acknowledge anything approaching the full dimen-
sions of the tragedy. Nor have they admitted that the
32
party, and especially Mao, were responsible. Often
they blame the weather. There are no official monu-
ments to the victims, no days of commemoration, no
serious histories available to the general public, and
most significantly, no effort to place accountability
where it belonged.
Chinese leaders may be even more concerned about
presenting the "correct" interpretation of history
than their Russian counterparts. An updated offi-
cial version of the party history that was released in
2011 took 16 years to draft, including four extensive
rewrites. It was vetted by 64 state and party bodies,
including the People's Liberation Army. In telling the
story of the Great Leap Forward, the history admits
that the project brought great suffering, but credits
Mao with wanting to "change a picture of poverty and
backwardness and make China grow rich and strong
so that it could use its own strength to stand tall in
the forest of nations."22 In other words, one of the
century's great politically driven famines was justified
because it supposedly contributed to China's emer-
gence as a world power. The history also insists that
Mao tried to change course when he learned of the
growing rural suffering—an outright lie, as Mao actual-
ly doubled down on the most disastrous policies.
The determination to suppress any real assessment
of the dark corners of Chinese history under the
Communist Party is also reflected in the exhibits at
the National Museum of China in Tiananmen Square.
Mao's Cultural Revolution (1966-76), a period of polit-
ical terror and violent nationwide purges, is dispensed
with through one photograph and a brief caption,
located in an out-of-the-way part of the facility. As for
the famine, it is glossed over with the euphemistic
phrase, "the project of constructing socialism suffered
severe complications."?3
Seven 'don't mentions'
In 2013, the General Office of the Communist Party
Central Committee issued a secret directive prohib-
iting universities from permitting the discussion of
seven themes-the "Seven Don't Mentions." Accord-
ing to the directive, lecturers were not allowed to take
up universal values, freedom of the press, civil society,
civic rights, elite cronyism, judicial independence, and
past mistakes of the Communist Party.24
To independent-minded scholars, the most disturbing
item in the roster of Don't Mentions was the leader-
ship's mistakes. While the authorities have never come
close to permitting a serious investigation of either
HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_019266