Стр. 24 - V

Электронное приложение к журналу «Международная жизнь»
Author : M. Oreshina
Member of the Russian Union of Journalists, Candidate of Science (History)
ON MAY 6, 2017, the House of European History (HEH) opened
in the Belgian capital to much fanfare. It is nothing less than a land-
mark project of the European Union for promoting the history of
Eurointegration ideas and EU European values.
The museum was at the same time conceived as a state-of-the-art
exhibition that would employ multimedia technologies and the latest
achievements in the field of museology; a documentary informa-
tional center; and a forum for dialogue between scholars, political
scientists, and journalists on topical issues of postwar European
history. In the mind of founding father Hans-Gert Pöttering, the
museum would be the product of joint efforts between EU insti-
tutions and the national museums of EU member countries.
The House of European History resembles, in the opinion of many experts still capable of
thinking clearly, a European Narcissus, "isolated, vain, and arrogant," that could be of interest
only to the internal market of the EU bureaucracy.
GRADUAL IMMERSION into the museum's exposition leaves a bitter aftertaste. It is hard not
to agree with those opponents of the project who complain about the uneven attention given
to entire layers of history, and to the exposition's clear biases and shallowness for the sake of
promoting the sleek EU concept of European identity. This is especially true of the number of
topics that are either inflated out of proportion or are deliberately papered over or consciously
swept under the rug.
This "Palace of Propaganda," as some have already succeeded in christening this child of Eu-
roparliamentarians, accepts that Europe sprang from the womb of the great French Revolution,
that the Napoleonic Code and the works of Karl Marx are much more important than the shame-
ful "volume" of European history dealing with slavery and colonialism, and that the World War
II is nothing more than a "European civil war."
The media in the West and the countries neighboring the European Union have now been
cleansed of the "scourge of Russia." We can hardly expect from them honest publications on
the most contentious period of world history in an era of post-truth. The EU elite continues to
tear apart the bloodstained fabric of the history of the Second World War, woven from the mil-
lions of lives of the great martyr heroes brought up in the crowning era of the "abominable to-
talitarian past" who vanquished the envy for such a successful centuries-long geopolitical project
as Russia.
Upgrading History: Launch of the EU Project for the Preservation
of European Identity