MOSCOW. Dec 11 (Interfax) - Russian President Vladimir Putin has allowed for a possibility that after the Investigative Committee set up a unit to counter history falsifications, investigators would be interpreting historical events arbitrarily, but noted the "good intentions" which led to this decision.
The issue was raised at yesterday's meeting between the president and his council for human rights, when a member, Nikolai Svanidze, recalled the decision, made in September, to set up an Investigative Committee unit to counter falsifications of history.
"Investigators, prosecutors and politicians should not supervise historians and history," Svanidze said.
"That is precisely what leads to falsifications, the dosing of information," he said.
The president said he did not understand what Svanidze was talking about and asked him to clarify.
"They set up a department to deal with history falsifications and to punish for those falsifications. What turns out, in my view, is simply prosecutors supervising the historical science. This will end badly for the historical science," Svanidze said.
"Yes, I understand. You see, here, on the one hand, we have colleagues saying that we need to defend our interests abroad; on the other hand, there is such danger. Yes, you are right, such danger probably exists in theory, that investigative bodies would somehow have their own way of interpreting the facts of history," Putin said.
"Yes, I understand. This is something to think about. But this was caused by good intensions, as you surmise, by the attempts to whitewash criminals, the Nazis, their abettors. That's what caused it. But the risks you talked about, they are, too, probably there. I agree, this is something to think about," Putin said.
Earlier the head of the Investigative Committee, Alexander Bastrykin, said that the committee was setting up a special department to investigate Nazi crimes and to counter the rehabilitation of Nazism and the distortion of historical truth.