Russia to outlaw criticism of WWII tactics
The controversial plan comes after a television documentary exposed the scale of human losses during one of the conflict's bloodiest battles.
The programme stirred deep emotions in a country that has traditionally glorified the heroic exploits of ordinary soldiers during the 'Great Patriotic War' but has often ignored the immense human cost behind the victory over Nazi Germany.
As anger among veterans swelled, the government sensed an opportunity to capitalise on the public mood at a time when the threat of economic recession is threatening prime minister Vladimir Putin's popularity.
Sergei Shoigu, the respected emergency situations minister, has called for a law, based on Holocaust denial legislation in Germany, that would make it a criminal offence to suggest that the Soviet Union did not win the War.
Mr Shoigu indicated that the legislation would also seek to punish eastern European or former Soviet states which deny they were liberated by the Red Army. The leaders of those countries could be banned from Russian soil, he said.
Mr Shoigu has won support for his proposal from the prosecutor general, Yuri Chaika, and other legislators who say that a bill will be presented before parliament in the next few months.
Liberal Russians fear that the legislation will be used to punish anyone who criticises the manner in which Stalin conducted the war or addresses incidents such as the Soviet massacre of 22,000 Polish prisoners of war at Katyn Forest in 1940, which Moscow maintains was not a war crime.
Academics estimate that more than 26 million Soviet soldiers and civilians were killed between 1941 and 1945, a death toll that dwarfed the losses of any other country. Yet in Russia itself, where Stalin is still revered as the country's wartime saviour, the subject remains a forbidden one.