Olga Vasilyeva called Stalin a great politician with a big minus sign
The Minister of education of Russia Olga Vasilyeva said in an interview to “Interfax”, it ambiguously refers to the figure of Joseph Stalin, seeing his policies as positive or negative.
“How can I treat Stalin the man, the tyranny which is self-evident? Man, the conscience of which — and not only on his conscience victims of political repression. But we must agree that this man is a statesman. I usually call a great politician with a great big sign “minus”. It’s my attitude, therefore, hardly possible to me as a Stalinist,” — said Vasilyev.
She recalled that her master’s and doctoral theses (Vasil’eva — doctor of historical Sciences) is devoted to the Russian Orthodox Church during the great Patriotic war and Stalin’s attitude to the Church in these and subsequent years. In particular, the Ph. D. dissertation Vasilyeva was “the Soviet state and the Patriotic activity of the Russian Orthodox Church during the great Patriotic war.”
According to Vasilyeva, from 1943 to 1953, Stalin used the potential of the Church to organize the postwar world order. “The uniqueness of this decade is that the interests of the ruler and the Church coincided”, — said Vasiliev in an interview.
Vasiliev was appointed Minister of education on 19 August 2016. His main task in his new position, Vasiliev called care for teachers, and rethinking the experience of previous years.
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Prior to that, Vasiliev was Deputy Director of the Department of culture of the government of Russia and Deputy head of management on public projects of the presidential administration.
In addition, Vasiliev was appointed to the Board on the preparation of the programs of the course “history of Russia” at the Ministry of education, Commission on Affairs of religious associations under the government of Russia and a working group of the presidential Commission for people with disabilities by creating conditions for participation of persons with disabilities in the cultural life of society.
Already on a post of the Minister Vasilyev urged to improve the exam and called “balanced” new history textbooks. It is also proposed to reduce the number of textbooks for the elementary schools and to attract students to the cleaning classes as well as in the Ministry of education has created a structure for cooperation with the security forces.