Whitewashed Life

From MT:
"Putin's Ex-Wife Scrubbed From Kremlin Biography"

Any mention of President Vladimir Putin's former wife has been removed from his official biography on the Kremlin website in what a spokesman said signified that the first couple's divorce was now complete. "This means that the divorce has taken place," presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, Itar-Tass reported Tuesday. The president's official biography that previously mentioned his wife, Lyudmila, now only lists their daughters Maria, 28, and Yekaterina, 27. However, a longer description of the president's life on another page of the Kremlin website still has a section devoted to his ex-wife, with no mention of the divorce. The couple announced in a joint interview on state television last June that they were divorcing after nearly 30 years of marriage. The removal of Lyudmila Putina's name for the president's biography prompted some Russians to remark wryly that history might have to be rewritten. "Lyudmila is history. Whole epochs will now be thrown out of our history textbooks," said a reader on Ekho Moskvy radio's website. New standardized history textbooks proposed for Russian schools last year make no mention of Putin's most prominent opponents such as former Yukos chief Mikhail Khodorkovsky and late Kremlin insider Boris Berezovsky, and critics worry that schoolchildren will soon be instructed in a single Kremlin-approved version of events, similar to Soviet-era textbooks. Nearly a year after announcing the split, Putin remains single. It is unclear whether he is dating. Peskov has said the president's personal life should remain his own affair.

 

^ It seems odd for any non-Russian to read this. While he may be divorced it seems that he is trying to erase the 29 years he was married from ever happening (and yet he has two daughters from it.) This reminds me of the whitewashing that the Soviets (especially Stalin) did. There's a famous photo of Stalin and several men standing near a river. One man is on Stalin's right side. When the man fell out of favor with Stalin and was either killed or sent to a Gulag the picture was redone so that the guy was removed. I have also heard rumors that Stalin had himself put in the audience of people listening to Lenin giving speeches so it would look like better. We all have things in our past we are not happy with, but to try and hide them or make it seem like they never happened is just trying to falsify the truth. ^

 

http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/putins-ex-wife-scrubbed-from-kremlin-biography/497271.html