MOSCOW, June 8 (RAPSI) – A group of State Duma lawmakers has proposed penalties including a ten-year prison term for equating Communism and Nazism, RIA Novosti reported on Monday.

In May 2014, President Vladimir Putin signed a law that introduces criminal liability for exoneration or glorifying Nazism and for spreading false information about the Soviet Union’s role in World War II. Under the law, violators could face a 300,000 ruble fine ($5,300) or three years in prison. If the perpetrator broke this law using his or her official position, the fine goes up to 500,000 rubles ($8, 900) and the prison term to five years. The law also stipulates fines for desecrating the dates or monuments that commemorate Russian military glory.

The MPs propose amending the article on the exoneration of Nazism with a ban on equating the political regimes of the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany and on exalting the superiority of the Nazi regime, says an explanatory note to the bill.

Violators whose actions result in grave consequences could receive up to 10 years’ imprisonment and a ban on holding certain official positions or engaging in certain activities for up to three years.

The bill’s authors justify these measures by what they see as the need to cut short the rapidly increasing international trend for changing the post-war world order and revising WWII results based on the idea of the totalitarianism of the Soviet and Nazi German regimes, allegedly promoted by the United States and its satellites.

The MPs recall that the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) adopted a resolution in 2006 on the “need for international condemnation of crimes of totalitarian Communist regimes.”

According to the MPs, in that resolution PACE equates Communism and Nazism, in spirit if not in letter, which implies corresponding legal and geopolitical consequences.

In 2015, the Ukrainian parliament adopted a law banning Communist and Nazi regimes and their symbols, thereby equating Communism with Nazism.