Talk politics.

History is not objective. The general idea of revising history is no more inherently threatening than the march of science as it revises a theory. And yet, both can be weaponized. E.g. social darwinism, and Nazi indoctrination. So if morality and accuracy are not crucial in the defining of history, what is? How about utility.

The history that persists is the history that is useful to someone.

I think we could categorize "revisionist history" more narrowly, as the attempt to change the current understanding of history to hide, or to justify, immoral acts. The most immediate version of this is what we could call propaganda. Russia is currently attempting this in Ukraine, in real-time, by using revised laws, threats, new textbooks, and so on, to effectively erase Ukrainian identity. In a move that is either astoundingly ironic or completely unsurprising - I can't decide which - the Russian government is doing this under the cover of a justification that they are fighting "nazis" in Ukraine.

The more free and open a society is, the more resistant it is to the use of "revisionist history" as a tool for its own ends. I bet if you showed one of those revised history books to the average Russian citizen, they would either agree with what's inside, or shrug their shoulders and say, "Truth is flexible. This document doesn't target me, so why should I care?"

Assuming you believe that a ground invasion with the aim of permanently subjugating a population or just driving it out and taking their land is a bad thing, you need to ask, how does the country conducting the invasion justify it? What's in the heads of the people rattling the metaphorical sabres, to say nothing of the ones swinging them? And so, in this case, what are we going to do about Russia? What are we going to do about the Russian people, who have been hunkered down inside a kleptocracy, permanent outcasts from most of the Western world due to ideological and economic warfare and a language barrier, for generations, and primed by all this to bankroll the annexation of Ukraine, or at best, ignore it?

I think most of us are just getting on with business and hoping that the Russian government will collapse again, and that the internal chaos will neutralize them as a threat for a while, and that's it. And as the saying goes, it's not paranoia if they actually are out to get you. What are the Russian people supposed to think, when they peek out from behind the censorship and propaganda and discover an entire Western world that is rooting for them to descend into chaos, again? Are they supposed to laugh and say, "yep, we sure do suck"?

(Because yeah, their government sucks.)

Let's assume that Trump gets re-elected back in the US, and that about six months later he strangles off all remaining funding for Ukrainian resistance, and about two years after that Ukraine agrees to a really gross deal with Russia and cedes about a quarter of its territory, everything east of the Dnipro river. Everyone unfortunate enough to be stuck on that side of the line will see their language and most of their local history viciously eradicated and replaced with Russian glorification, and their exploitation at the hands of Moscow will begin all over again. The rest of Ukraine will be too weak to do anything but build a defensive line along the river and complain about genocide to deaf ears.

Western Europe for its part will offer economic integration but very little in the way of reconstruction aid, and will refuse to bring Ukraine into NATO, cynically believing instead that what remains of Ukraine should continue to serve the purpose that Ukraine has already served once: As a sacrificial meat shield against Russian aggression. Ukrainians will sense their second-class status and resent it.

Here's an interesting question: How will (what remains of) Ukraine revise its history then? Caught between an aggressor in the east and indifference in the west, what will they choose to put in their history books and teach their kids?