The Kremlin is starting an official drive to try to reverse what it sees as an anti-Russian view of 20th-century history. President Dmitri A. Medvedev issued a decree on Tuesday ordering “the creation of a presidential commission to counter attempts to harm Russian interests by falsifying history.” Russia says its former allies have forgotten the sacrifices made by the Soviet Union during World War II. But critics see the effort as an attempt to whitewash Russia’s imperial past and the crimes committed under Stalin. Oleg Orlov, a human rights advocate in Moscow, said the commission was an attempt “to halt any objective view of what really happened in Russia’s past.”