The Commission was set up by a decree issued by Dmitry Medvedev, president of Russian Federation on 15 May 2009, officially to "defend Russia against falsifiers of history and those who would deny Soviet contribution to the victory in World War II".

The Commission is headed by Medvedev's chief of staff Sergey Naryshkin and staffed by top-representatives of the state administration, military and academia. The Commission prepared studies on revisionism in Estonia and Latvia, and RF already addressed the United Nation on that basis.