Paul
Goble
Staunton, May 15 – For Russians,
Victory Day is an ever more important date; but they act as if May 9 was the
end of history and fail to see that the Soviet Army which first liberated
Eastern Europe from the Nazis then became an occupying force for almost half a
century, Moscow commentator Tatyana Ross says.
But because Russians are encouraged
by the Kremlin to view Victory Day in isolation from what followed, she
continues, they view the reaction of East Europeans to those events as efforts
at “revision of the results of the Great Fatherland War” and as an
impermissible defense of Hitler’s aggression (kasparov.ru/material.php?id=59189F3F19487).
Russians don’t ask
themselves why, after the Red Army liberated Eastern Europe, it didn’t go home
but instead “left IN ALL the liberated countries ‘a limited contingent’ of its
forces” for decades, Ross says. And they don’t see the ways the liberation led
to the occupation and the occupation led to Budapest, Vilnius and all the rest.
“If Russia would just recognize and
then condemn the Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe,” Ross says, she “does
have any doubts that [the Red Army] would be viewed there as heroes who
liberated [Eastern Europe] from German fascism. And [in that event,] no one
would be tearing down the monuments.”
The anger Ukrainians, Balts and
other East Europeans feel is the direct result of Russia continuing to “assert
that it was only a liberator” and nothing else just as today Moscow insists
that “there are no Russian soldiers in the Donbass” and that theya re in Syria
“only to help the toiling people.”
“It is time,” Ross argues, “to
honestly admit that the Soviet Red Army having liberated became an occupier.”
Taking that skeleton out of the closet will allow everyone to breathe easier
But even more, she says, “until we do this, Russia will not have a future”
because “Russians will not understand why other peoples are so negatively
inclined toward them.”
Unfortunately, she says, there are five
reasons why the Kremlin won’t acknowledge this reality. First, “to recognize
the USSR as the occupier of Eastern Europe means to reduce its own greatness in
the victory” and to admit that the Soviets committed serious crimes along the
way even if they had a triumph.
Second, for the Kremlin to declare
that the Soviet army was not only a liberator but an occupier means to tell Russians
that among those who resisted it were not only Nazis but those who were
legitimately fighting for their own freedom and independence. Third, such an
admission undercuts the Kremlin’s insistence that Moscow conducts “only wars of
liberation.”
Fourth, to admit that the Soviet
military was an occupier after 1945 requires an acknowledgement that it was an
occupier before the German invasion of 1941 when as a result of the
Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact occupied the Baltic countries, western Belarus and Ukraine,
and part of Romania.
And fifth – and this may be the most
intolerable thing for the current occupant of the Kremlin – such a recognition requires
not only the denunciation of the USSR for what it did but also the condemnation
of the man Vladimir Putin calls “’a successful manager’ in the first instance.
Russians need to recognize that no
one in Eastern Europe disputes that the Soviet army liberated them from the
Nazis, but they also need to recognize that they have compelling reasons to
view what the Soviet army and state did after that time and for almost 50 years
was an occupation and not a liberation.
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