Putin’s War in Ukraine Reflects Russians’ Failure to See Stalin’s Army was Both a Liberator and an Enslaver, Skobov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 4 – Those who fought in the Red Army during World War II were given little choice at the time as to whether they would be on the right side of history fighting fascism or on the wrong side “conquering new nations for the Kremlin’s Red Fascist empire,” Aleksandr Skobov says.

            But Russians after the war were confronted with a choice to renounce one or the other, the Moscow commentator says. But most Soviet citizens preferred instead to not make a choice, failing to see that “not choosing was also a choice” and in favor of the latter rather than the former role of the Red Army (graniru.org/opinion/skobov/m.285125.html).

            The consequences of making a choice but not making one became obvious “when a new generation arising from the combination of criminal groups and the security services came to power in Russia,” Skobov says, a generation “absolutely cynical and unprincipled but having a deep and holy faith in the right of the strong and a conviction that they are the strong.”

            The appearance of rulers with these views is “why it was so easy to replace ‘it must not happen again’ with ‘we can do it again,’” why the Kremlin assumed it could behave as it has in Ukraine, and why it is not something new but a recrudescence of Stalin’s Red Fascism which itself was “ordinary Nazism.”

            The memorial day of those who fought fascism is May 8; that of those who were and are fascists themselves is May 9, Skobov argues. But this celebration “won’t last long” because “Putin’s Nazism will perish just like Hitler’s.” Even before that happens, however, May 9 “can’t any longer be considered an anti-fascist holiday.”