It was once said that the Soviet Union was the only country in the world where it was impossible to predict the past. For the last couple of years the accusation that the Medvedev/Putin alliance in the Kremlin was trying to take Russia back to the USSR has been gathering pace.
Now the terrible twins multifarious enemies are again jumping up and down with conclusive proof that the bad old days are back; the Russians are trying to re-write history much in the way they did when Stalin made Trotsky mysteriously disappear from all those photos.
Now the terrible twins multifarious enemies are again jumping up and down with conclusive proof that the bad old days are back; the Russians are trying to re-write history much in the way they did when Stalin made Trotsky mysteriously disappear from all those photos.
They cannot resist the temptation to change the past, they say. This time the Russian government has set up a group of experts going under the title, “The Commission on Analysing and Suppressing Falsifications of History Detrimental to Russia”, and its aim, primarily, it seems, is to fight back at claims the Red Army was not the glorious liberator of European peoples from Nazi tyranny in 1945.
It is even suggested this new commission might draw up laws making it illegal to denigrate the Soviet Union’s role in eliminating fascism from the continent. Such ideas have brought a furious response both from inside Russia, where critics say the commission will end up re-writing school textbooks, and in wider Europe where there are more claims about Russia trying to bully its ‘near abroad’ into submitting to its will.
The commission has just one genesis; the break-up of the Soviet empire starting with Poland’s semi- free elections in 1989 and ending with the collapse of the USSR in 1991. From the moment Poland, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Georgia, Ukraine and the rest were allowed to assert their own independent national identities there was a chance there would be trouble because their pasts were at odds with Soviet history.
Released from the constraints of communist dogma they could say what they wanted; that the Soviet ‘liberation’ of their homelands from Nazi Germany in 1945 was not the freedom they would have chosen.
It was a reasonable assertion to make, if it had been made in a reasonable way. But it didn’t turn out like that. Instead, Latvians decided to organise parades involving Waffen SS conscripts who they claimed were freedom fighters against Soviet occupiers. In Estonia, a famous bronze statue of a Soviet soldier in the centre of the capital city, Tallin, was moved to a less conspicuous location because it offended their sense of national independence.
And it wasn’t just radical nationalists wielding the cudgel. National governments joined in. Latvia sent a bill to Moscow for reparations caused by the Soviet occupation. Now Ukraine wants a murder investigation into the country’s famine of the 1930s.
It is that kind of entrenched position that has led to the setting up of Medvedev’s commission as an equal and opposite reaction, and the threat of jail to anyone who dares suggest that the Red Army were slightly less than glorious as they kicked out one lot of despots and replaced them with their own imperial rule.
The new Russian talking shop has been dubbed a ‘truth commission.’ If it weren’t so serious it would be funny. But maybe Russia , and every country in central and eastern Europe, would benefit from a proper truth commission, and, if need be, headed up by Desmond Tutu, as he did in South Africa.
After almost twenty years of tit-for-tat point scoring wouldn’t they all be better served to admit the real truth ? The Poles must accept Soviet imperial rule was not the same as the Nazi racist terror, while the Russians must be clear and say sorry for deporting thousands of Ukrainian and Lithuanian nationalists to Siberia.
Estonians and Latvians must come clean and say they were wrong to join German forces in a futile last stand against the Red Army. But Russians must also accept that although their presence in these countries after 1945 was part of a much bigger geo-political picture, it was nevertheless an unwelcome occupation.
But they won’t. They will carry on with their own re-writing of history, each refusing to face up to reality, preferring hostility to engagement and anger to rapprochement. And why ? Because no-one can admit errors and everyone’s afraid to say sorry in case it’s seen as a sign of weakness.
It is even suggested this new commission might draw up laws making it illegal to denigrate the Soviet Union’s role in eliminating fascism from the continent. Such ideas have brought a furious response both from inside Russia, where critics say the commission will end up re-writing school textbooks, and in wider Europe where there are more claims about Russia trying to bully its ‘near abroad’ into submitting to its will.
The commission has just one genesis; the break-up of the Soviet empire starting with Poland’s semi- free elections in 1989 and ending with the collapse of the USSR in 1991. From the moment Poland, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Georgia, Ukraine and the rest were allowed to assert their own independent national identities there was a chance there would be trouble because their pasts were at odds with Soviet history.
Released from the constraints of communist dogma they could say what they wanted; that the Soviet ‘liberation’ of their homelands from Nazi Germany in 1945 was not the freedom they would have chosen.
It was a reasonable assertion to make, if it had been made in a reasonable way. But it didn’t turn out like that. Instead, Latvians decided to organise parades involving Waffen SS conscripts who they claimed were freedom fighters against Soviet occupiers. In Estonia, a famous bronze statue of a Soviet soldier in the centre of the capital city, Tallin, was moved to a less conspicuous location because it offended their sense of national independence.
And it wasn’t just radical nationalists wielding the cudgel. National governments joined in. Latvia sent a bill to Moscow for reparations caused by the Soviet occupation. Now Ukraine wants a murder investigation into the country’s famine of the 1930s.
It is that kind of entrenched position that has led to the setting up of Medvedev’s commission as an equal and opposite reaction, and the threat of jail to anyone who dares suggest that the Red Army were slightly less than glorious as they kicked out one lot of despots and replaced them with their own imperial rule.
The new Russian talking shop has been dubbed a ‘truth commission.’ If it weren’t so serious it would be funny. But maybe Russia , and every country in central and eastern Europe, would benefit from a proper truth commission, and, if need be, headed up by Desmond Tutu, as he did in South Africa.
After almost twenty years of tit-for-tat point scoring wouldn’t they all be better served to admit the real truth ? The Poles must accept Soviet imperial rule was not the same as the Nazi racist terror, while the Russians must be clear and say sorry for deporting thousands of Ukrainian and Lithuanian nationalists to Siberia.
Estonians and Latvians must come clean and say they were wrong to join German forces in a futile last stand against the Red Army. But Russians must also accept that although their presence in these countries after 1945 was part of a much bigger geo-political picture, it was nevertheless an unwelcome occupation.
But they won’t. They will carry on with their own re-writing of history, each refusing to face up to reality, preferring hostility to engagement and anger to rapprochement. And why ? Because no-one can admit errors and everyone’s afraid to say sorry in case it’s seen as a sign of weakness.
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