WThey often hear that this is the inability of Russian or unwillingness to deal with the crimes of their past that led to the renewal of Tyranny and military aggression we see now. Such a narrative usually focuses only on the internal Soviet work: forced collectivization, large terror from the 1930s, Gulag system and so on. Some of these things are nominally recognized as crimes, but no attempt was made to keep the perpetrators on the account. Russian translation democrats are mostly opposed to transitional justice.
However, the most actual sensitive Soviet crime is almost always omitted from the discussion. The Russian failure regarding this crime is far more dangerous and affects the fate of many nations.
This crime is the Soviet occupation of Central and Eastern Europe, which lasted for decades and resulted in many dead and arrested, destruction of social and cultural life and denial of freedom. The injustice was immensely.
Internal Soviet crimes, who passed unpunished, were at least legally recognized and their victims were marked. External aggression and occupation were not. And even Russian dissidents and liberals never risked raising problems.
Therefore, in relation to Central and Eastern Europe, there are two concepts of memory and history that usually cannot coexist, who clashed and opposed each other. They are completely opposed; I can’t reconcile by diplomacy: Soviet liberation opposite the Soviet occupation.
Only when the Soviet troops finally withdraw from Eastern Europe 45 years after the end of the Second World War, that true liberation came, when the Soviet Union crashed and took their way to independence. But it was easier to renew or establish statehood and independence than to achieve the sovereignty of historical memory.
Progressive picture The Soviet Union in its last days, high hopes of the Moscow were shown from serious criticism and charges related to the occupation of Eastern Europe. This retention was the result of a confidence surfing or, perhaps, just cautious pragmatism – the desire not to irritate Moscow and undermine her good will, they do not burden the losers of the cold war too. But the most important protection of Moscow enjoyed it, of course, based on the status of winning the Nazism.
Russia, as a self-proclaimed successor state in the USSR, built its international political profile with Soviet acquittal, which provides moral capital and prescribes former occupied debt of gratitude for their “liberation” from Nazism.
Yes, Soviet losses were real. And yet, it is really tragic that these losses helped to obey nation for freedom, replacing one dictatorship with another. The Soviet soldier, he has gone in the statue that continue to celebrate Europe landscape from Berlin in Sofia, was not the liberator. He was porous. And no bloodshed the soviets for the defeat of the Nazis may pronounce the Soviet one’s own role as occupiers.
It is no coincidence that the Soviets were reluctant to recognize even the existence of a Molotov-Ribbertop Pact. In modern Russia, in order to make any equivalence between the roles of the USSR and the Naziks criminalized. 1939. and 1940. The Soviet Union gathered Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia and parts of Poland, Finland and Romania. For 22 months, he was a faithful ally of Nazi Germany. This first wave of Soviet occupations can in no way be disguised in the “fight against naming”: he discovered the real intention of the Soviet. What followed, in fact, geographically extended repetition. This was a special goal of war, not necessarily with the one to win the Nazis.
Unfortunately, the understanding of the Soviet occupation as crime has not become an essential part of the modern European history. Geographically limited to the east, blurred, underrepresented; It forms part of the history of individual nations, but does not form a powerful international narrative divided across the continent. However, this understanding has a profound impact on modern European life and is crucial for European security. Only when you fully understand the cruelty and consequences of the Soviet occupation, you can understand the concerns of the nearest neighbor Russia, their historically grounded fears and their safety needs.
The eastern regions of Ukraine are now occupying Russian troops. For the first time since 1989. the large areas of the European continent, home millions of people, is under control is the state of invasion. But too many Europeans seems to have already forgotten what interests means.
Russian citizenship intended forcibly. In fact, this is a mass expulsion program, because those who do not agree to be treated as strangers and forced to leave. Russia follows the same way as the USSR, for example, in relation to the Baltic states, with the aim of rusifying The won by the region, redeem their national composition and make it part of his condition.
The property is placed and redistribution. “Settlers” are brought to form the backbone of the occupational regime. The policy of memory is inverted, monuments denoting Soviet crimes disappear, the streets return to Soviet names as a symbol of Russian domination. It’s all part of the attack on the national identity, try to delete it.
Russian state security services extensively use filtration techniques, and anyone is considered politically unreliable can be closed. Severe torture and sexual violence are widespread. Ukrainian prisoners of war released from captivity reports the same torture, abuse and deliberate malnutrition focused on punching physically and mentally.
Anyone who knows history behind the iron curtain immediately recognizes the form. All this was a dark reality for Poland and Lithuania, East Germany and Romania and others. Mass deportation, a brutal rule of secret police, deprivation of property and civil rights … but has never become a real stigma for the USSR or, later Russia. It never became something of what is a shame a nation, something that requires justice and punishment, recognition and movement.
And there we are are now: the occupier is back. And the occupying war just like Soviet.
The Vladimir Putin army has a chest advantage in relation to the Western armies, which have largely invested in maintaining their staff from harm. Can withstand losses that would be absolutely unacceptable for any western land. But it is also technically advanced enough to oppose Western military technologies.
Western science was the first in “Dronis” warfare, in order to minimize the involvement of the troupe to ground and use machines for new tasks. Putin’s army, simultaneously using and real drones, drones and human beings. She turned soldiers to disposable disposable unusual unusual unusual.
With full-scale full invasion, we entered the era of global moral climatic change. Just as an earthquake can have consequences all over the world, or a volcanic eruption can pollute the sky above several continents, Russia’s aggression changes the political climate around the world.
This is another very real, but it is not yet fully recognized, the outcome of the war. It may be the most unique than all outcomes. With thousands of troops sent to the battle and killed Ukrainians, Putin does not only get pieces of Ukrainian territory – he expel the political landscape around the world in the patience of NATO and pull us into hell moral relativism.
What can be done about?
Western and Southwest Europe, who have never faced the reality of the Soviet occupation, must now listen to the votes of those who have experienced him first hand.
It is difficult to say whether Russia will soon be responsible for their crimes against Ukraine. But to fully build the future, the actual future, it will be the most important to develop a cultural and historical concept that opposed Russia to divide and rule.
At the initiative of Havel Václav, Joachim Gauck and other prominent ex-dissidents, 23. August, the date of signing Molotov-RibBroP Pact, is a day of memory of the victims of Stalinism and Nazism or the Black Ribbons. Understanding the importance of this day, it could also be deepened to include a broader perspective on Russian imperialism, which was part of the Soviet Communist Policy, but certified.
We have to facilitate the long-term and coordinated policy of memory this day, strengthen existing institutions such as Ens – the European network of memories and solidaritywhich includes mostly Eastern European countries. We need to build new, through continents, also suppressed by left and pretending narratives that still pronounce about Russia.
The USSR collapsed because its artificial unity was carried out by violence and oppression. EU endurance depends on the persistence of voluntary unity. But unity is not given. It is a product of mutual knowledge and compassion, from many cultural bridges that connect people.
It’s time to start construction.
This article is adapted to the writer’s closure to Helsinki debate is Europe18. May 2025. Years
2025-05-19 04:00:00
