MOSCOW/WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 19th June, 2020) Russian President Vladimir Putin in an article published by The National Interest, a US foreign policy magazine, outlined lessons learned from World War II 75 years since the allied victory over Nazi Germany and the way European countries now handle this legacy.
The Russian President first laid out the position the Soviet Union faced in 1941 while bracing for the Nazi offensive.
"The war did not come as a surprise, people were expecting it, preparing for it. But the Nazi attack was truly unprecedented in terms of its destructive power. On June 22, 1941, the Soviet Union faced the strongest, most mobilized and skilled army in the world with the industrial, economic and military potential of almost all Europe working for it," Putin wrote in the article published on Thursday.
The 1939-1945 Second World War, of which the portion from 1941-1945 is referred to as the Great Patriotic War in Russia and other post-Soviet countries, has left a "deep imprint on every family's history," Putin wrote. The Russian president shared a memory of how the war had affected his own family, saying that his two-year-old brother Vitya died during the Siege of Leningrad and both his parents endured suffering in order to survive.
According to the article, almost 27 million Soviet citizens were killed in the battlefields, in German prisons, starved to death, or died in ghettos and furnaces of the Nazi death camps, and the figure is not exhaustive.
"We have a responsibility to our past and our future to do our utmost to prevent those horrible tragedies from happening ever again," Putin wrote, adding that it was the reason that compelled him to write the article.
According to the Russian president, the CIS counterparts supported his aspiration to write an article about the war as he discussed it with them at a regional summit last year, but his assertion, voiced back then, - that "it is essential to pass on to future generations the memory of the fact that the Nazis were defeated first and foremost by the Soviet people" - has "caused a stir in Europe and the world."
"There were many emotional outbursts, poorly disguised insecurities and loud accusations that followed," Putin said, adding that some politicians rushed to accuse Russia of revising history, hence his urge to write a historically-supported article while using archival materials which, he stressed, are available not only in archives of Russia, but also of other countries.
The Russian president also pointed out how Western countries, specifically those in Europe, prefer today to limelight the Soviet Union's responsibility for making it possible for Nazi Germany to unleash the war, while turning a blind eye on their own role, especially the 1938 Munich agreement among Adolf Hitler and the leaders of France, Italy and the United Kingdom to partition Czechoslovakia, known in Russia as the Munich Betrayal.
As stated in the article, the root causes of World War II stem in the interwar period, when the Nazis were nurturing revanchist attitudes in Germany which suffered a humiliating defeat in World War I. Instead of heeding the Soviet Union's calls for a collective security pact in Europe, the Western countries - especially the United Kingdom and the United States - poured investments into Germany's industrial sector which rushed to boost military production, while betting on the League of Nations, the archetype of the United Nations, for preventing new international conflicts.
Furthermore, the Western aristocracy overwhelmingly hailed the radical, far-right and nationalist movements that were on the rise both in Germany and in Europe at the time, Putin wrote.
"I would like to point out in this regard that, unlike many other European leaders of that time, [Soviet leader Joseph] Stalin did not disgrace himself by meeting with Hitler who was known among the Western nations as quite a reputable politician and was a welcome guest in the European capitals," Putin wrote.
But it was the Munich Betrayal which made the war in Europe inevitable, Putin said, highlighting specifically the role of Poland which sought and got a hand in Czechoslovakia's subdivide. All of it was part of the West's policy of appeasement vis-a-vis Nazi Germany and its key allies, the fascist Italy and militarist Japan, and culminated in the 1939 Anglo-Japanese agreement, greenlighting Tokyo into China.
"The Munich Betrayal showed to the Soviet Union that the Western countries would deal with security issues without taking its interests into account. In fact, they could even create an anti-Soviet front, if needed," Putin wrote.
He did not shy away from one of the most contentious chapters of the World War II history - the Non-Aggression Pact the Soviet Union signed with Germany in 1939 and the military campaign which saw eastern parts of the then Poland and Baltic states taken over by the Red Army.
"It was done in the face of a real threat of war on two fronts - with Germany in the west and with Japan in the east, where intense fighting on the Khalkhin Gol River was already underway," Putin wrote. "Stalin and his entourage, indeed, deserve many legitimate accusations. We remember the crimes committed by the regime against its own people and the horror of mass repressions. In other words, there are many things the Soviet leaders can be reproached for, but poor understanding of the nature of external threats is not one of them. They saw how attempts were made to leave the Soviet Union alone to deal with Germany and its allies. Bearing in mind this real threat, they sought to buy precious time needed to strengthen the country's defenses."
He reminded that the Soviet Union gave a legal and moral assessment of the so-called Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, denouncing in 1989 the secret protocols as "an act of personal power" which in no way reflected "the will of the Soviet people who bear no responsibility for this collusion."
"Yet other states have preferred to forget the agreements carrying signatures of the Nazis and Western politicians, not to mention giving legal or political assessments of such cooperation, including the silent acquiescence - or even direct abetment - of some European politicians in the barbarous plans of the Nazis," he said. "Besides, we do not know if there were any secret 'protocols' or annexes to agreements of a number of countries with the Nazis. The only thing that is left to do is to take their word for it."
Putin urged all states to step up the process of making their archives public and publishing previously unknown documents of the war and pre-war periods - "the way Russia has done it in recent years." He offered Russia's broad cooperation and joint research projects engaging historians.
Putin argues that there was no alternative for sending Red Army units into the so-called Poland's Eastern Borderlines, which nowadays are parts of Belarus, Ukraine and Lithuania, when it became "absolutely clear" that Great Britain and France were not going to help their ally, crumbling under the Wehrmacht swift advance.
"Otherwise, the USSR would face seriously increased risks because - I will say this again - the old Soviet-Polish border ran only within a few tens of kilometers of Minsk. The country would have to enter the inevitable war with the Nazis from very disadvantageous strategic positions, while millions of people of different nationalities, including the Jews living near Brest and Grodno, Przemyśl, Lvov and Wilno, would be left to die at the hands of the Nazis and their local accomplices - anti-Semites and radical nationalists," Putin wrote.
"As is known, there is hardly any point in using the subjunctive mood when we speak of the past events. I will only say that, in September 1939, the Soviet leadership had an opportunity to move the western borders of the USSR even farther west, all the way to Warsaw, but decided against it," he added.
When the Soviet Union was invaded in 1941, the country and its army made the main and crucial contribution to the defeat of Nazism and paid the greatest price for it, emphasized Putin.
"On the whole, the USSR accounted for about 75 percent of all military efforts undertaken by the anti-Hitler coalition. During the war period, the Red Army 'ground up' 626 divisions of the Axis states, of which 508 were German," he said. "Almost 27 million Soviet citizens lost their lives on the fronts, in German prisons, starved to death and were bombed, died in ghettos and furnaces of the Nazi death camps. The USSR lost one in seven of its citizens, the UK lost one in 127, and the USA lost one in 320."
Putin added that Russia will always be grateful to its Allies for ammunition, raw materials, food, equipment and other supplies they sent to assist the Red Army.
"And that help was significant - about 7 percent of the total military production of the Soviet Union," he said.
VIEWS ON MODERNITY, ROLE OF UN SECURITY COUNCIL, VETO POWER
The Russian president then made clear his intentions to encourage dialogue as opposed to trading accusations regarding historical events.
"Saying this, I by no means intend to take on the role of a judge, to accuse or acquit anyone, let alone initiate a new round of international information confrontation in the historical field that could set countries and peoples at loggerheads," Putin said.
Instead, the Russian president said, he had always encouraged the foreign counterparts to "build a calm, open and trust-based dialogue, to look at the common past in a self-critical and unbiased manner."
"However, many of our partners are not yet ready for joint work. On the contrary, pursuing their goals, they increase the number and the scope of information attacks against our country, trying to make us provide excuses and feel guilty, and adopt thoroughly hypocritical and politically motivated declarations," Putin continued.
The Russian president referred, in particular, to the resolution on the Importance of European Remembrance for the Future of Europe approved by the European Parliament on September 19, 2019, in which the Soviet Union was accused of sharing the responsibility with Nazi Germany of unleashing the Second World War, while the Munich Betrayal was omitted altogether.
"I believe that such 'paperwork' - for I cannot call this resolution a document - which is clearly intended to provoke a scandal, is fraught with real and dangerous threats," Putin wrote.
The Russian leader harshly criticized any attempt to revise history and distort facts of World War II, adding that the lessons learned from the failure of the League of Nations to ensure world peace were taken into account when the United Nations was established in 1945. Despite not without occasional tensions, the veto power of the Security Council's five permanent members - the Soviet Union, the US, the UK, France and China - is what keeps the system running, according to Putin, although not "as effective as it could be."
"What is veto power in the UN Security Council? To put it bluntly, it is the only reasonable alternative to a direct confrontation between major countries," the Russian president said.
Putin further described calls to strip the UNSC quintet of veto power "irresponsible," adding that "after all, if that happens, the United Nations would in essence become the League of Nations - a meeting for empty talk without any leverage on the world processes. How it ended is well known."
Urging upon the WWII victorious countries to treat the UN-based international order as "a duty," Putin said that the leaders of China, France, the UK and the US have already supported Russia's initiative to hold a face-to-face five-party meeting in Moscow, which the Russian president said he hoped would be held "as soon as possible."
According to the article, the summit is going to have more than a comprehensive agenda, with issues pertaining to collective principles in world affairs, world security, global economy and the crisis it has suffered because of the coronavirus pandemic, climate change and cyber security.
