Murdering Memory and the Cult of Historical Victimization

‘As the 70th anniversary of fascism’s demise in Europe approaches, history is being re-cast, particularly events before, during, and after World War II. This history is being reinterpreted and even rewritten in a number of post-Soviet and Eastern European states. This approach often undermines, or even denies, the role the Soviet Union (its peoples and soldiers) played in the defeat of Nazi Germany. This has less to do with historical knowledge than it does with scoring cheap geopolitical points in the present at Russia’s expense.

In some Baltic republics and quite openly today in Ukraine, Nazi collaborators are honored as war veterans, while Soviet war memorials are moved, dismantled and, in some cases, publicly destroyed with great media fanfare. Most in Russia consider this not only insulting, but also a dangerous rehabilitation of ideas that their citizens paid such a high price to eliminate.

This is especially painful when the people of Ukraine’s Donbas remain the subject of assault and punishment by the western-backed regime in Kiev that openly celebrates Nazi collaboration.

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