Russia stares straight down WWII controversies 75 years on
23 June, 2020
The Soviet victory over Nazi Germany in 1945 is a pillar of countrywide pride in Russia, employed by the Kremlin to stir patriotic sentiment and rebuff criticism of the USSR and its army.
Yet Russia's state-backed narratives about the battle and its legacy regularly bring about disagreements with other Europe.
Russia celebrates its victory in World War II every year on May 9 with an enormous military parade on Crimson Square in front of the president and other community leaders.
Before this year's parade on Wednesday, postponed from May as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, here are five World Battle II episodes that continue steadily to fuel tensions.
Pact with Hitler
The 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop pact between Soviet head Joseph Stalin and Nazi head Adolf Hitler remains a spot of contention between Moscow and Europe to this day.
World Battle II erupted after Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union invaded and carved up Poland in September 1939 under a technique clause of the pact.
The agreement, which remained classified in the Soviet Union until 1989, has been described by Putin as important because Western powers had abandoned the USSR to face Germany alone.
He in addition has lauded the pact as a triumph of Stalin-period diplomacy.
Putin was angered last year by a text published by the European Parliament telling the pact helped pave just how for World Battle II.
Invasion or liberation?
Soviet soldiers are celebrated on Russia for liberating Europe from Nazism, but also for some countries in eastern Europe the Reddish Army is definitely remembered as an occupying force.
The Baltic countries of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania were forcibly integrated into the Soviet Union, and revile Nazi and Soviet forces as well.
Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda said previous month that the war didn't end until 1993 "when the previous Russian soldier still left" his country.
Russia says this narrative is an unacceptable rewriting of history and routinely protests in removing Soviet-era military monuments in eastern and central Europe.
Polish massacre
One of many details of friction with Poland may be the massacre in Katyn, named after a good forest nearby the Russian metropolis of Smolensk where Soviet technique police shot a large number of Polish officers in 1940 on Stalin's orders.
Until 1990, the Soviet Union claimed the executions were carried out by the Nazis.
Moscow has since admitted responsibility, however the legacy of the massacre has been overshadowed found in Russia by larger Stalinist repressions.
In 2010 2010, throughout a thaw on relations between Moscow and Warsaw, the plane carrying Poland's president to a commemorative event in Smolensk crashed, killing all 96 people on board.
Investigations in to the accident experience become a fresh source of pressure between the two countries.
Mass deportations
During the battle, Stalin accused minority ethnic groups of collaborating with the Nazis and deported thousands of Crimean Tatars, Kalmyks, Chechens, Balkars, Germans and other folks to Central Asia in severe conditions.
Deported populations were rehabilitated following Stalin's death, but tensions linger with the ones that returned.
Crimean Tatars, for example, were deported from their homes and therefore opposed Russia's annexation of the Crimea peninsula from Ukraine in 2014.
Many Soviet soldiers and officers returning residential following captivity in Germany were also likened to traitors and delivered to forced labor camps.
Rape in Germany
Rapes committed by Soviet soldiers because they captured Berlin in April 1945 permeated German collective memory, but are largely overlooked found in Russia.
A good Russian blogger in January was charged with "Nazi apologism" for satirical interpersonal mass media posts that referenced Soviet abuses committed in Germany.
In 2016, a newspaper in the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad was handed the official warning over articles about atrocities committed by the Red Army during the takeover of the German city in 1945.
Source: www.thejakartapost.com
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