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“Some peoples are still looking for their identity”
Published: 01 September, 2009, 14:18
French historian Edouard Husson thinks that the vehement attempts to rewrite history are linked to the longing for the independence of every European country, which leads to the adaptation of history to a national ideal.
Pseudo-historian...he is lying. It seems that Stalin's agression was justified because it gave him more time and territory to prevent German attack. June 1941 showed that Soviet Russia did not take advantage of this "additional time and territory". Millions of Red Army soldiers were taken prisoners in the beginning of operation Barbarossa due to bad equipment, weak leadership, low morale and blind devotion to Hitler. Essentially Ribbentrop-Molotov pact was a share of influence between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union in Eastern Europe. Soviet Union wanted to regain what it lost as a result of I world war and expand abroad its communist system and ideology. These are the facts. I can see that RT interviews those historians who present the version of history which is good from political point of view but it is far from true.
yeah, more territory to prevent German attack:) So why he attacked Finland,? It's long way from Germany. The answer is simple. Because Stalin was a viscious, cruel dictator, who wanted more and more power and land. That's why he attacket in 1939/1940 almost all Soviet neighbours in Europe (Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Finland, he also forced Romania to cede Besarabia, under threat of invasion), in accordence with the secret protocol to the Stalin - Hitler Pact (also known as the Ribentrop-Molotov Pact) Also, I find it funny to read so many times, here, on the RT site, about "rewriting" history. It is rewriting only for Russians, who were brainwashed by the communist propaganda for 50 years. Be proud of your victory against hitler in 1945, but admit soviet aggresions against independent states in Europe.
Marzipan6, it is understandable that you love your country and that you are proud of who you are. However, you choose to be insulting to other points of view, and pick and choose your "facts" as they suit you. Any honest historical overview cannot just pick "villians" and "victims", while only the superior beings are entitled to write history in which some are their "pets", while others are "ogres". The history of the world is not a fairy tale. It is a story of tragedies, where the innocents often suffered the most. You have heard of "Einsatzgruppen", I am sure. However, insisting blindly on your view of injustice to your nation only, and only yours, is to ignore the pain and suffering by millions of ordinary people throughout Europe. And to think that a German mother was any different then any other mother whose child was killed in the senseless war, is to deny our common humanity. Marzipan6, if only you would allow that it is the the elites of any country that really make the decisions that affect the future of millions, it may be easier for you to comprehend the lessons to be learned. And in it, Polish elites were not the innocents. They gambled, and lost. And Chamberlain was not just an "appeaser", but someone, who along with French, Polish and Italian elites, knew very well the pact they signed at Munich. Otherwise, you are one of those who remember everything, and learn nothing.
Bianca, I am sure that you wrote your post from a desire to be helpful, and I do appreciate that. However, may I correct a mistaken impression that you may hold? In no way do I dismiss or think lightly of the agonies of German mothers, Russian mothers, Chinese mothers, or of the pain of anyone anywhere who has suffered. If possible, I would comfort and help every one of them. My posts are not a reflection of who suffered more and who less. Instead, they are a direct reaction to Moscow’s ongoing offensive lies about its Soviet-era Baltic crimes, and to the present-day on-going antagonism in its Baltic pronouncements and policies which ensures that closure about the past cannot happen. This is not some kind of quirky personal aberration on my part, Bianca. You will find that most of Russia’s neighbors feel pretty much the same, and for pretty much the same reasons. In response to such doleful Russian initiatives which occur on almost a weekly basis, I try to redress the balance by presenting facts which Russian sources generally do not present. Many Russians and Russian apologists, being somehow inured to Russia’s ongoing outrageous behavior and consider it to be normal, wonder why Russia’s neighbors say the things they do. Yet the reason is precisely because Russia does think that its ongoing behavior is normal! The current article is a good bad example of this. Russia notices that its neighbors are unhappy with it. Not for a moment does Russia think that this has anything to do with its own behavior. No, it is all because their neighbors are “looking for their identity” – whatever that means. And if you can find a French academic to say so in an interview, well, so much the better. For every one character like that you could find ten thousand others who identify the cause of the unrest surrounding Russia as being precisely Russia’s own unlovely behavior.
Husson implies that Estonia “is looking for its identity.” As an Estonian, may I assure Husson that Estonia 100% clear about its identity, and always has been throughout its long history. It is this certainty about who it was – and was not – that prevented Estonians from losing their identity throughout a 700 year nightmare of serial foreign occupation. It was this same certainty that enabled it to wage a victorious war of liberation in 1918-20 simultaneously against Russian and German forces, and establish national independence. It was this certainty that made it a progressive European nation with a standard of living in 1939 slightly better than Finland’s and greatly higher than Russia’s. It was this certainty that enabled it to survive the horrors of the Stalinist occupation of 1940-41, the Nazi German occupation of 1941-45, the awful re-imposed Stalinist occupation of 1945 onwards, and the long night of Soviet terror that finally lifted only in 1991. It was this certainty that enabled Estonians not to lose their culture and self-awareness throughout all those long terror-enforced years, and led them to be among the vanguard of peoples that spear-headed the Soviet collapse. It was this confidence that enabled Estonians to establish for themselves what is still the highest standard of living of any post-Soviet people, and by which they have established themselves as an integral member of Western political and military institutions. And it is this same self-awareness and confidence in their own identity that leads them to resist ongoing Russian pressure and lies about them. Clearly Husson knows very little about Estonia. Secondly, the reason why comparing Nazism with Stalinism is “abstract rhetoric” for Husson is because France was not occupied and savaged by both. Fate offered no similar luxury to the Baltics. For them, the similarities of those two totalitarian systems were neither abstract nor rhetorical. The murdered of each are just as dead.