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ROAR: Russians do not equate Stalinism to fascism
Published: 04 August, 2009, 14:31
The majority of Russians do not support the idea of European politicians to equate the responsibility of Stalinism and fascism for the beginning of World War II.
Try to make it this way: very serious historians and journalists had been puzzled and astonished how come that Nazi(onali)sm generated so much evident enthusiasm in Germans. Also no one explained how come all “antifascists” did not smash Franco’s regime as well, but instead were considering to quit communism in one go (ending WW II – general’s Paton’s active proposal). T(h)inking today – with all my love, respect and gratitude to Russian legacy – I must admit the West is ahead of our Slavic civilization in one dominant key indicator: it is more sincere and together with Russians we all remain the patients suffering emotional constipation much more than the West ever throughout the history. Let’s make this clear: when Russians ever expressed their collective and convincing love to Stalin? And we perfectly know they can love! So – what is this mysterious inner force for? For Stalin? For Solzhenitsyn? For Zhivago? Who is going to answer this? This is our tripping issue, it is not something just “to tackle” at RT.
When Stalin made that deal with Hitler to invade and cut up Poland in 1939 alot of people in the West started to view them both in the same light. The Communits Party USA all but died after that. Its only after Htler doublecrossed Stalin first did Russia wake up. Dictators are all cut from the same cloth. Communism, National Socialism the difference is in the name. Their both about one party lead by a strongman bent of keeping their power and destroying any life that disagrees with them. Russians may remember back to the power and false respect they had in the world then, but ask them if they want the gulags and KGB back and I think we know what the answer is. Only after a few generations of the system they have now will they be able to look back and judge things in forsight.
His holiness the Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia Kirill is right: the two regimes are not the same even though both were evil. However, Hitler's regime suffered from the same hate on Russia as the today's west. That is what is a common point in Hitler/German Nacism and the anglo-saxon imperialism. In my opinion, it is exactly that common point that is behind the attempts to equate Stalinism with Hitlerism. On the other hand, many Russians (and some westerners too) use to think about Stalin's regime as being the key force that actually defeated Nacy Germany. To my modest opinion, that is not really correct, for it is Russian Orthodox people who in fact made the victory. Namely, it is well known that Russians hadn't had really a will to fight Nacis until services in churches were not restored in the late autumn 1941 and the church bells started ringing calling everybody to take a part in defending the Homeland . As one German soldier noted "after that bells have rung we all suddenly felt we will never win the war".
Stalin was smart to sign a non-agression pact with Hitler...if Stalin could have avoided war, and let the Eureopeans fight it out among themselves, that would have been better for the Soviets. That is precisely what the USA, my country, did. We let the Russians and Europeans spend their strength fighting Hitler's invasion, then we came in at the last minute and stopped the Soviets from taking all of Europe after they beat Hitler at Stalingrad and emerged as one of the two world superpowers. How anyone can blame Stalin for trying to do what we actually did is beyond me. Furthemore, if I were a Pole, and especially if I were a Polish Jew, I would have MUCH preferred Stalin to Hitler. Stalin allowed any Jew who wanted to go north to do so. Most, however, preferred to stay and fight the Nazis.
It is hardly surprising if Russians’ views on Stalinism and Nazism are distorted. Stalin and his successors imposed a generations-long terror-enfoced brainwashing upon Russians. This resulted in them eventually becoming unable to judge their own circumstances realistically. They ended up thinking that severe repression was more or less a normal condition of life, and that less severe repression was liberty. By contrast, many of Russia’s neighbours had no such mental and emotional fog to overcome. The Baltics, for example, were genuinely free in the inter-war period, with rule of law and parliamentary democracy operating for most of that time. Against this background they had the experience Soviet Russia invading them and impose its own reign of terror upon them. Then they had the experience of seeing Nazi Germany invade them, and impose its version of state terror upon them. Then they had the experience of Soviet Russians returning to murder, enslave and oppress them for almost another fifty years. And frankly, they noticed very little difference at all between the two. The dead that the Nazis killed were just as dead as those whom the Soviets killed, the enslaved of each regime were just as enslaved, the lack of freedom and the thousand and one insults of occupation were just as acute in the case of each. In their judgment, which is free of the self-serving propaganda of both totalitarian regimes, Nazism equalled Stalinism. And post-Stalinist Sovietism was hardly an improvement. It is for victims to judge the guilt of the victimisers; they have earned the right to. It is not for victimisers to compare and contrast themselves and decide whose criminality was better. Entirely appropriately, each year on August 23, the anniversary of the infamous Molotov-Ribbentrop pact Europe remembers all the continent’s victims of totalitarianism. There is no difference between the two sets of victims. Nor, for any practical purpose, between the two sets of victimisers.
Because Russians are a numerate nation!