To revise lessons of WWII, one needs to make Hitler a hero

Ten years ago it was impossible to hear anyone making public statements on the UN rostrum about Hitler's collusion with Stalin. Nowadays, this seems to be a steady trend to dehumanize the Russians. Russia responds.

'Soviet troops were killing Ukrainians'

On Monday, November 30, at a meeting of the UN General Assembly, Ukraine's Ambassador to the UN, Sergei Kislitsa, stated that "September 1, 1939 was far from the initial stage of the plan that Hitler had developed, including in collusion with Stalin."

Kislitsa, as quoted by TASS, claimed that the Poles and the Ukrainians "were among the first victims of the plan, in which Nazi troops from the west and Soviet troops - from the east marched across Poland and today's Western Ukraine." According to the Ukrainian Ambassador to the UN, "Soviet troops killed thousands of Ukrainians during the occupation and even more during the retreat in 1941."

President of Ukraine Vladimir Zelensky, whose grandfather heroically fought at the front of the Second World War and was awarded two Orders of the Red Star, shares the same opinion.

Vladimir Zelenskyy, after his meeting with Polish President Andrzej Duda, announced the "collusion of totalitarian regimes" that "led to the outbreak of World War II." During his visit to Poland, which was timed to the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz by the Soviet army, he said that Poland had fallen a victim to Berlin and Moscow's actions, which "gave Nazis an opportunity to start the deadly machine of the Holocaust."

It becomes clear why the heir to the veteran of the Great Patriotic War has such an opinion - he is translating the opinion of the United States. US Ambassador to Poland, Georgette Mosbacher, once tweeted that "it was Hitler and Stalin who conspired to start World War II."

We would like to note here that the United States and Ukraine are the only countries that do not show their support (ever year) for the UN resolution on combating the glorification of Nazism. Domestic policy is decisive for Ukraine at this point, because Stepan Bandera, a Nazi sympathizer,  and the SS Galicia division are officially honored and glorified in Ukraine.

What about Europe? In September, the European Parliament adopted a resolution "About the importance of European remembrance for the future of Europe," which says that the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact signed by Germany and the USSR paved the way for the outbreak of war.

This is not the fruit of somebody's sick imagination - this is an absolutely purposeful course to dehumanize the Russians, Russia, the USSR, to deprive the Russians of their Great Victory and force the nation to repent. It appears that this trend is going to develop steadily. It was impossible to imagine such statements from such a high international platform, but nowadays it is a steady trend.

Mind the Munich Agreement, not the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact

Russian President Vladimir Putin responded to those people and offered them to analyze the events in Europe after 1918 and "who signed which documents with Hitler."

Vladimir Putin said that Joseph Stalin, unlike representatives of Great Britain, France and Poland of those years, "did not stain himself with direct contacts with Hitler." According to him, "they worked with him, with Hitler, they had several meetings with him, and surrendered Czechoslovakia."

The President of Russia recalled the "Munich Agreement," as a result of which the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia was delivered to Nazi Germany, which became the first step towards unleashing World War II. The USSR entered western regions of Poland, when Poland actually ceased to exist as a state, because its leadership fled abroad.

"Someone thought that after the Cold War they were victors. They considered themselves exceptional. They believe that they can and they should change the order that emerged after the Second World War. In order to create conditions for such changes, one should alter a little, rewrite what actually happened in history," Vladimir Putin said.

Check your guesses as per the Nuremberg Tribunal

In a commentary for Pravda.Ru, Vladimir Kiknadze, an advisor to the Russian Academy of Missile and Artillery Sciences, Doctor of Historical Sciences, noted that "international public opinion, represented by organizations such as the European Parliament, is attempting to hold the Soviet Union, including Russia, accountable for the outbreak of WWII.

The expert recalled that in 2019, the European Parliament referred to relevant resolutions passed by the Second Congress of People's Deputies in the USSR in 1989, which condemned the Soviet-German treaties of 1939 and recognized them, inter alia, invalid. Addressing today's leadership of the Russian Federation, the European Parliament declared that unlike the leadership of the Soviet Union, today's Russia is allegedly falsifying history.

Vladimir Kiknadze noted in an interview with Pravda.Ru that the UN resolution condemning rehabilitation of Nazism, neo-Nazism, racism and other forms of extremism is non-regulatory. Unfortunately, the number of countries voting "for" this resolution, decreases every year in favour of those that abstain from the vote.

According to the expert, the Russian diplomatic corps should make every effort to convert the non-regulatory resolution into the regulatory one. This would put an end to statements that do not correspond to the facts established by the international military tribunal in Nuremberg.

"The tribunal found that the culprit for unleashing World War II was Germany. Modern-day Germany and its political leaders admit this, emphasizing that no other state, especially the Soviet Union, has anything to do with unleashing World War II," the expert noted ...

Ukraine is not a civil society

As for Ukraine, Vladimir Kiknadze finds it "very strange" that the people of the country that lost more than two million civilians in casualties during Ukraine's occupation by Nazi troops, support or insufficiently condemn its government representatives for statements that contribute to the rehabilitation of Nazism, the emergence of new forms of neo-Nazism, and so on.

In the opinion of the expert, in order to reverse the negative trend of revising the outcome of World War II, one should take the following measures:

• work together with Ukrainian historians on scientific monographs related to objective coverage of the war in textbooks, including on the international level;
• express an appropriate position at the European Parliament and the UN;
• in the Russian Federation, to give modern historical and legal assessments of the events associated with the history of World War II, to defend this history more actively;
• to enhance the Russian legislation in connection with attempts to falsify the history of the Second World War.

One can not say that Russia is doing nothing at this point.

In order to prevent the distortion of Second World War history in Russia, "No statute of limitations" project was launched in eleven regions of the Russian Federation. As part of the project, employees of the Investigative Committee started taking testimonies from veterans of the Great Patriotic War and contemporaries of the war, investigating a criminal case about Nazi crimes committed during the Battle of Stalingrad.

The program goes in three directions:

• archival research,
• search,
• educational.

By the end of the year, based on the results of the project, a documentary will be made dedicated to the lives of common people during the war, various exhibitions will be organized.

The investigation of the sinking of the Armenia Soviet hospital ship on November 7, 1941, in the Black Sea off the coast of the city of Yalta, was recently completed. Up to 10,000 people, most of them are civilians, were killed as a result of Luftwaffe aircraft attacks. Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoygu referred to the tragedy, reminding his German counterpart, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, that Germany should not talk to  Russia "from the position of strength." Shoygu also said that it would take the Germans at least 100 years to pray for forgiveness.