Around Russia

Stalin = Hitler?

July 9, 2009 Anton Oresh

For a powerful and proud power, we often began to be offended by others. The OSCE resolution caused another terrible insult to support the initiative of the European Parliament to declare the day on August 23, when the notorious Molotov-Ribbentrop was signed, the day of the memory of the victims of Nazism and Stalinism. Our delegates at the scene and our “Duma” immediately began to resent, believing this resolution by an attempt to equate Stalinism with Nazism. And naturally, the beloved thesis of modern times about desecration and denigration, as well as distortion of history, sounded.

I’m not sure that the Lithuanian deputy Alyaknaite, offering the resolution, was guided exclusively by considerations of the highest justice. As well as our reaction, of course, reflected a completely obvious current political moment.

I also doubt that this kind of resolution can be taken like this, between business, almost in the “Miscellaneous” section.

I doubt even more that Stalinism and Nazism must be combined in one document.

But not because Nazism is evil, and Stalinism is almost good, as our parliamentarians actually pose a question. It’s just that these issues are too serious to solve them between business and abstract. Hitler and Stalin deserve each individual solutions, and decisions are more serious than simple resolutions of such an organization as an OSCE, which has long lost the real influence in Europe.

However, I'm not quite about that now. Here Oleg Morozov from the Duma rostrum says: “There are generally accepted, strict from the point of view of international right to determine what fascism is. There are decisions of the Nuremberg Tribunal. There are results of World War II, which no one has the right to question. And a completely different topic is the question of what Stalin is, his heritage, the regime that he was created. This is a topic that deserves the most attentive attitude. But these are fundamentally different questions. ” And these words personally cannot but cause a question that I, however, have already asked more than once, for example, on the air. Yes, there is a definition of fascism, Nuremberg was and fascism is really not the same as Stalinism. But what is Stalinism in this case? How much time do we need to finally give him a definition? When will we have our own process?

Recently, Voronezh was a high-profile case when the Communist Party, as an advertisement, hung Stalin's portraits in honor of the still not very soon 130th anniversary of the “leader”. And it is amazing not that this disgrace hung, but that it was eventually ordered to remove it. This is very surprising in our time, when it was the opinion that it was Stalin that won the war, that we had no other way to defeat fascism than to put 20, or 30, or God knows how many millions, that the country did not have a different way to become an industrial power than to destroy millions of fellow citizens in the Gulag. That effective management is just a bloody order.

They say that it is impossible to equal Stalin with Hitler, because Hitler Stalin won and thereby saved the world from fascism. Yes, not Stalin Hitler defeated, but the people! All forces put all forces in this war, who fought for his homeland and least then wanted to act as an occupier in Eastern Europe. And this people were a victim of Hitlerism and the victim of Stalinism - and even higher and brighter its feat!

Only we need to figure it out. Without any resolution of the OSCE or something else there. For ourselves, to decide who Stalin was and what Stalinism was. This will not indulge in victory, nor the story will denigrate, and ourselves will only exalt ourselves in our own eyes. I’m not talking about the “eyes” of the world community - in this case, his opinion is secondary to me.