Date change line

September 1, 1939, the day of the World War II, has long been the day of historical and moral watershed. This is the day that separated the Soviet consciousness from the human. Soviet - it is always focused on the same day in the mournful military annals: June 22, 1941, "the treacherous attack of Nazi Germany on the world's first state of workers and peasants."

The Soviet consciousness always uses precisely this word - “treacherous”, but never asks the question: why did the Bolshevik dictator Joseph Stalin so selflessly believed Adolf Hitler that refused to believe in the attack of the recent ally even when the enemy was already in the USSR? Why did not Stalin believe his own associates, fellow citizens, even his own wife - but Hitler believed? Maybe because the very idea of ​​the division of the world, which the Führer seduced by the gullible seminarist, was - and remains - the main dream of the Kremlin. And when at least the ghost of this idea appears, it is impossible to resist.

Stalin assured himself that he would share the world with Hitler - and for this his own lives, tens of millions of people paid his own lives. Putin expects to force the West to agree with himself about the new section - and for this hereditary madness has yet to be paid.

The unwillingness to remember on September 1 is not just ignoring obvious historical facts. This is also a reluctance to take responsibility for the past. It is much more pleasant to imagine themselves to be a victim of aggression, to scream the "grandfathers" and trade someone else's pain - but for this it is simply necessary that the war begins on June 22.

To understand that the war began on September 1, that it became a direct result of the Soviet -German conspiracy that the Soviet Union until 1941 and after 1945 behaved a little better than Hitler Germany in Europe - this is responsibility. The responsibility that most Russians are unable to take on. Responsibility, which can be not only state, but also personal - in fact, with personal responsibility and the recovery of the state begins.

I do not want to prescribe recipes for this recovery. You can simply remember that 1941-1945 was the time of the heroic resistance of millions of Soviet people - and at the same time the time of the tragedy of those millions who were in the occupied territory or chose the Reich side. But at the same time, do not forget that 1939-1941, an attack on Finland, the occupation of Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, the destruction of Poland are years of shame. And 1945-1991 - the actual occupation of the countries of Central Europe - decades of shame. But these are common words. But there are personal experiences.

I remember my own well. It was 1991, the train to Bonn. We talked with an elderly German professor, a specialist in Russia - and it turned out that his father was wounded in the same battle on the Kursk arc in which my grandfather died. Once again I thought about whether denazification and repentance can cancel personal experiences.

And then I thought about my other grandfather, a heroic officer who went through the entire Second World War and died from the consequences of front -line wounds a few years before my birth. When I was little, I loved to consider his awards for liberation and for taking. And, of course, I did not think about the fact that until June 22 in the life of my grandfather there was a Finnish war and was Lviv.

And I realized that the train could not be up to Bonn, but to Tamper or to the Wroclaw. And I could sit opposite the grandson of the Finnish or Polish soldier, who defended his homeland from the aggressor and died in battle. I would differ from the German professor only in that in the country, which then disappeared before my eyes, there was neither denazification nor awareness of responsibility. On the grave of the Finnish or Polish soldier, I would have froze alone.

That is why it is so important for me that I turned out to be a citizen of Ukraine, the country in which the history of the war is counted from September 1, and not from June 22. This change in the date is a very important and very difficult step towards humanity and self -esteem. To have the right to be proud of something, you need to learn shame.