EDMONTON, Canada — After being postponed by the Covid-19 pandemic, thousands of Russian troops will march in Moscow on June 24, raising with it the specter of Russia’s Soviet past and its role not only in history’s bloodiest conflict but also in the modern world of disinformation and the shaping of public discourse.
With the Soviet Union estimated to have lost more than 20 million soldiers and civilians in World War II, Victory Day is marked every year in Russia with a mix of patriotic solemnity and celebration. This year it was rescheduled to coincide with the 75th anniversary of the first post-war march of the Soviet troops on Red Square after they had liberated Europe.
Europe has debated for years whether the Soviet Union after WWII should be seen as a liberator from Nazism, or as oppressive communist imperialists.
As countries debated internally, the European Parliament adopted a resolution in 2019 highlighting the fact that Moscow’s attempts to glorify the Soviet past are a “dangerous component of the information war waged against democratic Europe.”
In a resolution adopted to mark the 80th anniversary of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, in which Josef Stalin and Adolf Hitler carved up parts of Europe for themselves, European lawmakers also said that Russia’s development into a democratic state will be impeded “as long as the government, the political elite, and political propaganda continue to whitewash communist crimes and glorify the Soviet totalitarian regime.” They also expressed concerns over the continued existence throughout Europe of Soviet monuments and memorials “which pave the way for the distortion of historical facts about the consequences of the Second World War and the propagation of the totalitarian political system.”
Putin’s reaction was fierce. Speaking at his annual press conference on Dec. 19, he was outraged over mentioning Nazism and Communism as totalitarian regimes within one resolution, calling it “utter cynicism.” And just the next day while delivering a speech at an informal summit of ex-Soviet states, he appeared to blame Poland for the outbreak of the war: “It was them,” he said, “who, while pursuing their mercenary and exorbitantly overgrown ambitions, laid their people, the Polish people, open to attack from Germany’s military machine, and generally contributed to the beginning of the Second World War.”
It is not the first time that Putin has lashed out about World War II. Through his 20 years in power he has frequently raised the issue of the Soviet role in the war (and the West’s perception of it). Recent years have seen the rhetoric elevated to the point in which critics note that the war has become a “sacred” topic in society and a crucial part of the Russian identity.
As Moscow prepares to commemorate the Soviet victory with a Red Square parade, Putin is once again trying to re-write World War II history and accusing the West of doing the same thing. In a lengthy article published on June 18 in the National Interest, a conservative US magazine, Putin warned against “historical revisionism,” saying downplaying the role of the Soviet Union in World War II helped undermine the current world order.
Titled “The Real Lessons of the 75th Anniversary of World War II,” the Russian president offered his assessment of the legacy of World War II, arguing that “European politicians, and Polish leaders, in particular, wish to sweep the Munich Betrayal under the carpet.” The Munich Betrayal, according to Putin, showed to the Soviet Union that the Western countries would deal with security issues without taking its interests into account. He also attempts to whitewash the Soviet occupation of Poland and the Baltics by saying that “incorporation of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia was implemented on a contractual basis,” while the Baltic states mostly remember mass arrests and executions that destroyed their nations’ political and cultural elites.
Experts agree that ignoring Putin’s version of history is not an option. As Europe tries to come to terms with its past, acknowledging heroes of the fight against totalitarianism on May 25 and Black Ribbon Day on August 23, historians and lawmakers beleive that it should also take a strong stance against Russia’s propaganda and keep educating populations about totalitarian crimes.
Paul Grod, a Ukrainian-Canadian who is the president of the Ukrainian World Congress, knows about totalitarianism not just from books; it is a part of his family history. His mother and father were only young teenagers at the time when they were taken with their families from western Ukraine to Germany as slave laborers.
“My mother, then 13, was separated from her brother and her family and worked on a German farm to feed the war effort,” Grod explains.“They were certainly victims of the Nazi regime. After the war was over, they were placed in the Allies displaced persons camp and at that point, there were attempts by the Soviets to repatriate those people. However, the Allied forces recognized these people would be returning to their deaths and now would become victims of Soviet totalitarianism because those that did return faced either Gulag or persecution and being considered traitors.”
This photo shows an Immigration Identification Card belonging to Paul Grod’s father Ivan. (Courtesy Paul Grod) (Courtesy Paul Grod )
His parents were fortunate to immigrate to Canada. They reunited in Toronto, got married in the Ukrainian Catholic Church, and ended up having three sons. “They always wanted to make sure their children remained conscientious Ukrainians who would continue to fight for Ukraine’s independence,” Grod explains.
In this archive photo Maria and Ivan Grod are getting married in Toronto, Canada. (Courtesy Paul Grod)
Teaching young generations about history is crucial, he believes. However, it’s a challenging endeavor when the world is facing Russia’s continued attempts to sanitize and glorify crimes and genocides of Joseph Stalin and the Soviet regime.
“When we talk about the fact that the end of the World War II allowed European nations to rebuild and embark on the process of reconciliation, we shouldn’t forget that what the Soviet system created was other European countries remaining under dictatorships and Soviet occupation — deprived of freedom, sovereignty, human rights, and their socio-economic development,” Grod said in an interview with the Kyiv Post. “Thus, the crimes of Nazism should be equated similar to the crimes of communism. We need to speak very clearly about it because we still see, unfortunately, even in democratic countries like Canada and the US, people glorify Soviet symbols and that’s very sad.”
The Soviet propaganda machine remains very strong and the challenge is that one of the “greatest victims of communism” continues to be Russia, said Grod. However, its citizens are yet to come to terms with their tragic past. It wasn’t until the Gorbachev era that Russia apologized for the USSR’s role in numerous crimes, including ethnic cleansing in the Baltics and Ukraine, wars, and brutal crackdowns in East Germany, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Poland.
“There’s sad history there yet we still allow Russia to manipulate that history and to glorify it despite it being one of the most evil empires in the history of humanity,” Grod adds.
Under Putin, the World War II victory has increasingly dominated rhetoric and critics have accused him of seeking to co-opt history to boost his power. The legacy of victory in World War II is also a chance to mobilize public opinion about the war in Ukraine and Crimea’s annexation and legitimize it as a fight against fascism.
Many Ukrainians, in turn, are also struggling with accepting their role in history as Russia continues to “oppress and dominate Ukraine” as it has been trying to do for over 300 years. Grod says he’s concerned that the current Ukrainian political and business elites have become afraid to offend Russia by not calling the occupation of Donbas a war.
“By not being clear about calling Russia an aggressor and acknowledging the fact that Russia is waging a war against Ukraine in the Donbas we risk making a serious mistake by obfuscating the truth.” All this, according to Grod, also adds to spreading the Russian disinformation campaign that is tempting to convince the world there is “civil war in Ukraine” and that Russia is just trying to help by signing a peaceful resolution.
During the 2019 Normandy peace negotiations in Paris, Grod recalled listening to French media, and as they were talking about the process, they described the event as “Vladimir Putin coming to France to help Ukraine find peace with its civil war.”
“That’s the way much of media in Europe is interpreting this (war). And unless the Ukrainian leadership is very clear and continues to repeat the same message the world will continue to obfuscate and buy Russia’s disinformation campaign by which it’s trying to convince that there’s a civil war in Ukraine,” Grod said, adding that Ukrainian leadership needs to call things by their name.
“Listening to Volodymyr Zelensky’s press conference a while ago I noticed how one of the reporters continued to ask him who does the fighting in the occupied territories in the Donbas and the president continued (after several attempts to clarify) to avoid calling it straight. It was very difficult for him to say that it was Russia’s war against Ukraine,” Grod said. “The fact that the Ukrainian leadership can not be clear is hurting Ukraine internationally.”
