EDITORIAL: Observing Victory Day (05/01/05)

EDITORIAL

Observing Victory Day

On May 9 Moscow will host a grand celebration of Victory Day, the day on which the end of World War II and victory over the Nazis is marked in Russia and, before that, in the Soviet Union. President Vladimir Putin has invited leaders from around the globe to attend, and, for weeks leading up to the 60th anniversary, Russia has been focusing on nostalgia related to what is known there as the Great Patriotic War, a victory credited to Stalin.

At the same time, there are voices from within Russia calling for Stalin's rehabilitation. Members of the city council of Oryol argued that it has never been proven that Stalin was responsible for the deaths of millions of people at the time of his regime, and they suggested that monuments be erected in his honor throughout the country. Indeed, cities throughout the Russian Federation are planning to do so; Volgograd will erect a statue of Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill meeting at Yalta in 1945. (A similar monument, which was to have been erected at Livadia Palace, site of the Yalta Conference in Ukraine, was rejected by Crimean authorities.) Stalin is cited as the leader who made the USSR into a superpower, with many saying that today's Russia needs a leader just like him.

More of the nostalgia for days of the superpower USSR was seen in the words of Mr. Putin when he said "the demise of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century." Earlier Mr. Putin had made another eyebrow-raising assertion when he said the USSR had been justified in signing the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact of 1939 because this constituted defense of its borders. A.k.a. the Molotov-Ribbentropp Pact, the agreement divided Poland, allowed Hitler free rein to the USSR's west, and ceded the Baltic states and Ukrainian lands under Poland to the USSR.

Given all of the foregoing, the world's leaders faced quite a dilemma as they considered the invitation to Moscow for May 9.

Among those who decided not to attend are the presidents of Estonia and Lithuania, respectively, Arnold Ruutel and Valdas Adamkus. For the Baltic states the end of the war meant the beginning of more than four decades of occupation by the Soviets. President Vaira Vike-Freiberga of Latvia will attend, but she promises to take advantage of the event to speak about the Soviet occupation. Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski, who will attend, urged Russia to use the occasion to condemn the Molotov-Ribbentropp Pact.

President Viktor Yushchenko of Ukraine, who will be in Moscow on May 8 for a CIS summit, has opted not to attend the next day's ceremonies. Instead, he will mark Victory Day in Kyiv, where Ukraine's war veterans will parade on the Khreschatyk. According to Ukrinform, the president has called for it to be an unpoliticized patriotic day focused on the veterans of World War II. He has also stated that he would like to see veterans of the Red Army, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army and the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists seated together at one table and that all those who fought in World War II should be honored. Ukraine, it must be recalled, was the major battleground in the clash of Nazi and Soviet forces, a country that lost millions of lives in the war - more of its population than any country in Nazi-occupied Europe. Moreover, with the victory over the Nazis, Ukraine was not liberated, but resubjugated as all its lands came under the USSR's domination.

President George W. Bush will be in Moscow for the May 9 festivities, but he will also visit Latvia and Georgia, two stopovers that will make his Moscow host less than pleased - a good move, we say. Writing in the Washington Post, columnist Anne Applebaum, author of the highly acclaimed book "Gulag: A History" (2003) said Mr. Bush "should show that he understands what really happened in 1945. Every recent U.S. president has visited Auschwitz, and many have visited concentration camps in Germany, too. Perhaps it's time for American presidents to start a new tradition and pay their respects to the victims of Stalin."

She concluded by underscoring, "To falsify the record - to commemorate the triumph of totalitarianism rather than its defeat - sends the wrong message to new and would-be democracies in Europe, the former Soviet Union and the rest of the world."

No matter how hard he tries, Mr. Putin cannot be allowed to alter the historical record.

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