Russian President Dmitry Medvedev says the world must know the truth about the Great Patriotic War and the role the Soviet Army played in liberating Europe from the Nazis. The Russian president said this in an interview with Izvestia and the First Russian TV Channel .
The importance of telling the world the whole truth about the war grew from attempts by some politicians in Eastern Europe to falsify historical facts and interpret these facts for their own time-serving purposes. In some countries the falsifiers go as far as rehabilitating the Nazi criminals and equalizing the roles played by the Soviet Army and the Nazi invaders. But the truth is as follows , according to Medvedev.The Soviet people had no other alternative but fight for their lives. Otherwise, they would have been killed or turned into slaves. In this respect, the question of who started the war has a clear answer which is enshrined in the Nuremberg decisions and engraved on the memory of millions of people. Given this, any attempts to garble historical truth look evil.
As for the role of the Soviet Army, the truth is that the Nazis lost about 70 percent of their troops on the Eastern Front. Nevertheless, there is no need to idealize the role of the Soviet Union in the post-war years, President Medvedev says. But a historian is highly qualified and an ordinary person shows common sense if they can differentiate the Red Army and the Soviet state’s mission in the war years from the post-war policies. It is necessary to underscore once again that but for the Red Army’s role and its mass loss of human life , Europe could have been a different place to live in . Rich, thriving and prosperous Europe would have never seen a light of day but for the Red Army’s war effort to eliminate Nazi forces. The slaughterers can never be referred to as victims. Those who place the Soviet Army and the Nazi invaders on an equal footing commit a moral crime. On this sensitive issue the modern-day Germans show much more tact and reason than some in the Baltic countries.
When asked about the role of Josef Stalin in the Great Patriotic War, President Medvedev emphasized that the war was won by the people, not Stalin, or his commanders, even though their contribution is impossible to overestimate.
One of the most important lessons of the war, the president said, is that Russia should join forces with other countries to alleviate any military threats. The priority for today is to build a lasting international security system to replace the existent one, which is far from perfect, particularly in light of the August 2008 events in South Ossetia. In the opinion of Dmitry Medvedev, in the 1930s the governments thought of a new European security system too but they lacked the courage to translate those plans into life and pass the required decisions. That led to the bloodiest war in the history of humanity. And for this very reason it’s important that we make use of the accumulated experience and introduce new international security arrangements now.
President Medvedev concluded by congratulating all war veterans and the nation as a whole on Victory Day, which is a much-treasured holiday for every Russian.
