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Demythologizing the War and the New World Order

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Demythologizing the War and the New World Order

23.06.2015

Ôîòî sco-russia.ru
The participants of the two-day conference “World War II: Science and Ideology 70 Years Later” came to the conclusion that attempts to revise the history of World War II are directly connected to attempts to revise the system of international relations which was established following victory in 1945. The emergence of a new balance of power in the world driven by the countries of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and BRICS could serve as a counterweight to these revisionary tendencies.

The conference now underway in Moscow under the auspices of SCO began with a thesis about the potential for reconsideration of the system of international relations which emerged following the victory over fascism in 1945 and reinforced during the years of the Cold War. However, the first real possibilities of reconsidering the results of World War II appeared only after 1991, with the disappearance of the USSR.

“The collective West consider Russia as the heir of the USSR to have lost the Cold War while the new Russia believed that it happened opened up to the world in order to joint build a democracy,” says Viktoria Panova, Senior Advisor for Strategic Planning of the Russian National Committee on BRICS Studies. “With this began a conflict of ideas between Russia and the West which has grown into a different understanding of working of the mechanisms of democracy. Russia does not separate democracy from the principles of sovereignty, while the West believes that it is possible to delegate sovereign rights of democracies to supranational bodies. There is an ongoing confrontation over the reconsideration of their roles in the system of international relations, and at the UN in particular. The attempt to reframe the results of World War II is just one phase on this long path. Moreover, the possibilities of the countries of the BRICS and SCO in confronting modern threats are underestimated and colossal.

As Viktoria Panova believes, as well as the subsequent speakers at the conference from China, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, the countries of the BRICS and SCO could become those centers of power which could ease the confrontational tension between Russia and the West or even provide a buffer for the international security system. However, according to many experts, the US is not interested in the emergence of such centers of power which could undermine its monopoly on the interpretation of the principles of democracy, which requires a reconsideration of the results of World War II.

The main postulate in the attempts to rewrite the history of World War II involves equating Hitler’s fascism with Stalin’s totalitarianism, which according to the creators of this thesis “demythologizes the USSR’s victory over fascism”, i.e. devalues and demeans it.

“Our principled position,” says Andrei Sidorov, docent of the International Relations Department of MGIMO University, “is that the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945 is the confrontation of two ideological opposites. It is indisputable that fascism championed the ‘Aryan supremacy’ of the Germans, whose prosperity was built on slave labor and the deaths of millions of inferior race. Meanwhile, the USSR was built on international socialism in a country where more than 120 different people coexisted. This is quite different from the attempts being made to call this internationalism “Russian imperialism”. We must consistently resists these attempts, which are growing ever more persistent.”

One interesting aspect of the restoration of the full picture of World War II is a sort of “turn to the East”. Scholars from Russia, Kazakhstan and China agreed that the enormous losses borne by China are unknown not only in the EU but in Russia and CIS countries as well.

“We should steadily expand in the minds of Russians and resident of the CIS and then in countries of the BRICS and SCO the perception of World War II, not limiting it to the Great Patriotic War,” believes Stanislav Chernyavsky, Director of the Center of Post-Soviet Studies of MGIMO University. “Right now a number of respected British and American historians share the opinion that World War II began not in Europe but rather in Asia in 1936 or even in 1932. Here, as in Europe, it is largely unknown, with the exception of a small group of scholars, that China’s civilian population suffered great losses during World War II. I am convinced that the time has come to break down these established stereotypes.”

The first step in this direction will be the SCO summit in Ufa in July 2015. According to Bakhtiyor Khakimov, special representative of the Russian president on SCO affairs, at the summit in Ufa there will be a discussion of events marking the 70th anniversary of China’s victory over Japanese militarism. In particular, the conversation will focus on the large-scale human losses of China and China’s role in halting Japan, which was unable to launch a war on the USSR as an ally of Fascist Germany.

“This is our progress for the future,” says Bakhtiyor Khakimov. “After all, one of the main aims is the development of an ideology or concept for Russia’s representation in SCO ahead of the upcoming 2015 summit. It entails the creation of a new economic and trade partnership among SCO countries, and through them create a new balance of power which is capable of easing the acuteness of the confrontation between Russian and the collective West.”

Dmitry Mezentsev, Secretary General of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, stressed that at the summit in Ufa the possibility of adopting India and Pakistan will be discusses as well as expansion of cooperation with Turkey, Iran, Egypt, Cambodia, Syria and a number of other countries which are interested in SCO’s trade, economic and educational platforms. They, together with the fact that SCO has been granted observer status at the UN, are expanding the role of the organization in the creation of a new balance of power in the world.

Vladimir Emelyanenko
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