A tomboy in my childhood games, in Bulgaria, I was either an “Indian” warrior or the commander of a resistance troop fighting against the Nazis. I religiously watched Soviet war films. I could clearly distinguish between Soviet and German uniforms, military ranks and armament. In my late childhood, I viscerally hated Nazi Germans and admired the Red Army. In the 1980s, Bulgarian TV started broadcasting European and American films about the war. The “good guys” changed: they were French or Italian resistance fighters, British or American soldiers. The “bad guys,” however, always remained the same: the Nazis.
Last year, I was struck to find that the British series A world on fire, which recounts the invasion of Poland by the Germans in 1939, always presented the story from the point of view of the victors. Before being accused of revisionism, I want to stress that I am not asking for more lenient treatment of the Nazis. However, I protest against the preferential treatment granted to the victors, especially to the Soviets.
After all, it was they and the Nazis who started World War II by simultaneously invading Poland in accordance with the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, which provided for the partition of the country (the Soviets simply crossed the Polish border two weeks late). Has anyone ever seen a fiction film about the Soviet occupation of Poland? I’m sure not, although I know neither the Polish filmography nor that of the Baltic countries of the last thirty years.
For two years (out of six years of war), the USSR and Germany remained staunch allies. Each has conquered its part of Europe and protected the rear of the other. The German invasion of the USSR in June 1941, however, propelled the country into the anti-Hitler camp, alongside Great Britain and the United States. At the end of the war, the West set up Nazism as a symbol of absolute evil, but not the Soviet regime, which was nevertheless identical to the Nazi regime.
Worse still, a stony silence falls on the war crimes committed by the Soviets and their army. Why ? Because it is embarrassing for Western democracies to recognize that they had to collaborate with one fascist regime to destroy another. Victory against “absolute evil” could only be achieved by the “forces of good”. Therefore, during the Cold War, the USSR is considered, certainly as an ideological enemy, but all the same frequentable. His status as winner gives him a legitimacy reinforced by the complacency of the parties on the left.
For this reason, neither you nor I have seen any films (even documentaries) about the occupation of the Baltic republics by the Soviets; on the fate of German prisoners in Soviet camps; on the behavior of the Red Army in Germany or Bulgaria; on the export to Germany of Jews and communists who had taken refuge in the USSR; on the collaboration of the European Communist Parties with the Nazis until June 22, 1941, etc.
By dint of repeating it, the West began to believe that the Soviet regime was something other than fascist. Consequently, when it fell in 1989, Europe demanded neither de-Sovietization nor the condemnation, at least symbolic, of the great Soviet criminals. (Imagine the same treatment given to Germany in 1945!) The West only demanded the conversion of the Soviet economy to the capitalist model. Undoubtedly, Europe and America were attracted by the lure of gain. But they would have acted with more circumspection if they had not forgotten that this country was as totalitarian as Nazi Germany, even worse, that it served as an example to Mussolini and Hitler. impunity of the Soviets/Russians and the certainty that everything is allowed to them…
Since February 24, it has become fashionable to compare Putin to Hitler. The danger is that the West “forgets” that Putin is only the product of a totalitarian system that has been operating at full speed for more than a century already. After 80 years, it is time to abolish the monopoly of the victors to tell the Second World War as they see fit. The West, and especially the progressive movements, must question their relationship to the USSR since its creation. In the picture of history, the USSR/Russia must regain its place alongside Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy.