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UPI: The international commemorations planned in Moscow on May 9 marking the end of the Second World War in Europe pleases Vladimir Putin and the majority of Russians, but there are dissenting voices. Few deny Russia this important accomplishment. But what the war means in retrospect, particularly in light of Soviet influence over the Baltic states and other countries of East Central Europe for decades after the war, is far from positive. Eric Kraus, chief strategist, Sovlink Securities, Moscow:
Every country reinvents its own history. Russia is no exception - no more than several of Russia's neighbors who conveniently ignore their own enthusiastic support for the Nazis before and during the war. As most of the direct participants are no longer with us, all now have the luxury of awarding themselves medals as heroic resistance, committed anti-fascists, and selfless crusaders for freedom. The dead shall not wag a finger. The Cold War is over. The Baltics are independent states within a federalist Europe. They are under no conceivable threat. To use the commemoration as a means to re-fight old battles is both futile and tedious.
Gordon Hahn, scholar-at-large:
I believe that in some ways, the Soviet approach still holds. Old habits die hard. Of course, the West and Eastern and Central European states have also adopted nationalist positions in relation to Moscow on this score. As the anniversary approached, Poland began to raise once more the issue of Katyn, demanding an apology. (In the spring of 1940, the Soviet NKVD massacred some 4,000 Polish prisoners, mostly army reservists, in the Katyn forest near Smolensk, in western Russia.) This seems uncalled for if the issue is one of interstate relations, since Russia is not the USSR. The new Russian state overthrew the Soviet power responsible for Katyn, but to little avail apparently as far as some nationalist Poles are concerned. The Latvians began to raise border issues, but wisely they soon saw the futility of their revanchism, choosing magnanimously to look forward rather than backwards in building its relations with Russia, at least on this issue. It would be good if she could do so with regard to her violation of political and civil rights of ethnic Russians living in Latvia.
Robert Bruce Ware, associate professor at South Illinois University, noted expert on the North Caucasus:
Many bad things happened in the aftermath of World War II, and I don't think that anything can possibly justify or excuse the Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe. But there is no more point in retrospectively attempting to isolate the aftermath of a single war than there is in attempting to isolate the policies of a single country. The fact is that many bad things, including the Bolshevik revolution and the Russian civil war, also happened in the aftermath of the First World War. Many bad things are happening now in the aftermath of the Cold War. And before we Americans point fingers, we might pause to consider how much bad there was in the aftermath of our own Civil War.
Janusz Bugajski, director of the East Europe Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington:
The May 9 anniversary in Moscow clearly has a different meaning in Russia than it does among Russia's western neighbors. And as we know, history is politics, and interpretations of history impregnate political discourse and international relations. May 9 is important not just because of what it celebrates - the defeat of Nazi Germany - but also for what it fails to acknowledge - the enslavement of half of Europe for almost half a century by the Soviet Union.
Dale Herspring, professor of political science, Kansas State University:
To me this is a non-issue. The Russians/Soviets paid a tremendous price in World War II, and one could argue that they were the main reason the Germans lost the war. Certainly, Stalingrad stands alongside Midway as one of the two most important battles -- and turning points -- of World War II -- and I think that almost anyone who has seriously studied the war on the Eastern Front (including Germans), is prepared to argue that Russian sacrifices were critical to winning the war.
Ethan S. Burger, Esq., School of International Service, adjunct associate professor, Washington College of Law, American University:
At the some point, Russians will need to come to grips with their history. They need to understand the consequences of Stalin's diplomatic and military mistakes prior to and during the initial stages of the war, how Soviet partisan leaders and soldiers taken capture by the Nazis were often killed or sent to the Gulag by their comrades, how Soviet machine gunners sometimes targeted their own troops to discourage retreat in combat, and that Stalin's victims may have been in excess of 20 million lives.
Andrei Tsygankov, professor of international relations, San Francisco State University:
It is tempting to cast Russia's victory as that of the society and the peoples, rather than the state, particularly when one associates the state with crimes against Eastern European and its own peoples. Then the Russian people too were oppressed by their own state and therefore had much in common with those Europeans who read the victory as Stalin's dictatorship. However, treating Russian people and their state as opposing poles has its limits. Historically, state often introduced important reforms and defended social, economic, and national rights of the peoples.
Ira Straus, U.S. coordinator of the Committee on Eastern Europe and Russia in NATO:
There were Russian democrats who had hoped to use the 60th anniversary as an occasion for highlighting the goal of Russia-West alliance and implanting it more deeply in the Russian national conscience. What a pity that their wise and decent intentions are being sidetracked by the scandals stirred up by the Balts!