Original Russian text here.
If Hitler defeated the Soviet Union, modern Europe would have considered him its savior
Russian historian and political scientist Oleg Nemensky.
IA REGNUM is continuing a survey of Russian and foreign historians, which theme is this year official commemoration of the Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Totalitarianism. In the EU context this means two political regimes - the German Nazism and Soviet communism.
Questions and answers by a REGNUM, August 3, 2011 at the Institute of Slavic Studies,
IA REGNUM : Why does the EU commemorate the victims of so-called totalitarianism only, but does not care about victims of democracy and authoritarianism, fascism and militarism?
The reason lies in the modern European identity. Their own sins is one thing, those sins are judged either in terms of being long gone history or as something that at the time of their occurrence was inevitable and necessary. Another thing is what forces had to be overcome in order modern Europe could be born. The post-war Europe was constructed upon rejection of Nazism and Communism as two almost equal evils against which shone the brilliant light of the ultimate good, the light of Western civilization with which the EU identifies itself. And while many Europeans see the world in a more complex, less caricature-like way they do not make the difference because their views do not form the structure of the European identity.
IA REGNUM : What was the political nature of regimes in Central and Eastern Europe in 1930s -1940-s., with which the USSR had to deal on its western borders.
In ideological and operational terms political regimes in interwar Central and Eastern Europe were much closer to Nazi Germany than to the Soviet Union. Most of Central and Eastern European belonged to Nazi Europe, not to the continent's liberal bloc.
And now it is important to understand that for all those people (except perhaps for the Czech Republic and, with some reservations, for Slovakia), the victory of our country during World War II meant the defeat of their own kind and a national catastrophe. Even the Poles perceive the outcome of the war this way, because they lost a third of the country to the east (their "Eastern Ranges ' - although as translator's note, Poles were rewarded with a far productive and developed part of Germany, in fact it was the entire East Germany that they were allowed to steal. What was called East Germany during Cold War years is in fact Central Germany), and are still grieving over the loss. To entertain the hope that these people would somehow be grateful to us because they were saved from the miserable fate Nazi politicians had in store for them, - is hardly reasonable. Asking them for thanks is to them way worse than being simply annoying. At one time this alien feeling of gratitude was forced upon them, but this sentiment was so burdensome that now, after being finally freed from it, they are unlikely to revive the feeling on their own accord. But let's be honest with ourselves - the liberation of those countries from Nazi Germany and denazification was in our interests, for them this event will never be a cause for celebration. For one side to win, the other must lose. And they were the other side. Now they want a revenge.
These people are sick with nostalgia for the period of their interwar statehood, for the geo-political projects, which they were planning and which failed. And, yes, all those projects had some connection with Nazi Germany, at least with the way how it presented its own plans in its pre-war propaganda. The dream of a revenge or of a history replay will inevitably lead to partial acquittal of the Third Reich, in fact in their minds the Third Reich has already been long rehabilitated . The gravest problem these countries face is that the Nazis were considered "uniquely evil" not only in and by Russia (USSR), but also in and by the West. And here Central and Europeans are starting to have all sorts of problems but so far they managed to disguise things and put up a very good show.
IA REGNUM : What were the goals those regimes pursued vis-a-vis the USSR?
Speaking of the states that appeared on the map as a result of Russia's defeat in World War I (as translator - I would say of the Bolshevist revolution,) or like Romania which profited from stealing its territory , the success of their interwar geopolitical projects rested upon the eventuality of the military defeat of the Soviet Union. Only the fact that Russia has been militarily defeated could guarantee them their independence from Moscow and their sovereignty over long term and over large areas, particularly those which have been a part of the Russian Empire. And Germany was seen as their natural ally in this cause (a divine instrument), something Germany exploited well in its politics and its propaganda.
IA REGNUM : What was the plan for eventual political system that the national movements of the 1940s had, the ones which fought for their independence from the Soviet Union?
Political movements of the immediate prewar years and the war period should be assessed from the premise that those people had a very poor comprehension of what Nazism means and what further designs Nazi Germany had for their lands. However, many of their leaders, due to a rather quick succession of military events did not have a chance to disbelieve the inadequacy of their own preconceptions. Or did not want to.
By the way, some movements could really have had a chance to coexist with the new (Nazi) system. Nazi plans for the dismemberment of the Russian lands went much further than those of the Bolsheviks, and many of today's activists for projects like the Cossackia or the Idel-Ural find it now difficult to hide the nostalgia (or conceal the sadness) that those projects failed
The political system (for the lands of Eastern and Central Europe) - either or, in any case it would have been based on some form of fascism. Though not necessarily on Nazism everywhere.
IA REGNUM : From what end was Europe divided before World War II: Hitler split it with the Soviets or Hitler divided it with the Western "democracies"?
To a great extent Hitler and "Western democracies" shared identical objectives - the defeat of Communism and the destruction of Soviet Russia. The misfortune of France was that its leaders hoped that Germany would do the job on its own without getting them involved. Hitler did everything possible to unite the West for a united crusade against Russia. Had he won on the Eastern Front, today's Europe would have certainly remembered Hitler as the greatest savior and the founding father of the modern Europe where every schoolkid could explain what a mortal danger those Jews, Gypsies and Russians presented to the continent's progressive people. And that attitude is not particular to Third Reich, it was shared in English-speaking cultures as well.
This common goal has been the cause for the numerous concessions granted to Hitler. In general, prior to the attack on Poland, Berlin's actions fit quite nicely to the logic of " historic unification of Germany." And Bohemia, and Austria, and the demand for the Danzig corridor - these all were of course justifiable for creation of a unified nation on the territories of the old German states. This policy, one of creating a unified nation-state, could not have caused too much of harsh criticism because at the time the very notion of a unified nation state was considered justifiable and even noble.
Czechoslovakia was partitioned by Germany, Poland and Hungary and this dismemberment produced a slight change in the political map of Europe as compared to a much greater challenge that lied ahead, that "in the East." You've got to understand that a few people then believed in the viability of the Czechoslovak national project, and so obviously they were not much disturbed when Czechoslovakia got destroyed. To this day, even in our historiography the partition is not treated as part of World War II but merely as one of the events that led to it. It is so however not so clear cut, unless you want to deny the connection between the partition and the military action that followed later. It is important to remember that our country opposed the partition - after all, that was when Berlin began conquering lands which were not German in the ethnic or any other sense.
By the way, the Soviet Union acted according to the same logic of national unification in September 1939, in direct contrast to Germany. Moscow regained what Poles occupied by force twenty years earlier and these territory had a predominantly non-Polish population. And now, when Poland is trying to equate the "aggression" of Germany and the USSR on 1 and September 17 of that year, it is important to emphasize this fundamental difference. As, of course, is the difference that by September 17 the state called Poland ceased to exist.
IA REGNUM : Why doesn't the EU condemn the Munich Agreementof 1938?
And why should they? Their goal is to condemn Russia now, certainly not to "look for an impartial assessment of the past events."
It seems that we often underestimate the need for the West to condemn actions of the USSR in the World War II. Without condemnation of Russia, the West can not be sure of its positive self-esteem, it cannot be sure of the absolutely positive perception of its historical experience, its values and of itself. The notion of universal Western values, that these values that are somehow shared by the entire mankind is only possible when there is a great degree of confidence that these values are good. In the West liberal values have replaced Christianity and the West is religiously faithful to them as it sees itself through their reflection - and nothing would be allowed to disturb the sight.
Mass perceptions of major historical events are always based on a simple childish model of a struggle between the good against the evil. The Second World War - the most important event in the history of the West which has shaped its present political and ideological state, and formed its memory is also reconstructed on the simplistic pattern of victory of the Good over the Evil. After all Good is good because Evil is evil. And here lies the biggest problem the West has: what is considered evil has been defeated by Russia, which is also seen as evil. But the logic of defeat goes like that: evil must always be defeated by the good, not by another evil (otherwise the model falls to peaces). Because of deep cultural and civilizational reasons the West cannot recognize Russia as something other than evil. Most importantly, Russia is not the West. And no matter how you twist and falsify the events of the war it is impossible to conceal the fact that the Soviet Union defeated Nazi Germany. That means in turn that they are forced to present events as if the war itself was the result of collusion of two evils, and thus their joint enterprise.
Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact is the central theme here, as it was this pact, regardless of its actual content, that becomes the most potent symbol of this conspiracy, the symbol of the unity of the world's evil. No other agreements that other countries might have signed with Berlin are that symbolic, and hence they do not matter, are insignificant to the European history. Moreover, any differences between the communist and Nazi regimes in such a scheme of things must be erased, and this feat is accomplished by employing the theory of totalitarianism. Thus, the Third Reich and the Soviet Union are turned into a single whole, and conflicts within this "one" whole are of no fundamental significance. The very fact that these two powers began to fight one another, and another one of them won - well, it's not victory of the good, it is just failure of an evil power, the failure of Evil. In all the fairy tales evil characters are not only in conflict with the good, but occasionally they quarrel with each other - that's obviously not a reason to sympathize with them.
Victory of the May 1945 is not seen in the West such the absolute victory, the way it seen in Russia. For them, finally, "a force of good" overpowered "evil" only at the end of the Cold War. This is what ideologically justifies U.S. leadership in the modern world. It's the task of "defending freedom and democracy", which the United States and its allies took upon themselves during World War II and then managed to finish. But wait, not, they did not manage to finish anything. The collapse of the Soviet Union was unexpected, there was "somehow wrong" with it - there were no American tanks in the Kremlin - so that evil still dwells there, it just became weaker, but is not less dangerous.
By the way, the Third Reich - though is evil, is of course European, and thus it's comprehensible. So it cannot really be equated with evil Russia - which is alien. This is the evil from and on the outside. Since it must be fought, the idea of a "new Nuremberg" trial, only this time over the USSR and its "successor State" comes handy. For the political elites in Poland and the Baltic states this became something of an the obsession, it is their wildest political dream. And I think the urgency of this issue will only grow with time as no historical or logical arguments would be able to stop the West from pursuing it. Again, the West has a psychological need of condemnation of both the USSR and of Russia; it is a very serious cultural complex, which we only managed to wake up in somewhat western, in the cultural sense, nations of Central Europe and in the Baltic states. The main reason for attacking the USSR now is the fact that it won in the Second World War.
The only weapon that Russia has at its disposal are Western financial interests. Whenever dealing with Russia becomes more profitable than fighting it, the intensity Russophobia itch decreases. But unfortunately so far we have not been particularly successful at this.
There is one area where we can give a fight, but somehow nothing seems to work here either - perhaps because the social sciences, the humanities in today's Russia are barely alive. This is the very theory of totalitarianism. Behind it stands a great comparative tradition of finding commonalities and, through them assuming the common general nature of Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Soviet Union. The theory is slick and beautiful, it attracts many and in the West it is absolutely dominant theory in scholarly and public discourse about these two states. But since the question itself does not require to find differences, but only similarities, whoever works within the framework of this theory must come up with same answer, the proponents argue that these two modes were similar to each other almost like twins, like two peas in a pod. And as there is no market for an alternative, and nobody is asked to find the differences between Nazism and Soviet system in the West (and there will be no market for alternative models in the West), then the theory of totalitarianism reigns supreme and is almost unchallenged. Meanwhile, we better pay attention at how different these two systems were and why only a fraction of their qualities manage through into the theory of totalitarianism. After all, most aspects of social and political life and ideology in the Third Reich and the USSR get simply overlooked within framework of this theory as unnecessary because to do otherwise would defeat the whole scheme. And, I think, if we pay attention to differences between these countries, there are obviously far more differences than commonalities. And these differences are crucial to understanding what was the Third Reich on one hand, and what the Soviet Union on the other.
We in the historical science, unfortunately, don't have a tradition of criticizing classical theory of totalitarianism. We were fascinated by it in the 1980-es and -90-ies. For the most part though we were unaware of the political implications of this theory and that it prevents us from looking at our own past objectively. In this case at a single glance, the only opposition to this theory consists of the old Soviet " approach, it a manner opposing the Stalinist USSR to the Third Reich in the an absolute good versus absolute evil pattern. This approach is very convenient for "the researchers of totalitarian regimes" and advocates of the theory of totalitarianism because its practitioners represent the "perfect opponent," who try to justify their entire theory, the whole thing, and most importantly who are as ideologically motivated as they (promoters of the theory of totalitarianism) are.
We cannot be drawn into the game of "which model is better." After all, that's what they are waiting for, that we will vigorously defend the communist governments and again take on the role of the pan-European bogey. Those regimes are different and incomparable. Our attitude to the past must be differentiated because the past does not fit the black-and-white pattern approach which we are being pressured to take but which shouldn't because it is our internal business and not a subject for discussion at the political level. And from the standpoint of historical science - yes, I believe that we should show fundamental differences between these systems and their ideologies without becoming romantically apologetic to one of them. The approach can be rather abstract, but it must free from ideology, there should be analysis and no deliberate attempts should be made to deliberately ignore or justify darker events from the past or the worst crimes committed by the authorities, but it also must reveal the different motivations behind their deeds.
By the way, no less important, would be analysis of differences in core values of the official cultures of the Third Reich and the USSR, among them the notions of good and evil: like how they taught small children about "what is good and what is bad", which purpose in life is considered noble, worthy, etc.. And in this area (perhaps the most significant for the overall ratings of those regimes), the differences will be absolutely enormous.
However, there is one aspect that is being continually raised at the political level - it is the matter of national responsibility for the actions of those regimes. Especially in the light of the prospects "for alternative Nuremberg" this aspect is very important.
We must show the differences and state that it is impossible to equate the responsibility of Germans for the Nazi regime and responsibility of Russians for the Soviet one as two are so greatly dissimilar. Nazi regime was based on the premise of exclusive superiority of one group over others, of the German people, while the Soviet system was internationalist in spirit, based upon supranational principle, and was built and maintained at the expense of the Russian people. These are two fundamentally different political structures with dissimilar systems of accountability, and the question who is responsible points to diametrically different directions.
The concept of totalitarianism is a useful one, but it requires constant creative adaptation on the part of its promoters. If we are to take a look at the contemporary Western society, what we'll discover is that the level of control over the consciousness of society is incomparably higher than it has been the case either in the USSR or Germany of the 1930s. The government propaganda, the solidarity based upon a common ideology, the notion of true principles or values characterize current political system. Even the notion of condemning "Communist ideology and the criminal USSR regime" is just an attempt to justify yet another totalitarian system. Though this one might of course be "really democratic".
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