History can confuse, disturb, provoke defensive reflexes. It can illuminate, hurt and be misused to relativize. For example, when did World War II begin? In Germany, the answer is clear: It began on September 1, 1939, with the invasion of Poland by the Wehrmacht. In Russia, on the other hand, the “Great Patriotic War” only began in June 1941 with “Operation Barbarossa”, the German attack on the Soviet Union. If you want to understand the difference, you have to ask a second question: What led to World War II?
Particularly in Eastern Europe and the Baltic States, the answer is: the Hitler-Stalin Pact of August 23, 1939, signed in Moscow by the Foreign Minister of the “Third Reich”, Joachim von Ribbentrop, and his counterpart from the Soviet Union, Vyacheslav Molotov. It was a non-aggression treaty that allowed Hitler to invade western Poland while Stalin invaded eastern Poland 16 days later.
The allies then met in the center of the country for a joint victory parade. Between 1939 and 1941, Wehrmacht and Red Army soldiers murdered around 200,000 Polish civilians. In addition, the pact gave Stalin unhindered access to Finland, Estonia and Latvia.
In Russia, where Stalin is now more popular than a Mikhail Gorbachev, August 23, 1939 is largely ignored. Stalin had defeated Hitler, the Red Army had liberated Europe from fascism, more than 20 million Soviet citizens had been murdered by the Nazis: this triad shapes official historiography. The fact that the veterans of the Red Army were both victims and perpetrators, victors and occupiers does not penetrate the consciousness. No disgrace should be stronger than pride.
This pride must not be endangered, not by the Gulag, the Great Terror, the “purges”, the Holodomor – the famine caused by Stalin that killed millions of Ukrainians – the suffering of the Crimean Tatars. Nor must it be endangered by the crimes of the Soviet occupation regime. For many peoples beyond the Iron Curtain, in Moscow’s sphere of influence, the victory over National Socialism was followed by another, the communist dictatorship. National Socialism and Communism proved to be the formative European totalitarianisms of the 20th century.
A pan-European culture of remembrance must include all victims of the two totalitarian regimes. Therefore, in April 2009, the European Parliament declared August 23 to be the “European Day of Remembrance for the Victims of Stalinism and National Socialism” with a large majority. The founding document is the “Prague Declaration on European Conscience and Communism”. It was signed in June 2008 by several European politicians, including Joachim Gauck, Vaclav Havel and Vytautas Landsbergis.
The commemoration day is celebrated in the Baltic States, Bulgaria, Croatia, Poland, Hungary and Slovenia. In Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic, the denial, approval or justification of communist crimes is punishable, analogous to the German Holocaust denial ban.
In Germany, on the other hand, the fear of relativizing the crimes of one’s own history by parallelizing Stalinism and National Socialism continues to dominate. But August 23 as a day of remembrance neither calls into question the singularity of the Holocaust, nor does it supersede January 27 as “International Day of Remembrance for the Victims of the Holocaust”.
Russia is hiding the date, which commemorates the temporary cooperation between Hitler and Stalin, out of concern for national pride. Germany is hardly more open about it – out of concern about the accusation of wanting to relativize the Holocaust. The bitter irony of history is that this involuntary interaction loses sight of the dignity of the victims of Soviet communism. But that’s a shame.
