The USSR invaded Eastern Europe calling it “liberation” – Russia is repeating the same crime in Ukraine

By: Sergei Lebedev / The Guardian
Translation: Telegrafi.com

We often hear that Russia’s inability or unwillingness to confront the crimes of the past has led to the return of tyranny and military aggression that we see today. Such a narrative usually focuses only on internal Soviet actions: forced collectivization, the Great Terror of the 30s, the gulag system, and the like. Some of these things were nominally recognized as crimes, but no effort was made to bring the perpetrators to justice. Democrats of the perestroika era in Russia were generally opposed to transitional justice.

However, the most sensitive political crime of the Soviet Union is almost always left out of the discussion. And Russia's failure to confront this particular crime is far more dangerous and affects the fate of many nations.

Read also from Sergei Lebedev: If Russia has a future, it must become another state

This crime is the Soviet occupation of Central and Eastern Europe, which lasted for decades and resulted in many deaths and arrests, the destruction of social and cultural life, and the denial of freedom. The injustice was extraordinary.

Internal Soviet crimes, which went unpunished, were at least legally acknowledged and their victims commemorated. But external aggression and occupation were not. Even Russian dissidents and liberals did not dare to address the issue.

This is why, with regard to Central and Eastern Europe, there are two concepts of memory and history that usually cannot coexist, but clash and contradict each other. They are completely opposite and cannot be reconciled through diplomacy: Soviet liberation versus Soviet occupation.

Only after Soviet troops finally withdrew from Eastern and Central Europe, 45 years after the end of World War II, did true liberation occur – when the Soviet Union collapsed and the occupied nations found their way to independence. But it was easier to restore or create statehood and independence than to achieve sovereignty over historical memory.

The progressive image of the Soviet Union in its final days, the high hopes of the moment, protected Moscow from serious criticism and accusations of invading Eastern Europe. This restraint was the result of an excess of confidence or, perhaps, simply of cautious pragmatism – the desire not to irritate Moscow and not to undermine its goodwill, not to overburden the loser of the Cold War. But the most important protection that Moscow enjoyed was, of course, its status as the victor over Nazism.

Russia, as the self-proclaimed successor state of the USSR, has built its international political profile on the myth of Soviet liberation, which gives it moral capital and imposes on the formerly occupied territories a debt of gratitude for the "liberation" from Nazism.

Yes, Soviet losses were real. And yet, it is truly tragic that these losses helped subjugate nations that yearned for freedom, replacing one dictatorship with another. The Soviet soldier, immortalized in the statues that still dot the European landscape from Berlin to Sofia, was not a liberator. He was an enslaver. And no amount of blood shed by the Soviets to defeat the Nazis can justify their role as occupiers.

It is no coincidence that the Soviets were reluctant to even acknowledge the existence of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. In modern Russia, any comparison between the role of the USSR and the Nazis is condemned. In 1939 and 1940, the Soviet Union invaded Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, as well as parts of Poland, Finland, and Romania. For 22 months, it was a loyal ally of Nazi Germany. This first wave of Soviet invasions cannot be disguised as a “war against Nazism”: it showed the true intent of the Soviets. What followed was, in effect, a geographically expanded reconquest. This was a separate goal of the war, not necessarily related to defeating the Nazis.

Unfortunately, the recognition of the Soviet occupation as a crime has not become an essential part of modern European history. It remains geographically limited to the East, obscured, underrepresented; it is part of the histories of individual nations, but does not constitute a powerful shared international narrative on the continent. Yet this understanding has a profound impact on modern European life and is key to Europe’s security. Only when you fully understand the cruelty and consequences of the Soviet occupation can you understand the concerns of Russia’s closest neighbors, their fears based on history and their need for security.

The eastern regions of Ukraine are now occupied by Russian troops. For the first time since 1989, large areas of the European continent, home to millions of people, are under the control of an occupying state. But it seems that many Europeans have already forgotten what occupation means.

Russian citizenship is being imposed on them by force. In fact, this is a scheme of mass expulsion, because those who disagree will be treated as foreigners and forced to leave. Russia is following the same path as the USSR, for example towards the Baltic states, aiming to Russify the occupied region, change its national composition and incorporate it into its own state structure.

Properties are being confiscated and redistributed. New “residents” are being brought in to form the backbone of the occupying regime. Memory policies are being overturned, monuments marking Soviet crimes are disappearing, streets are being given Soviet names as a symbol of Russian domination. All of this is part of an attack on national identity, an attempt to erase it.

Russia's state security services make extensive use of filtering techniques, and anyone deemed politically suspicious can end up in prison. Severe torture and sexual violence are widespread. Ukrainian prisoners of war who have been released report the same methods of torture, mistreatment, and deliberate starvation to break them physically and mentally.

Anyone who knows the history behind the Iron Curtain immediately recognizes this pattern. All of this was a grim reality for Poland and Lithuania, East Germany, Romania and others. Mass deportations, brutal rule by the secret police, denial of property and civil rights… but it never became a real stain on the USSR or, later, on Russia. It never became something for which a nation feels ashamed, something that demands justice and retribution, acceptance and reparation.

And here we are today: the invader is back. And the invader fights exactly as the Soviets did.

Vladimir Putin's army has a formidable advantage over Western armies, which have invested heavily in protecting their troops. It can withstand losses that would be completely unacceptable to any Western country. But it is also technologically advanced enough to rival Western military technology.

Western science was the first to “droneify” war, minimizing the involvement of troops in the field and using machines for new tasks. Putin’s army, in addition to using real drones, also droneifies human beings. It has turned soldiers into disposable units.

With Russia's large-scale invasion, we have entered a new era: a global shift in the moral climate. Just as an earthquake can have worldwide repercussions, or a volcanic eruption can pollute the skies over several continents, Russia's aggression is changing the political climate on a global scale.

This is another very real, but not yet fully recognized, consequence of the war. It is perhaps the most far-reaching of all the consequences. With thousands of troops sent into battle and killed by Ukrainians defending their country, Putin is not simply taking a few pieces of Ukrainian territory – he is eroding the global political landscape, shaking alliances, wearing out the patience of voters in NATO countries, and dragging us down into the hell of moral relativism.

What can be done?

Western and Southwestern Europe, which never faced the reality of the Soviet occupation, must now pay attention to the voices of those who experienced it firsthand.

It is difficult to say whether Russia will be held accountable for its crimes against Ukraine in the near future. But to build a future – a real future – it is essential to develop a cultural and historical concept that counters Russia’s attempt to divide and rule.

At the initiative of Václav Havel, Joachim Gauck and other prominent dissidents, August 23 – the date of the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact – is the EU Day of Remembrance for the Victims of Stalinism and Nazism, otherwise known as Black Ribbon Day. The meaning of this day can and should be deepened to include a broader perspective on Russian imperialism, which was part of Soviet communist policy, but which has survived.

We need to make this day a focal point for a long-term and coordinated memory policy, to strengthen existing institutions, such as the European Network of Remembrance and Solidarity (ENRS), which includes mainly Eastern European countries. We also need to build new institutions, across continents, to counter the narratives, both left and right, that still continue to justify Russia.

The USSR collapsed because its artificial unity was maintained by violence and oppression. The EU's sustainability depends on the sustainability of its voluntary unity. But unity is not guaranteed. It is the product of mutual recognition and compassion, of the many cultural bridges that connect people.

The time has come to start construction. /Telegraph/