Yesterday's high-profile celebrations in Moscow marked the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe; there were massed ranks of Red Army veterans, flanked by swathes of red flags, marching proudly to public acclaim through Red Square. If taken together with claims by the Kremlin that it was the Red Army that freed Europe from the Nazis and President Putin’s recent remarks that the collapse of the Soviet Union was a “catastrophe”, many may conclude there is a deep nostalgia for the Soviet Union in present-day Russia. There is. But it is nothing to do with a desire to return to communism, other than among some of the elderly. The nostalgia is about the achievements of the war years. The Red Army’s defeat of Nazi Germany was the greatest and the only Russian military achievement in the 20th century. All the rest — the five-year plans, the growth in industry, in production and output, the supposed freedom brought by revolution — were lies. But the victory was real. It came at immense cost. Over 26.5 million Russians died during the war; for those who survived, it was a time of appalling endurance — starvation, flight, losing loved ones, the constant threat of annihilation. War can be a time of great bonding, and for the Russians it was. They have every right to look back on World War II with the greatest pride, even if the claims that it was the Red Army that freed Europe are somewhat exaggerated.
The presence of 50 international leaders, including President George W. Bush at the celebrations in Moscow, is a recognition of what was achieved and what was suffered by the Russian people in the war. But not everyone has joined in. The Latvian president grudgingly turned up in Moscow, while the Estonian and Lithuanian leaders deliberately stayed at home. For them, the defeat of Nazi Germany was not an escape to freedom. It was merely a change of scene in a longer tragic drama. The Red Army liberated them from Nazi occupation but then occupied them for the next half century. One brutal dictatorship was simply replaced by another.
It is difficult not to sympathize with the Baltic republics; for them, victory in Europe was freedom denied, liberty stolen. They want an apology from Moscow for what happened but President Putin is not a man to apologize. If he had his way, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania would be back under Moscow’s thumb, as would all the rest of the former Soviet Union.
No denying that Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians were initially grateful in 1945. But the Russians had no intention of leaving after 1945; the three Baltic republics were forcibly incorporated into the Soviet Union; the Russians finally left in 1991 only because the Soviet Union collapsed. (They still have not left Georgia despite Georgian demands, which is why its president was another absentee in Moscow yesterday.)
Between the Baltic republics and Russia there is today a chasm of bitterness that prevents normal relations between them. It could be the same with Iraq and Americans. The longer US-led troops remain the greater the chance that the resentment Iraqis feel will poison US-Iraqi relations long after they have left.
