On January 29, 2025, the Valdai Club hosted an expert discussion dedicated to historical memory in the context of the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz by Soviet troops.
Anton Bespalov, the moderator of the discussion, noted that although Nazism was defeated by the joint efforts of the West and the East, with the Soviet Union playing a decisive role, this fact has apparently become inconvenient for the Western consciousness. “In recent years, the narrative has been spreading in the West that World War II was a conflict between democracy and totalitarianism. The role of the Soviet Union in this picture is becoming less and less important,” he said. Moreover, in Poland, where the former Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz is located, a systematic policy is being carried out of displacing the memory of the role of the Red Army in the victory over Nazism from the public consciousness.
“Western politicians, experts and journalists are rewriting history for short-term political purposes,” said Jean-Pierre Page, a French writer and trade union activist. The anti-Russian hysteria demonstrates extreme disrespect for the millions of Soviet soldiers who sacrificed their lives to liberate Europe. Now, the majority of French respondents believe that the United States played the main role in the victory over Nazi Germany. In 2020, France did not invite Russia to its Victory Day celebrations, and the USSR was not even mentioned. “What will they say in a few years? That the Soviet Union and Stalin started this war?” Page asked. It is no coincidence that the European Parliament adopted a resolution putting Nazism and Communism on the same level in order to erase traces of real history and create a new unified historical narrative – an “alternative truth.” This means that we are approaching a point of no return, beyond which it will be impossible to fulfil the duty of memory, the French writer said.
Yuri Kanner, President of the Russian Jewish Congress, called for people to listen to one another and find common ground with them if we want them to accept our vision and listen to us, because all people and all nations have different historical memories. The difference in perceptions of the Holocaust in Western Europe and in the USSR is an example of this. If in Europe there were deportations and concentration camps, then in the USSR there were executions. This explains the special strategies of memorialisation and the dissemination of knowledge.
Alexey Miller, Professor at the European University in St. Petersburg, Academic Director of the Centre for the Study of Cultural Memory and Symbolic Politics, objected that dialogue works at the individual level, but loses its resonance when it comes to the politics of memory. As an example, he cited the formula about the liberation of Auschwitz by “allied troops”, which has become common in the European media in recent years. “If we try to talk with any person from any country on an individual level about the memory of the Holocaust and other controversial issues, we will be able to understand each other. But where politicians, political structures and organisations operate, decisions are made that make the parties deaf to each other,” Miller is convinced. In his opinion, against the backdrop of the collapse of the world order, the foundations of global historical memory are also collapsing. Accordingly, all that remains is to wait for the disappeared space for dialogue to reappear.
Maria Pavlova, Senior Researcher at the Baltic Sea Region Integrated Research Group, IMEMO RAS, called the metamorphoses of Polish memory policy very indicative. In preparation for joining the EU, Poland had to accept the pan-European consensus on the Holocaust as Europe’s common guilt, but it quickly turned out that this narrative was both unpleasant and inconvenient for Eastern European countries. In response, they began to put forward their alternative version of the peoples of Eastern Europe as the main victims, “suffering under Soviet occupation.” This made it possible to whitewash the names of the peoples and countries in question, especially against the backdrop of the publication of documents on Eastern European collaborationism that was taking place at the time. The next stage of this process could mean placing responsibility for the Holocaust on the USSR, Pavlova suggested.
The Valdai Discussion Club was established in 2004. It is named after Lake Valdai, which is located close to Veliky Novgorod, where the Club’s first meeting took place.
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