No one is denying the Soviet Union’s decisive military efforts, but if you examine the language of Mr. Lavrov, he uses words like ‘liberate.’ - The real battle is over who gets the credit for the MORAL victory of liberating a continent.
To begin with: it’s irritating that the massive acts of rape and pillage which accompanied Soviet military ‘victories’ particularly west of Russia hardly gets mention. Some people have vague ideas about the ‘Rape of Berlin’ but too many German women found their memories far too difficult to rehash and keep in the spotlight of history. The estimated numbers of women affected are in the hundreds of thousands.
Secondly, the Soviet Union’s moral role can only be properly examined in light of the context of the continent *preceding* the war. If properly understood, the Soviet Union was equally responsible for inviting carnage as they were in defeating their fellow carnage-makers. Whether it was Bolshevism or National Socialism, both societies were in their own collective state of delusional, murderous psychosis. Both societies threatened to swallow up the globe with their detestable ideologies.
Finally, and most egregious of all, is the trend among disenchanted American conservatives to not only downplay our country’s role in the War, but to BLAME IT for our current state of lefty globalism. Coinciding with this is a downplaying of the Holocaust and anti-Semitic sentiments in general. When really, it’s precisely the lingering influence of Soviet (socialist) values and elements which continue to weaken the West.
Ask the Poles if they felt “liberated” by the Red Army?
Nevertheless Larov has a point. The Russians suffered by most historical consensus 12-20,000,000 casualties in less than four years of war and huge amount of material destruction. There is no question that the Nazi regime was evil in philosophy and deed. America was righteous to play a huge role in its destruction. However whatever motivated the average Soviet serviceman and despite the vile nature of communism and their leaders, the sacrifices and deeds they performed in monumental battles that few in the West are know, their efforts were instrumental in the defeat of Nazi Germany.
The tragedy that most conservatives are beginning to realize is that Europe including Russia lost forever from 1914-1945 its best virile genetic stock. Combine those losses with post war widespread birth control, abortion and neo pagan social decadence, it is no mystery why their culture is collapsing and they are being overrun and supplanted by aggressive culturally alien migrants.
The rape of Berlin happened. But no more than what the nazis did in the east with massive sexual humiliation followed by a bullet to the head beside a ditch.
Always weird to hear the Sturm und Drang about the sexual abuse of women in Berlin after the behavior of the nazi army in the east for the 3 years prior.
It’s a bitch to get done to you what you did to others i guess.
The Soviets lost 20 million people in WWII and that doesn’t include the millions more wounded and injured and the massive property damage. They would not have the Marshall Plan (nor should they have) to rebuild. They would rape Eastern Europe for resources.
The incomprehensible damage done to the Soviets is the context for their subsequent actions.
My German wife lost her father on the Eastern Front and two uncles, one at Normandy and one captured by the Soviets never to be heard from again, one of a million German prisoners who were used to rebuild the Soviet Union dying in captivity. My wife was 3 years old when the war ended.
The generations of Europeans that grew up in the post- war era had their world views shaped by their experiences during that period. Fortunately, we did not experience that level of destruction with the possible exception of the South after the Civil War. IMO the growth of big government and socialism found fertile ground in these devastated countries.