How Russian Kids Are Taught World War II

Moscow Times ^ | 2017 | Ola Cichowlas

[CondoleezzaProtege]

From Kaliningrad to Vladivostok, Russian schoolchildren are preparing for the most important holiday of the year: Victory Day. Commemorated with a grand military parade on Moscow’s Red Square every May 9, the Soviet Union’s defeat of Nazi Germany has long been used by authorities to rally support for the state. And it starts in school.

In September 2016, three history textbooks were sanctioned by the Ministry of Education, all of which gloss over Stalin’s crimes and his initial alliance with Nazi Germany. “My main issue with the textbooks is that they do not reveal the whole truth,” says historian and teacher Leonid Katsva.

What is still unclear is who decides which book should be used in the classroom. “Is it the teacher, the school director or the city? I asked this question to the Moscow city government many times and received no answer,” says Abalov.

Most schools across the country have sided with one of them, published by Prosveshenie, whose retelling of the war focuses almost exclusively on the heroic aspects of the Soviet war effort.

The pact was defensive!

For Russians, World War II began—not in 1939 as it did for the rest of the world—but in 1941. What happened before, and the Soviet Union’s role in it, has stirred emotions and denial in Russia. The most controversial moment, which the Kremlin traditionally does not emphasize, is the Molotov–Ribbentrop “non-aggression” pact between the USSR and Nazi Germany.

Putin has made contradictory statements about the pact. He struck a conciliatory tone in 2009 when he spoke in Gdansk in Poland, saying the Russian parliament had condemned the pact. Six years later, in a meeting with Germany’s Angela Merkel, Putin said the pact “made sense for ensuring the security of the Soviet Union.”

[rxh4n1]

“The world’s Great Powers permitted self-determination for Poland and the Baltics to separate from Russia, but not for Belarus and Ukraine.”

The Great Powers had no say in what was happening in the new Soviet Union. Blaming the Russians alone for Soviet action is mendacious and distorting history. Bolshevism was an international movement that suppressed al the national movement they couldn’t exploit. In fact, Russian nationalism was suppressed harder than the others.

[Dr. Franklin]

Citing Woodrow Wilson on this forum is not a way to win friends here or convince anyone. You must not pay much attention. Wilson is one the most despised presidents here. Stirring up the nationalities was a huge blunder by Wilson. There were always going to be some that would feel slighted and shortchanged and look to get even, and many of them did.

I noted that Wilson's plan to limit Poland's borders to Polish ethnic lands, mostly the old Kingdom of Poland, while denying other ethnic groups in the old Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth the right to choose to Bolshevik Russia was a disaster which led to millions starving to death in the Soviet Union and led to Stalin allying with Hitler to wipe Poland off the map of Europe. You alleged that interwar Poland was an illegitimate state because its Eastern provinces had many non-ethnic Poles, and then I noted that those populations were never asked to affirm to which state they wished to join, which is ethnic self-determination of peoples. The Versailles regime collapsed because it failed to created nations large enough to defend themselves from their larger neighbors. That is a criticism of Wilson, not an endorsement. I merely pointed out the hypocrisy of allowing some states to leave Russia but not others.

Harvard historian Robert Howard Lord, (back when Harvard was a respectable university) attended the Versailles Peace Conference and strongly recommended that the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth be recreated along its former boundaries. He was on the Joint Commission on Polish and Czechoslovak Affairs and on the subcommittee on the Cieszyn region and the future eastern border of Poland. Lord was an expert on the partitions of Poland and was the first foreigner to gain access to Kremlin archives on those events. The Allies feared further weakening Russia, and therefore weakened Poland and condemned the people of Ukraine and Belarus to live under Communism. They didn't get a vote on that. Since many, in fact, voted with their feet and fought for Poland and Pilsudski's dream to reestablish the old Commonwealth, your claim that Poland's borders were somehow illegitimate is without any factual support from the local population. Even in WWII, many non-ethnic Poles attempted to join the Polish Army which Stalin formed from the Soviet prisoner camps. There were Ukrainian nationalists who wanted an independent state, but even they preferred life in Poland to life under communism.

[Dr. Franklin]

The Great Powers had no say in what was happening in the new Soviet Union. Blaming the Russians alone for Soviet action is mendacious and distorting history. Bolshevism was an international movement that suppressed al the national movement they couldn’t exploit. In fact, Russian nationalism was suppressed harder than the others.

The Allies actively intervened in the Russian Revolution November 7, 1917 to May 20, 1925. That's 7 years, 4 months, 1 week and 1 day. It's well known: Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War. One of the reasons that intervention was not more successful was that Polish Field Marshal Josef Piłsudski declined to support the White Russians, thinking the Bolsheviks would prove weaker. The Allies by the Versailles treaties determined Poland's borders, and declined to support a restoration of the boundaries of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Depriving the Bolsheviks of the food supply and lands of Ukraine and Belarus would have greatly hindered their movement, but it was the Allies who let them keep those lands.

Russia was the largest state of the old Soviet Union, and Russians were its largest ethnic group. From those facts they were the group most responsible for Soviet conduct domestically and its foreign policy, even if other ethnic groups participated or its leaders came from smaller ethnic groups. The Russians who did nothing to stop the communists should be judged much the same as the "good Germans" who acquiesced to Hitler's wars and crimes against humanity. That argument is neither mendacious nor distorting history.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks Dr. Franklin

[dennisw]

“Why aren’t you upset about the rampant neo-Nazism in modern-day Ukraine....”

Because there is none. You believe that Putin propaganda, you are nuts. You are clinical. There are more aspiring Nazis in Russia.

[dennisw]

You know your history.

[dennisw]

Stalin wasn’t stalling

[bert]

You are the epidemy of the gullible ignorati. By thinking you were getting your licks in opposing Biden, you consumed the Putin propaganda effort purposely aimed directly at those who will believe any thing.

[Kazan]

What are you babbling about?

It's you and your fellow Zeepers obsessed with Russia and have support the globalist attempts to push us into a conflict with Russia.

I'd be thrilled not to hear anything about Russia. But, Zeepers certainly will keep posting articles here assuring Russia is a prime subject being discussed.

[Kazan]

Because there is none

This is where Zeeper lies come to die:

Commentary: Ukraine’s neo-Nazi problem

The Hill: Congress bans arms to Ukraine militia linked to neo-Nazis

Hundreds of Ukrainian nationalists march in honor of Nazi collaborator

Israeli ambassador bemoans glorification of Ukrainian leader

KIEV, Ukraine (AP) — The Israeli ambassador to Ukraine has sharply criticized local legislators’ move to honor a Ukrainian nationalist leader.

Ambassador Joel Lion said on Facebook that he was “shocked’ to see the regional legislature in Lviv in western Ukraine declare 2019 “the year of Stepan Bandera” to mark the 110th anniversary of his birth.

Bandera was a leader of Ukraine’s nationalist movement, which included an insurgent army that for one period sided with the Nazis during World War II. Jewish groups have linked Bandera’s followers to the mass murders of Jews.

Lion said “I can’t understand how the glorification of those directly involved in horrible anti-Semitic crimes helps fight anti-Semitism and xenophobia.” The ambassador that “Ukraine shouldn’t forget those crimes committed against Ukrainian Jews and in no way celebrate them through honoring their perpetrators.”

[dennisw]

delulu

[rxh4n1]

“The Allies actively intervened in the Russian Revolution November 7, 1917 to May 20, 1925”

Don’t exaggerate. 1918-1919 in the west and until 1922 in the Far East. This had little effect on the eventual outcome and where the borders finally settled.

Did you copy and paste most of this? Looks like it. Another fraudster from the Ukraine.

[rxh4n1]

This is the problem with your bloody ethnic feuds. You nationalists nurse ancient grievances and there’s so much back and forth that youy’ve forgotten where it all started. Just leve your filth back in the old country. We don’t want it here.

[dennisw]

This is the problem with your bloody ethnic feuds. You nationalists nurse ancient grievances and there’s so much back and forth that youy’ve forgotten where it all started. Just leve your filth back in the old country. We don’t want it here.

I and others can sort out ethnic feuds. Not everyone is as dumb as you. The basics are that Russia invaded Ukraine, Not the other way around. Or how about Sunni vs Shia? These squabbles are easy to sort out.

[x]

It wasn’t just a non-aggression pact. It was also a plan to divide up Eastern Europe. I certainly can fault Stalin for signing that.

[rxh4n1]

What a pantload. Ukes and Russkies, Serbs and Croats, Romanians and Hungarians, Greeks and Turks, and more. Bunch of bloodthirsty cretins. It’s all the same. You’re all wanting to cut each others throats.

[dennisw]

You want to ignore the chaotic feuding outside world, but the world does not ignore you. Years ago the wars in Yugoslavia mystified me. Until I sat down for 30 minutes and read the history.

[rxh4n1]

We had no business there whatsoever. They’ve been going at it for hundreds of years. Ths is America. We have people from hundreds of ethnicities and cultures. We don’t want your nasty European feuds here. But you, you can’t let them go. Says a lot about you.

[bert]

There are no zeepers. There are only the deluded thoughts of gullible nothings

[Dr. Franklin]

I and others can sort out ethnic feuds. Not everyone is as dumb as you. The basics are that Russia invaded Ukraine, Not the other way around. Or how about Sunni vs Shia? These squabbles are easy to sort out.

This is not an ethnic feud. It's about Putin's revanchism: his refusal to recognize that Ukraine is ethnically, and politically distinct from Russia. It's part of Putin's larger problem with revanchism in Belarus and Georgia, and his desire to restore the Soviet Union, which Reagan called the "Evil Empire". Revanchism is the opposite of ethnic hatred, became it refuses to recognize that a separate ethnic group exists. According to Putin, there are no Ukrainians, just "Little Russians".