“Stalin let many thousands of troops lay where the fell, unburied. Rather than giving them a burial, he planted trees around them.”
Today, in modern Russia, there are groups that go around to WW2 battlefields that search for, find, and bury the remains of Russians that died there. They have published videos of it on Youtube for several years now.
Some of their artifact finds are astonishing. And occasionally, some of them get killed by unearthing unexploded munitions.
I remember seeing that on TV. That was the first I had learned of it and it was very sad. I had read that Stalin didn’t let the German dead stay buried. After the war he had them all dug up and put into mass unmarked graves. And true to his leftist communist bastard self, he didn’t have the decency to have his own troops buried. They gave their lives for him, and like a true leftist, he didn’t give a damn. They served their purpose and the Stalin’s State survived to murder millions more.
UXO, unexploded ordnance, is an issue throughout Europe. We were in Paris last year and there was a news item about a big bomb or shell being found at a construction site. They have trained people around to deal with it in a way we simply do not, it’s just part of public works.
That was a theme in one of Martin Cruz Smith's more recent novels, Stalin's Ghost. (I like the Arkady Renko stories.)
Few days ago Novaya Gazeta had an article about present day Russians honoring the fallen WW2 soldiers. In this one raion of Orlov oblast 20,000 Red Army soldiers had died, 18000 of them were never found. The graves that do exist are in a terrible shape. Some renovations have been made over the years but they fall apart as people start stealing metal to resell it. When the journalist talks to the local official about the state of these graves, the official is displeased with these uncomfortable questions, especially before the holiday (9th May).
In all, a very sad article.