If memory fades away, the law must prevail

By Vestnik Kavkaza

See the beginning http://vestnikkavkaza.net/articles/politics/34857.html

By the end of the year a bill on inadmissibility of rehabilitation and glorification of Nazism, which was developed by the Federation Council, should be presented to the State Duma. Meanwhile, the General Assembly of the UN adopted a resolution initiated by Russia, which warns about inadmissibility of glorification of Nazism and forgetting crimes committed during the Second World War. The resolution states on necessity to judge glorification of the Nazi movement which expresses in public demonstrations, erecting monuments, and so on. 120 countries voted for the resolution, three countries were against - the USA, Canada, and the Marshall Islands; 57 countries stayed neutral, including Ukraine.

“The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry undoubtedly has to consider the position even of 10 percent of the population,”  Yuri Boldyrev, People's Deputy of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, says. "Svoboda" led by xenophobes has gained now 10 percent of votes in Ukraine and entered the Parliament. Their main support, of course, comes from the Western Ukraine - Galicia and Volyn. In the Ukraine, this position is not the official position of the government, unlike in the Baltic countries. Ukraine still has the position of a part of the population, has the position of a political establishment which represents the interests of this population, but it is not the official position of the Ukrainian authorities. This already gives us hope that if those who own the media abandon their current policy, which brought the heirs of collaborators to the parliament understand that they need to act differently, we could hope that Ukrainian society will resist the wider spread of this disease - the disease of xenophobia, glorification of Nazi criminals, of portraying as heroic, in my view, a criminal organization, which I consider the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, and the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists. 

I personally know many people who have suffered at the hands of the OUN-UIA, without even being immigrants from Eastern Ukraine or Russia. I know many families who lived during the war in the region of Rovenshchina and Volyn; their families have suffered at the hands of the UIA, and the reasons for their sufferings would simply seem ridiculous to us nowadays. If they are political journalists who write about politics, willing to write a book, I could help them gather eyewitness accounts, about how it used to be, and how the OUN and UIA members killed children simply for no reason at all, only based on their suspicions. In fact, these organizations maintained a reign of terror among their own fellow citizens, among its population, in order to deprive the Soviet troops that they were fighting against, of resources and to create their own resources. The fact that they lost in the end was the result of their own activities, the result of their own mistakes, of their actions against the majority of its population. 

Our history is complex and ambiguous. I think that everyone should, and I absolutely agree with our Russian colleague, based on the decisions of the Nuremberg Tribunal, do everything to ensure that we keep our society away from xenophobic ideas, keep it in the framework of civilized relations and prevent making Nazi war criminals into heroes."

Alexander Savenkov, Deputy Chairman of the Federation Council Committee on Constitutional law, legal and judicial matters, development of civil society, thinks that “it is very important for this resolution, which is directed against the rehabilitation of Nazism against the rehabilitation of fascism, to prevent our fellow citizens, our children, from going in the streets wearing a swastika, to prevent the use of these symbols, to prevent them from raising their hands in a gesture of greeting which can only be associated with Nazism and fascism. The memory is fading, the horror of the war is fading away. If memory fades away, the law must prevail. Law is what directs the future. The Nuremberg trials, the decisions of the Nuremberg trials, served as the basis for the International Criminal Court, the International Tribunal for Uganda, Yugoslavia, and many other international institutions. This is something that in the era of nuclear weapons allows us still to live in peace.

These were not easy decisions for us. On August 8 the decision on conducting the Nuremberg trials took place, while on August 6 and 9 of 1945 bombs fell on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The position of the United States is clear. They did not need a resolution, not because it was much quieter there, but because the Second World War was not over there yet, and the Fulton speech was approaching. Churchill forgot his words, which he addressed to the supreme commander of the Soviet Union – I do not want to continue, give his surname, so as not to point at certain people, where, as was generally acknowledged, he placed the major burden of the war, using glowing terms and expressions, on the Red Army, which included both Russian and Ukrainian soldiers, as well as people of many other nationalities. 

At the moment the UN organization consists of 193 states. Russia is home to almost as many ethnic groups –there are more than 180 ethnic groups in Russia. Certainly one can eliminate the history of each ethnic group. Each nation has had its ups, its peak, its ups and downs, but Russia continues to exist. Naturally the composition of Ukraine is not homogeneous, nor is that of many other countries. Based on Russian standards, small Belgium is not proposing to divide into two, but even three countries. Spain holds a referendum on disunion. In the UK, Scotland holds a referendum on withdrawal. One can enumerate without end the issues on the current agenda. I believe that today in this world we can have endless discussions on the fundamental issues of our history, express our views, but there must be a certain standard. In my view, there are events in the history of mankind which cannot be challenged. One is the victory of the Second World War. No other nation has a victory similar to the victory of the Soviet people. There is no state that can claim that it has had such a victory."