A photography exhibition 'Ukrainian World War II' has opened in Lviv. "We organized the exhibition because of the current situation in Donbass. It looks like the Second World War is still under way. Russians are now using the same propaganda that they used then. We hear propaganda about the Russian soldier, who frees the oppressed people from the fascist junta. We hear propaganda about 'militias' who are fighting their oppressors from the Ukrainian government. These words have not been updated since the Second World War," gazeta.ua quoted the organizers of exhibiton.
However, the Scientific Director of the Russian Military-Historical Society, Professor of MGIMO (U) of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Mikhail Myagkov, reminds that "all the peoples of the USSR were fighting, all the Republics. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, it was a profound tragedy not only for the people who lived there, for the veterans, first of all, but in general for the whole world, because, probably, most countries, democratic countries, and in 1945, and at the same time in 1991, saw the USSR as a state that brought people happiness by getting rid of the fascist threat. If not for the Soviet Union, perhaps today, still in the same Germany, maybe in Greece, people would still shout Nazi slogans, raise their hands in the air, remain slaves of the Nazi Reich. The USSR as a symbol of liberation suddenly collapsed. And suddenly a lot of states appeared on this site, which claim to have their own historical knowledge, their own history."
According to the professor, "we never divide nationalities at the Academy of Sciences and the Russian Military-Historical Society. Whoever has made a worthy contribution to the liberation of, say, Europe. We liberated it all together. Today in Ukraine they are beginning to talk about Auschwitz, President Poroshenko, I think, said that Ukrainians freed Auschwitz, not the Soviet people, but Ukrainians. Why is this happening? The fact that there are many external forces, which influence the process of the historical memory’s formation. Ordinary people, veterans, would never ask such a question."
Myagkov believes that "For the external forces, overseas included, it is important to present Russia as the legal successor of the USSR, as a state which is equally responsible for the outbreak of World War II, Hitler and Russia are put on a par. It is important for them to create an image of Russia as a stranger, an outcast, which has its own history, and other states, such as Ukraine and the Baltic states have their own history of struggle, including the liberation not only of Fascism but also, as they say, from the tyranny of Stalinism. In order to do so, in order to incite people against each other, to represent Russia as an outcast, some work should be done with historical memory. At the beginning, new textbooks, new teachers, new historical concepts. It takes a generation, 20 years have passed since the collapse of the Soviet Union, and we see that, say, this same Ukraine does not perceive us as one people. In Ukraine it is said that they conducted their own war. It certainly has been a deliberate policy pursued and implemented in thought for 20 years in order to present Russia as a stranger, as a force that needs to be feared. And to be afraid, some historical research should be produced."
