By Vestnik Kavkaza
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. It requires legal punishment for using Nazi and similar symbols, signs, the form of greeting, wearing Nazi uniform. The maximum punishment will be 2 years in prison. 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.
“This resolution is perhaps of a temporary nature, with certain periodicity it is adopted by the General Assembly of the UN, but the position of Ukraine remains unchanged. When in 2010 Ukraine also abstained along with Moldova and Georgia - yes, it was unpleasant. But when it is 2012 and Ukraine has not yet changed its position, as we say, it shows a trend,” Alexander Savenkov, Deputy Chairman of the Federation Council on Constitutional law, legal and judicial matters, development of civil society, states. “The Second World War ended with the verdict of the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal. It is the legal basis on which we ought to build all our future attitudes to Nazism, fascism, to everything that was done at that time. We should never forget the fact that World War II was waged based on an idea, which previously had never existed in the world ever. There were wars, which were aimed at capturing territories, seizing economies, plundering resources, after all even at capturing and enslaving people. But no other war before had started with the aim of eliminating other nations, with the aim of creating a mono-ethnic state. Our brother Slavs, first of all, from Ukraine and Belarus and many other Slavic peoples were not included at all in the group of people who were to be provided with at least a tolerable future. The world order, established as a result of the Second World War Yalta and the Potsdam conference, is today immutably accepted generally by everyone.
At the London Conference in the preparation of the statute and regulations of the International Military Tribunal, which then took place in Nuremberg, the issue of the inadmissibility not just of the glorification of Nazism, but even of propaganda of Nazism during the actual Nuremberg trials was discussed. I am far from thinking that the Ukrainian people, who had lost at least 8 million of their countrymen, have forgotten the Doha, Sobibor and the rest. 18 million passed through the German concentration camps. 11 million never came back from there.
The verdict of the Nuremberg Tribunal was read from September 30 to October 1, 1946. Throughout years there have been attempts to rewrite history. But no one at the time supported the idea of rewriting the Nuremberg verdict. If today there is a need to protect the peace that exists on Earth for so long by historical standards, it is necessary to protect it.
After World War I there were serious questions about German militarism and imperialism. Five countries attempted to create an International Military Tribunal regarding the leadership of Germany at the time - it has not worked. They continued to try until 1920. In 1933, we got what later became known as Nazism and fascism. The Nuremberg trials, the Nuremberg Tribunal verdict, allows us even today to maintain peace on the planet, even though it is fragile and not very popular with some people. There is shooting on Earth every day, every day there are armed conflicts. Therefore, we believe that if during the celebration of the 65th anniversary of our common victory in the Great Patriotic War and the Second World War overall, and it was our common victory of the Soviet people and the Ukrainian people, along with other nations of the former Soviet Union and all the countries of the anti-Hitler coalition.
Therefore, in fact a group of members of the Federation Council has not only initiated a bill on the inadmissibility of glorification of fascism or Naz rehabilitation. This also has a history. It was in Kiev in 2010 that an international organization "World Against Nazism" was established. This year Ukrainian representatives, on October 9 in the framework of PACE, sat at the first international conference of the organization. There we had no disputes.”
“There are two Ukraines,” Yuri Boldyrev, People's Deputy of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, explains. “There is a big Ukraine, in which the absolute majority of people think almost in the same way as Russians do, and there is the Western Ukraine, especially Galicia and Volyn, where the social basis of collaborationism is presented differently, similar to the Baltic states. So the position of the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry to me as a Ukrainian citizen is quite clear. The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry cannot ignore in its work the views of at least, if we are 46 million, the views of 10 percent of the population. If we teach our children and grandchildren as to whether the victory in World War II and the consequences deriving from it brought advantages to our people or disadvantages, not based on the pragmatism of modern historians, but on the stories of the people who actually experienced these events, I think that everything will be OK with the education of young people. Another problem is that nowadays in the mass media and popular art, unfortunately, there is a different trend, as they say now. I've seen movies that are shot here in Ukraine on the theme of the struggle between the Ukrainian Insurgent Army and the Soviet regime. For me it was very educational to watch these movies, though, frankly, I could not help feeling disgusted from the first to the very last scene, because I saw quite decent people, modern actors, not all of them, perhaps even sharing the beliefs of collaborators and xenophobes, playing various roles there. They played heroically-portrayed Waffen SS officers and members of the UIA or played its opponents portrayed as cowards. I think that all of them, in fact, bear a great moral responsibility for the acts they commit. It is alarming and distressing that society is losing its immunity, but it always happens. When memories fade away, the immunity disappears as well, people no longer perceive the tragedy of the past as an important tragedy.”
To be continued
