Interview by Vestnik Kavkaza
The fourth international history and cultural forum of “The Great Victory Achieved by Unity” will take place in Kursk on April 29th. It will be a platform for communication between veterans, historians, politicians, experts, representatives of youth and search movements from the CIS countries, Georgia, the Baltic States, Abkhazia, and South Ossetia.
Today everybody admits that the victory in the Great Patriotic War improved the unity of nations in the victor country. And many people hope that memories about the events will help to unite them today. Nurlan Yerimbetov, the chairman of the Board of Cultural Front (Kazakhstan), told Vestnik Kavkaza about the importance of the common victory.
- What is the goal of such forums as “The Great Victory Achieved by Unity”? What is the importance of the meetings with veterans?
- We should make it clear that veterans haven’t spent their lives in vain. Unfortunately, today the war pales into insignificance in the CIS countries. Young people who grew up in years of independence in the states of the former Union don’t know much about the war. In Kazakhstan they speak only about participation of Kazakh citizens in separate battles of the Second World War. But we should speak about the Great Patriotic War. The most important thing is that veterans (there are a few of them alive today, they are older than 90 and die day by day) could see that their lives were not in vain. I meet them regularly. They feel pain that no movies are being shot about the war, no books are being written, no documentaries are being demonstrated in the post-Soviet space, as if there was no war at all.
- How is the common victory taken in Kazakhstan today in general? What is being done to preserve the common memory of the war?
- In recent 15-20 years monuments to warriors appeared in many Kazakh cities. There are councils of veterans who have access to all top structures. Their representatives speak in the parliaments, at parties’ sessions, and big forums. At the moment we see a tendency of renaming streets ahead of upcoming anniversaries. In many towns and villages streets are renamed in honor of those who fought.
However, it is important to describe the war in history textbooks. We need a strong information wave about the war, what it looked like. Today it is being interpreted in different ways. There are people in all countries, who consider the fact from the contemporary point of view, and nobody wants to look at the past. Veterans should explain clearly that they defended their native land. Kazakhstan received a great amount of migrants and refugees at that time. The Ukrainians, the Germans, the Jews, people from the Caucasus arrived to Kazakhstan, and many of them stayed there. I have many friends who say that their grandfathers – the Chechens, the Ingush, the Ukrainians, the Russians – moved to Kazakhstan.
Many people don’t know that a lot of plants, factories were founded in the war period – right there in the fields and woods, people made bombs and airplanes. 1.2 million people went to the war from Kazakhstan. Only 600 thousand came back home. Half of them died on the battlefield.
Previously children were gathered and taken to Volgogran, Kursk, Minsk, Kiev. We saw places where the war took place. We were inspired of this. We need this today.
- How can we resist falsification of history and attempts to rehabilitate Nazism?
- The attempts should be strictly suppressed. Many people want to justify their behavior by some ideology. Many of them turn fascism into neo-fascism, want to find a moral and spiritual excuse of their behavior. And they are searching for these things in history. It should be suppressed strictly. I don’t speak about executions, but they must be punished. In Moscow neo-Nazis marched on the streets with fascist flags several years ago. Soon they will appear in Kazakhstan. This is not democracy. Talks are useless in Russia, Kazakhstan, and other post-Soviet countries. The authorities should show their power.
