The preservation of the common historical memory of the peoples of the post-Soviet space about the Great Victory as the achievement of all nationalities of the USSR is of fundamental importance, the multinationality of Victory in the Great Patriotic War must be remembered by all whose ancestors defeated Nazism on May 9, 1945. The director of the Institute of Political Studies Sergei Markov and the Scientific Director of the Russian Military-Historical Society, Professor of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia Mikhail Myagkov said, speaking with the correspondents of Vestnik Kavkaza.
Sergei Markov stressed that the preservation of the historical memory of the multinationality of the Great Victory is, first of all, an expression of respect for grandfathers and great-grandfathers, who accomplished this feat. "It was a great feat. Let me remind you that people in the rear often worked under very difficult conditions, for example, my father at the age of 14 sometimes lived in the workshop for two weeks, because the output could not be stopped," he said.
The common memory unites people. "And today people in Georgia, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan remember their grandfathers and grandmothers who participated in this universal feat. When we talk about unity, we express respect for the people living today. And thereby strengthen the modern friendship between the peoples. It also helps to protect the history from fraud," Sergey Markov added.
Mikhail Myagkov also pointed to the importance of memory about the multinationality of the Great Victory for Russia. "Today it is especially important to say that the Great Victory in the war against the Nazis was achieved by all the peoples of the USSR who fought against the enemy. If every people remembers the contribution that its ancestors made to the victory over Nazism, we can avoid many misunderstandings and conflicts on national grounds," the historian stressed.
The Scientific Director of the Russian Military-Historical Society explained that the Nazis had a plan to disunite the peoples of the USSR in the first place in order to defeat them one by one. "Undoubtedly, they worked in this direction, both their intelligence and counterintelligence. There was an attempt to create national groups of Russians, Ukrainians, and various peoples of the Caucasus - but these plans were not implemented," he said.
"The Russian flag above the Reichstag was raised by the Russian Mikhail Egorov and the Georgian Meliton Kantaria, but Berlin was taken by representatives of many nationalities. Our Soviet International was based on real mutual assistance between peoples and respect of one nation to another. We did not have a sense of superiority of one nation over another - and today it should serve as an example of how we should live in the modern world," Mikhail Myagkov summed up.
