Last Saturday’s parade in Moscow, commemorating the 70th anniversary of the defeat of the Nazis in Europe, also served as a reminder of a less auspicious outcome of the World War II: the Cold War that pitted the allies against one another.
Although the festivities in Moscow were attended by an impressive array of dignitaries, including the Presidents of China, India, Egypt and South Africa, the West was generally represented at the ambassadorial level in a snub intended to remind Putin of the cost of machinations in Ukraine.
The only Western leader who felt obliged to pay her respects was the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, who turned up to lay a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, acknowledging the enormous Soviet sacrifice in defeating Adolf Hitler. Ms Merkel also used the occasion to berate Russia for “the criminal annexation of Crimea and the war in eastern Ukraine”.
President Putin was relatively conciliatory, telling Ms Merkel: “We do face some problems today, but the sooner we can end their impact on our relations, the better it will be.” He also couldn’t resist a barb at the US for its “attempts to set up a unipolar world order”. The scale of the parade marking Victory Day was no doubt intended to underline Russia’s claim to superpower status. The fact that such displays of lethal hardware are still considered an acceptable means of underlining a nation’s clout is a sad reflection on the world.
But Russia is hardly the only culprit in this regard, and it could easily be argued that military parades are preferable to battlefield deployment of weaponry, which is the means the US chooses to demonstrate its prowess. Russian actions in Ukraine, meanwhile, are easy to deplore, but surely deserve to be viewed in the broader context of Western-backed regime change in Kiev, as well as Moscow’s apprehensions about the eastwards expansion of Nato. Much the same could be claimed in respect of the controversies that continue to swirl around the Soviet role in the Second World War. For instance, it is not unusual to come across the claim that whereas the Red Army was undoubtedly instrumental in defeating Hitler, the Soviets also bear some responsibility for enabling Hitler to launch the conflict.
This argument centres around the infamous Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. It is not an argument that can be easily disregarded. But again, the context matters: it is all too often forgotten that the reprehensible pact followed unsuccessful efforts by Moscow to form an alliance with nations like Britain and France. Had those efforts not been rebuffed, who can say what effect it might have had on Nazi plans? As things panned out, Hitler was able to overrun much of western Europe before launching an attack in the east.
Operation Barbarossa took Joseph Stalin by surprise: he had ignored reports from Soviet spies about an imminent invasion. As a result, the Germans faced little resistance and overran vast swaths of the USSR.
Another aspect of the conflict that is unpleasant for Russians is that nationalist groups in several constituents of the USSR collaborated with the Nazis, seeing them as allies against Russian hegemony. In some of the post-Soviet states, not least Ukraine, there is a tendency to celebrate these nationalists as heroes. Yet another aspect of the war that tends to be overlooked is the fact that, despite entreaties from Moscow, the US and Britain delayed opening a second front in Europe until June 1944. By then the tide had turned in the east and the West was keen to beat the Red Army in the race to Berlin. They didn’t succeed.
It is not uncommon for the Red Army’s role as a liberation force to be weighed against its repressive inclinations in eastern Europe thereafter, but post-war Western machinations in countries like Italy and, perhaps most notably, Greece are rarely mentioned. Who can say whether a sizeable contingent of Western leaders led by President Obama might have helped to break the ice in Moscow last week, but it may well come to be seen as a wasted opportunity. When asked about the boycott, President Putin responded: “Everyone we wanted to see was here.” His churlishness is unsurprising, but it does not augur well.
By arrangement with Dawn
