Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-05-11-Speech-3-138"
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"en.20050511.16.3-138"2
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".
Mr President, individual nations had very different experiences of the Second World War, and so the debate we are holding today is perhaps the most important debate on European identity that has been held for years. If we genuinely wish to join together to form a single European spiritual community, we must all endeavour to gain a full understanding of the historical experiences of Europe’s nations. In order to do so, there are certain issues about which we must speak quite frankly.
The resolution to mark the 60th anniversary of the end of the war has come about as a result of a hard-won compromise, and on the whole it is an accurate portrayal of the consequences of the war. What is missing, however, is any reference to the link that exists between the start and the end of the war, or to the views on the war that are currently being touted in Russia. Munich and the partition of Czechoslovakia were Hitler’s first acts of aggression, but there is no denying that the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was the real call to war. Poland fell victim to the cooperation between the Third Reich and the USSR in September 1939, and this was followed by Germany’s invasions of Norway, Denmark, Belgium, Holland, Luxembourg, France, Yugoslavia and Greece, as well as by the Soviet invasions of Finland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. Stalin did not join the Allies in their fight against Germany of his own free will. In fact, quite the opposite is true, as he refused to cooperate with France and Great Britain. It was only after Hitler’s attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941 that he secured the assistance of the British and the Americans by entering into a new coalition, which was ultimately to defeat the Third Reich.
Yet even though it was the Red Army which bore the main brunt of the war, no changes were made to the Soviet system. The Gulag Archipelago continued to expand, and the number of lives it claimed can be compared to the number of Soviet citizens that fell in the war. The cooperation between the Big Three was therefore based on a mere semblance of common values, which was why it proved impossible to maintain after the end of the war. Just before his death, Roosevelt admitted that America could not do business with Stalin, as the latter had broken every one of the promises he had made. Yet this admission came too late. Europe was divided, and Eastern Europe was driven into the arms of Stalinist totalitarianism. The countries affected included Poland, which was the first to put up any resistance to Hitler, even at a time when his ally was Stalin. The Polish armed forces constituted a quarter of the Allied forces, and in relative terms the country suffered the greatest loss of lives during the war.
Unfortunately, Russia is reluctant nowadays to acknowledge the ambiguous role played by the USSR during the war. President Putin has reverted to a Stalinist interpretation of the Second World War and its aftermath, and claimed that the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was a normal international treaty. Russia has officially denied that Stalin attacked Poland in 1939, that genocide was committed in Katyn and that the USSR occupied the Baltic states. It has even said that the Yalta Conference brought democracy to Poland.
Viktor Yerofeyev, a well-known Russian writer, recently wrote that Russia is enlightened enough to make no distinction between Stalin’s totalitarianism and Hitler’s regime. If Russia were indeed enlightened, there would be every reason to hope that it could be reconciled with Europe. Any signs of a rehabilitation of Stalin should serve as a warning to all of us, however.
Why is this so important right now? President Putin has said that reconciliation between Russia and Germany could set an example to Europe. Unfortunately, any reconciliation that is based on a Stalinist interpretation of history sets the warning bells ringing, and they are ringing particularly loudly in Warsaw, Vilnius, Riga and Tallinn.
Both the Polish people and the other nations of Central Europe believe that it will be impossible to achieve peace and reconciliation in Europe if the nations situated between Germany and Russia are left out of the equation in this fashion. What the House needs to understand is that we in Poland and Central Europe feel too cramped for comfort whenever the superpowers of Western Europe and Russia shake hands over our heads."@en1
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