Politics of the past: the use and abuse of history - Socialists ...

the subject of much controversy, the legacies of Hitler and Stalin
are. One wonders why they attract so much more attention than
what happened to the Spanish, the Portuguese and the Greeks
who experienced long periods of fascist dictatorship. To the individual
it makes no difference whether he or she was a victim of
Franco or of Stalin. Nevertheless and understandably, the distinction
is made because of the immensity of the horrific crimes committed
by the Nazi and Stalinist regimes whether directed against
race or class.
The dominant historical experience of Western Europe was the Nazi
regime; in the European Union’s new member states there was the
added experience of communism. This does of course affect the
interpretation of the twentieth century in these two parts of Europe.
Norman Davies has written extensively on this topic and has drawn
attention to the lack of interest in Western Europe for the crimes
committed by Stalin.
What should be the purpose of comparing the two regimes?
Should we emphasise the differences or should we rather look for
the commonalities? Here are a few examples of the kind of actual
discourse in Brussels and Strasbourg. In debates in the European
Parliament, colleagues from the Baltic states sometimes promote
the view that Stalin was worse than Hitler, ignoring, in the heat of
the debate, their own history of anti-Semitism, the authoritarian past
of their countries in the period between the two World Wars and
the enthusiasm of many of their fellow countrymen who joined SS
divisions or became guards in Nazi concentration camps. When
the European Parliament celebrated the 60 th anniversary of the end
of the Second World War, a member of the European Parliament
gave a speech deploring only the results of Yalta, making no mention
whatsoever of Hitler and the Nazis. The opinion that the Second
World War only ended after the downfall of the Soviet Union
is also frequently aired.
Looking simply at the numbers, Stalin murdered more people than
Hitler. Is the singularity of the Holocaust therefore not singular at all,
or, as certain colleagues in the European Parliament have publicly
stated, should we accept that disregard for communist mass
murders is a result of a version of history developed by the Soviet
regime? Were Hitler and Stalin exceptional phenomena, alone to
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