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

parts of the population were involved. Many collaborated or
passively accepted what was happening. In Western Europe the
former interpretation of Nazism is more common. These different
interpretations were famously played out in the so-called
Historikerstreit in Germany. What is your view on that?
My view is that the situations in Germany and in Russia were essentially
similar: a small political group taking over their countries.
The Nazis started off as a little bunch of malcontents who, by
pseudo-democratic means, managed to wrest control of the government
of Germany out of the hands of democratic parties. Once
they had achieved that they were able to find allies within German
society, different groups who supported the Nazis for various reasons.
Likewise the Bolsheviks, as I mentioned not quite the political
mainstream in Russia, got control of the biggest country in the
world. Exploiting the problems facing the country they enjoyed
some measure of support but also a lot of opposition. There were
people in Germany who were actually quite content to go along
with Hitler and probably never asked questions about what the SS
was doing at some sites. But exactly the same happened in the Soviet
Union. If you mention the Katyn massacre to Russians they will
invariably tell you it is Polish propaganda and never actually happened.
Even today there are Russian historians mounting a sort of
anti-Katyn campaign to promote the purely fictional story that the
Poles killed sixty thousand Russian prisoners in the 1920s. That is
absolutely false. But they come up with papers and photos defending
‘Mother Russia’, which would never commit such a crime
like that.
Q: But were the Russians and Germans simply as much victims of
Nazism and Stalinism as the Dutch or the Polish were?
No, I think it is quite obvious that both the Nazis and the Bolsheviks,
which, I have to repeat, were minority regimes, drew on certain traditions
in their countries. And in Russia, alas, there is a long history
of oppression, camps, deportations, of destroying peoples. Stalin
used different methods than the Nazis. In some cases he shot
people, like the million or so that were killed in the ‘Great Terror’ of
1938. But the traditional method in Russia to get rid of people was
simply by wholesale removing communities. Polish history is telling
in that respect. The Russians started deporting Poles to Siberia in
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