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

doomed to make the wrong choice because of their situation. We
should, however, also not make heroes out of them.
Stalin’s Soviet Union was an ally of Hitler’s Third Reich between
August 1939 and June 1941. The USSR did not enter the war because
of an ideological affinity with democracy. It did so because
it was attacked by Hitler. Once at war with Nazi Germany, it fought
with undeniable heroism and contributed enormously to the final
victory. These are undisputable facts, but they do not exonerate the
Soviet Union, its leaders and primarily Stalin himself from the crimes
committed. Stalingrad does not cancel Katyn. And the sacrifice of
Soviet soldiers cannot serve as an alibi for the massive rape of German
women. The totalitarian Soviet Union fought on the side of
democracy against the totalitarian Nazi Third Reich. We have to accept
the uncomfortable truth that the WWII was not simply a
Manichaean struggle of good against evil. Evil was present on both
sides. This does not in the least reduce the primary responsibility of
the Nazi criminals who started the war and violated all norms of international
law. They implemented the politics of extermination of
the European Jewry, and enslaved peoples of Eastern Europe.
My final conclusion can be stated in three sentences. Historians
should do their research and publish their results, even if they are
controversial. They should try to acknowledge that the recent
European past is very complicated and ambivalent, and so are the
memories of it. Politicians who forget that are doomed to failure.
85 Krzysztof Pomian