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Russian perspectives 163
In this context, in which Russian and socialist historical narrations merged, the
Second World War redefined German–Russian perceptions and with them Russian
self-definitions.
Outside the Soviet Union, in Eastern and Central Europe, the German invasions
and the German atrocities were experienced as a terrible disaster. The German
nation which had committed these crimes had to be punished. National history was
seen as a national catastrophe in each country, although the Holocaust was not
central to public memory, the fact that Nazi Germany had lost the war was not
a reason for triumph since the losses had been terrible. Victory was the just end
of a period of horror.
In East Germany, the history of the Second World War was told in a slightly
different way. Here, Nazi atrocities were seen as committed primarily on
communists and democrats; the East European peoples being the second group
of victims, the Holocaust not central to public memory. In consequence, according
to official GDR history writing, the perpetrators were not the Germans but the
Fascists. The good Germans were victims of the bad Germans as had been all
the others. Since the German Democratic Republic was the state of the good
Germans inheriting the democratic and socialist traditions of that country, East
Germany had not lost the war in 1945, it had been liberated by the Soviet Union
(Fulbrook 1992: 221–43, 291–317).
The same history had a different plot in the Soviet Union. Nazi Germany was a
terrible and ruthless enemy which had attacked an unsuspecting and peaceful Soviet
Union that had concentrated on its efforts on building a Socialist society. With these
actions, Germany was the incarnation of historical evil, and its fascism was the
culmination of the fight of reactionary capitalist forces against the bright hopes
of humankind (Felice 1995: 51–81). The strength, the cunning, and the cruelty of
the Germans represented the old spirit which fought its last battle against socialist
revolution.
There was a slightly different version which was told during the war and which
far better fitted into national Russian history telling. It was the story of the eternal
battle of a cruel, greedy and decadent West against a hopeful, valiant and honest
East as shown in Eisenstein’s film ‘Aleksander Nevskyi’. The Russian victory over
the German knights was one of brave humans against the forces of evil. The people
of Novgorod who dismantled its corrupt democratic institutions in order to submit
to the stern but benevolent autocratic rule of Aleksander were the same Russian
people who put their fate into the strong hands of Stalin.
Therefore, Soviet victory over Nazi Germany signified the triumph of the
historical hopes of mankind over the forces of evil – a decisive step in world history.
The ruthlessness and cruelty of the Germans or the Fascists, their terrible and evil
power, was needed in order to demonstrate the greatness of the Soviet victory.
Hence, the history of the ‘Great Patriotic War’ did not simply consist in terror
and destruction but in terror and destruction followed by triumph. After the war,
this definition of history was celebrated in innumerable monuments all over the
Soviet Union. The symbolism of two events may illustrate this meaning: the battle
of Stalingrad and the final conquest of Berlin (Glantz and House 1995: 129–78;
Overy 1998).