Most of the deputies of the Estonian parliament (73 of 101) signed a draft statement condemning the Russian interpretation of the events preceding the outbreak of World War II. This is the official website of the Estonian Legislative Assembly (Riigikogu).
The document accuses Russia of striving to rewrite history and justify the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. At the same time, Estonian parliamentarians call the USSR one of the “main initiators of the Second World War” and accuse Russia of denying their responsibility to the “victims of aggression”.
Another complaint against Moscow is the conduct of an “aggressive” campaign in the media. At the same time, deputies of the Estonian parliament express their support for Poland, to which the Russian Federation, according to them, seeks to shift the responsibility for the outbreak of World War II.
The statement also states that Russia's position on the issue of historical memory allegedly "paves the way for an aggressive foreign policy towards neighbors and the entire Western world."
- Estonian Parliament
- © Ints Kalnins / Reuters
Series of accusations
As the chairman of the Estonian Parliament’s Foreign Relations Committee, Marco Mihkelson, said on February 11, a draft petition supported by a majority of parliamentarians will be considered at a meeting of its committee. On February 19 or 20, parliament will officially vote for a statement condemning Russia.
According to Mihkelson, now the petition project is supported by representatives of all five factions of the Estonian parliament. Moreover, as noted by the Estonian National Broadcasting Portal, there are no “Russian centrist fraction deputies” among the signatories.
On January 28, Speaker of the Estonian Parliament Henn Põlloas, speaking to the Polish military in the country, accused Russia of allegedly rewriting history “for the sake of its goals”. At the same time, the Estonian politician said that “the danger from the east has not disappeared,” and thanked the “NATO allies for their contribution to protecting” the Estonian borders.
Earlier, Moscow was also accused of “rewriting history” in two other Baltic republics. On January 16, the Latvian Seimas approved the statement "On the 80th anniversary of the occupation of the Republic of Latvia", where he called on Russia to "abandon politically motivated revisionism." Moreover, in the document "Non-aggression pact between Germany and the USSR" the Latvian parliamentarians called not only the "Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact", but also the "Hitler-Stalin Pact".
The rewriting of history was accused by the Russian Federation and the Prime Minister of Poland Mateusz Moravecki, who wrote an article on this subject for the portal Politico.eu. Similar statements were made by the President of Lithuania Gitanas Nauseda.
The general point of view expressed by the leaders of the Baltic countries and Poland: the USSR supposedly bears the same responsibility for unleashing the Second World War as Hitler Germany, and modern Russia, as the legal successor of the Soviet Union, must recognize this “fact”.
- Participants of the torchlight procession in honor of Latvian Independence Day in Riga
- © Sergey Melkonov / Sputnik / RIA News
Revisionism on the march
The aggravation of historical disputes between a number of countries in Eastern Europe and Russia took place against the backdrop of the celebration of the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz by the Red Army. This year Israel became the center of memorable events, where the President of Russia Vladimir Putin was the guest of honor.
At the same time, the leadership of Poland, Lithuania and Estonia refused to come to Jerusalem. Latvia sent the speaker of parliament to the forum.
In his speech at the forum “Keeping the memory of the Holocaust, fighting anti-Semitism”, the Russian leader noted that it was in the Baltic countries that the extermination of Jews during the Great Patriotic War took on the largest scale. So, in Lithuania, 95% of the country's Jewish population was destroyed. In Latvia, only a few hundred people survived the Holocaust.
Vladimir Putin did not mention the Holocaust in Estonia. There, the Nazis, with the support of local collaborators from the Omakaitse "self-defense" detachments, killed "only" 7,500–8,500 people. This number includes the entire small Jewish population of the country and prisoners of concentration camps, who were brought from other countries. Already in 1942, the Nazis declared Estonia a completely “cleared of Jews” territory.
According to the Russian Historical Memory Foundation, Estonia and Latvia during the Second World War had the highest density of Nazi accomplices among all European countries - 884.9 and 738.2 per 10 thousand inhabitants. In Lithuania, this indicator amounted to 183.3 collaborators per 10 thousand people.
After gaining independence from the USSR, in the Baltic countries they began to proclaim Nazi accomplices as "fighters for independence." In Estonia and Latvia, marches and gatherings of former SS men are held annually.
- Honoring Latvian SS men in Riga
- © Victor Lisitsyn / Global Look Press
In Estonia, at these events, one can traditionally notice representatives of the Conservative People's Party (EKRE), a member of the ruling coalition. The speaker of the Estonian parliament, Henn Põlluaas, is also a member of this radical structure, who is outraged by Russia's “rewriting of history”.
In Lithuania, where there were no SS men, “forest brothers” —fighters of the anti-Soviet underground — are honored. However, in Russia and Israel they are considered involved in the Holocaust.
In mid-January, another attempt by the authorities to “whitewash” the “forest brothers” commander Jonas Noreiku, accused of collaboration with the Nazis, caused a scandal in Lithuania. The state "Center for the Study of Genocide and Resistance of the Residents of Lithuania" stated that Noreika allegedly actually saved the Jews, which caused criticism from historians, representatives of the Catholic Church and the Jewish community of the country.
Another initiative of official Vilnius - the development of a bill that would prohibit accusing the Lithuanians of participating in the Holocaust - has already provoked a tough reaction from the Council of European Rabbis and the Israeli Simon Wiesenthal Center.
- The funeral of the commander of the "forest brothers" in Lithuania
- © Lietuvos Respublikos Prezidento kanceliarijos nuotraukos / Robertas Dačkus
Burn memory
As President of the Russian Association of Baltic Studies Nikolai Mezhevich noted in an interview with RT, one of the factors that makes the Baltic states accuse the USSR of inciting the Second World War is nationalism.
Justified that they allegedly became victims of the Nazi and Soviet "occupation", these states infringe on the rights of the local Russian and Russian-speaking population. At the same time, they try not to recall uncomfortable facts from their own history.
“This ground, as it were, gives them the right to discriminate on the basis of nationality, deprive the Russians of their education and leave them one right to pay taxes, but not receive anything in return,” Mezhevich said. - Naturally for the Estonian parliamentarian, there is no Munich agreement of 1938. The Estonian parliamentarian, as a rule, does not know about the Estonian-Finnish plans for an attack on the USSR, there were plans for joint defense and blocking of the Baltic Fleet in the Gulf of Finland. ”
The Baltic countries, and Estonia in particular, are walking in the wake of the West, primarily the United States, said Andrei Koshkin, head of the Plekhanov Russian Economic University, Department of Political Science and Sociology, in an interview with RT.
“Estonia, on the basis of this Russophobic policy, is trying to feed on the West, because they cannot produce anything else in order to survive,” Koshkin emphasized in an interview with RT. “They are ready to make any decisions against Russia in order to get regular handouts from Brussels and Washington.”
Moreover, the expert emphasizes that during the Great Patriotic War a considerable part of Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians fought against the Nazis. However, the heirs of collaborators dominate the ruling elite of these countries.
Nikolai Mezhevich, in turn, recalled that last year the FSB of Russia for the first time declassified documents on the atrocities of Estonian punitive in the Pskov region. The data on the Latvian punishers operating in the Novgorod region were declassified.
“There is a war on the fronts of historical memory,” says Nikolai Mezhevich. - In 1942-1943, Estonian collaborators burned villages in the Leningrad, Novgorod, Pskov regions. And today they want to burn our historical memory. ”