Celebrating Captivity

By holding these celebrations in the Red Square, and thus highlighting the Soviet victory, today's Russia is also celebrating its gains in that war. One of those gains was my country, Lithuania, whose incorporation into Josef Stalin's empire was accompanied by countless tragedies. Unlike Germany, Russia has never recognized its responsibility for the war and the mass graves of the innocent.

Thus, a former captive nation is now being invited to celebrate its captivity. This is why almost all Lithuanians -- indeed, most residents of the Baltic countries -- feel queasy at the prospect of their leaders marking this anniversary in Moscow. But Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanian.s are not the only Europeans who should feel this way.

When Stalin offered Hitler his friendship in the spring of 1939 -- formally concluded that summer in the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact -- Nazi aggression was assured of not being knifed in the back from the East and so was left with free hands to do as Hitler pleased in the West.

The pact came after the pogroms of "Kristallnacht" in Germany, so its Soviet initiators knew pretty well to what destiny they were consigning the Jews of Poland and Lithuania, which, in accord with the first secret protocol signed by Vyacheslav Molotov and Joachim von Ribbentrop on Aug. 23, 1939, were to go to Hitler. A month later, in equal secrecy, Hitler sold Lithuania to Stalin.

The other countries situated between Germany and the USSR were similarly sentenced to disappear as nations -- sooner or later. Their peoples were treated practically as though they did not exist; the aggressors' only concern was territory. The death sentences and torturing that were then imposed on almost entire nations and millions of people are, it now appears, to be silently accepted and noisily celebrated on May 9 in Moscow. Some Russian officials want to unveil a monument of Stalin to crown the festivities.

When Hitler's Wehrmacht struck westward, the USSR duly supported Germany in its war against Poland, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Denmark, Norway and the UK. As a result, cities in those countries were flattened and people killed not only by the Nazis, but also by their Soviet ally, which invaded Poland and supplied the Wehrmacht with the material it needed for its war against the West. In return, Stalin's USSR was given a free hand to attack Finland and to occupy Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, as well as a part of Romania.

Vytautas Landsbergis, writing in the Taipei Times