Nazi Russia

It is sad to admit that in the 21st century there are no mechanisms in the country or the international community to stop the country's rapid slide into the abyss of violence. In the recent past, it seemed that the country was heading "back to the U.S.S.R.," but now the situation is more reminiscent of Germany in the 1930s, when gangs of storm troopers ruled the streets, beating up and killing Jews and others with impunity.

Read more: http://www.themoscowtimes.com/opinion/article/the-kremlin-storm-troopers/489306.html#ixzz2kKMixTgJ 
The Moscow Times 

Swedish suspect in Auschwitz sign theft

Swedish suspect says he was middleman in Auschwitz sign theft.(AFP)

Stalin's Politburo speech, August 19, 1939

The Finland-Swedish historian and architect Carl O. Nordling (1919-2007) reconstructed Stalin's speech to the Politburo of August 19, 1939 from texts published in Novy Mir (Moscow) and Revue de Droit International (Geneva). An excerpt (the bold text appears in both versions, the normal text only in Novy Mir and the italicized text only in Revue de Droit International):

The question of war and peace has entered a critical phase for us. Its solution depends entirely on the position which will be taken by the Soviet Union. We are absolutely convinced that if we conclude a mutual assistance pact with France and Great Britain, Germany will back off from Poland and seek a modus vivendi with the Western Powers. War would be avoided, but further events could prove dangerous for the USSR.

On the other hand, if we accept Germany's proposal, that you know, and conclude a non-aggression pact with her, she will certainly invade Poland, and the intervention of France and England is then unavoidable. Western Europe would be subjected to serious upheavals and disorder. In this case we will have a great opportunity to stay out of the conflict, and we could plan the opportune time for us to enter the war.

The experience of the last 20 years has shown that in peacetime the Communist movement is never strong enough for the Bolshevik Party to seize power. The dictatorship of such a Party will only become possible as the result of a major war.

Our choice is clear. We must accept the German proposal and, with a refusal, politely send the Anglo-French mission home.

It is not difficult to envisage the importance which we would obtain in this way of proceeding. It is obvious, for us, that Poland will be destroyed even before England and France are able to come to her assistance. In this case Germany will cede to us a part of Poland… Our immediate advantage will be to take Poland all the way to the gates of Warsaw, as well as Ukrainian Galicia.

Germany grants us full freedom of action in the Pribaltic/three Baltic States and recognizes our claim on Bessarabia. She is prepared to acknowledge our interests in Romania Bulgaria and Hungary.

Yugoslavia remains an open question, the solution of which depends on the position taken by Italy. If Italy remains at the sides of Germany, then the latter will require that Yugoslavia be understood as her zone of influence, and it is also by Yugoslavia that she will obtain access to the Adriatic Sea. But if Italy does not go with Germany, then the latter will depend on Italy for her access to the Adriatic Sea, and in this case Yugoslavia will pass into our sphere of influence.

This in case that Germany would emerge victorious from the war. We must, however, envisage the possibilities that will result from the defeat as well as from the victory of Germany. In case of her defeat, a Sovietization of Germany will unavoidably occur and a Communist government will be created. We should not forget that a Sovietized Germany would bring about great danger, if this Sovietization is the result of German defeat in a transient war. England and France will still be strong enough to seize Berlin and to destroy a Soviet Germany. We would be unable to come effectually to her assistance/to the aid of our Bolshevik comrades in Germany.

Therefore, our goal is that Germany should carry out the war as long as possible so that England and France grow weary and become exhausted to such a degree that they are no longer in a position to put down a Sovietized Germany. 

Read it all.

(Hat tip: Mari-Ann Kelam)

70 years ago

The BBC's Andrei Ostalski analyzes media coverage of the Nazi-Soviet Pact and the outbreak of World War II:

Until quite recently, the Soviet press had described Nazi leaders as "outcasts", "moral degenerates", "misfits".

Now the press needed to learn how to describe them respectfully, as the leaders of a friendly state.

Furthermore, Soviet journalists needed to correct their psychological approach to this extremely quickly - Stalin had set 23 August as the absolute deadline for von Ribbentrop's arrival in Moscow for the signing of the pact.

And the Orwell diaries are now covering the events that led up to the start of hostilities on September 1, 1939:

1. Emergency Powers Act passed evidently without much trouble. Contains clauses allowing preventive arrest, search without warrant & trial in camera. But not industrial conscription as yet. [Wireless 6 pm]
2. Moscow airport was decorated with swastikas for Ribbentrop’s arrival. M. Guardian adds that they were screened so as to hide them from the rest of Moscow. Manchester Guardian [h]

Russia defends Stalin's deal with Hitler

By Jonas Bernstein

Moscow

20 August 2009

Soviet dictator Josef Stalin (file photo)

Sunday, August 23, marks the 70th anniversary of the so-called Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact - the non-aggression treaty signed in 1939 by Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov and German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop. The pact included a secret protocol dividing Eastern and Central Europe into Nazi and Soviet spheres of influence. Days after it was signed, first German and then Soviet forces invaded Poland.

The anniversary's approach has sparked a debate in Europe. Western governments condemn Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin as two equally murderous variants of totalitarianism. The Russian government calls that comparison a "distortion" of history.

On August 17, the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service issued a statement saying it had declassified documents showing that the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was the Soviet Union's "only available means of self-defense."

The spy agency's demarche was just the latest in a series of Russian government statements that critics say appear to defend Soviet dictator Josef Stalin and justify actions he took shortly before and during World War II.

In early May, Russian Emergency Situations Minister Sergei Shoigu introduced legislation in parliament that would make it a crime to deny the Soviet victory in World War II.

Later in May, President Dmitri Medvedev issued a decree setting up a presidential commission to counter what he called attempts to "falsify history."

At a meeting in early July, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe passed a resolution designating August 23 - the anniversary of the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact - as a day of remembrance for the victims of both Stalinism and Nazism.

Russian delegates to the European security body walked out of the meeting, in protest. Russia's Foreign Ministry denounced the OSCE resolution as "an attempt to distort history with political goals," while Russia's parliament called it a "direct insult to the memory of millions" of Soviet soldiers who, in the words of the parliament, "gave their lives for the freedom of Europe from the fascist yoke."

Former independent Russian parliament Deputy Vladimir Ryzhkov says what he calls the "official" Russian position on the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact is "extremely strange."

Ryzhkov asks why today's Russia, which has a democratic constitution and new democratic legitimacy, should justify the division of Europe between Hitler and Stalin.

He says that this view is now included in Russian history text books and has caused "enormous moral damage" to Russia's reputation, particularly in the countries of Eastern Europe that were the main victims of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Ryzhkov says the only explanation for the Russian leadership's position on the issue is what he calls "sympathy for Stalin."

Public opinion surveys suggest many ordinary Russians share at least some of their government's views.

A poll conducted by the state-run VTsIOM agency, following the OSCE resolution condemning Stalinism and Nazism, found that 53 percent of the respondents across Russia viewed it negatively, while 11 percent viewed it positively and 21 percent viewed it neutrally. In addition, 59 percent of those polled said the resolution was aimed at undermining Russia's authority in the world and diminishing its contribution to the defeat of Nazi Germany.

Dmitry Furman of the Russian Academy of Science's Institute of Europe calls the presidential commission to counter what it deems historical falsification an "idiotic undertaking" and a "very bad idea." He also says Stalin's government killed as many, or even more people than Hitler's.
But, given the suffering Russians endured after Hitler turned on Stalin and invaded the Soviet Union, Furman says it is natural that many resist equating Stalinism and Nazism.

Furman says it is "very difficult psychologically" for Russians to put what they see as their "victors" in the Great Patriotic War, as they call World War II, on the same level with the vanquished Nazis.

From VOANews.com

See also: The anniversary approaches

The anniversary approaches

As the 70th anniversary of the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union approaches (August 23), some news stories:

First, Russia's defence minister announces that most of the hijackers of the Arctic Sea were Estonians. This later becomes eight detainees, of whom four are claimed to be Estonians, two Latvians, and two Russians. The Estonian government issues a statement saying that it received no official notification of the arrest of Estonian nationals from the Russian government, as would be required by the agreement existing between the two countries. Estonia delivers a note to the Russian embassy in Tallinn, requesting clarification.

The Czech government expels two Russian diplomats for suspected espionage. Russia calls it an "unfriendly act", and says it "will not promote development of normal relations between the two countries."

Georgia officially leaves the CIS (Commonwealth of Independent State, or former Soviet Republics, led by Russia).

Russia blames Poland for starting World War II

A few days ago the official website of Russia's Ministry of Defence published a 4,000 word article by a Russian military historian in which Poland was accused of not acceding of Hitler's demands, and thereby starting World War II, AP reports. The article, entitled  "Fictions and Falsifications in Evaluating the USSR's Role On the Eve of World War II," tells the story of how, before the Nazi invasion of Poland on September 1 1939, Hitler demanded that Poland hand over control of the city of Danzig, and also the land corridor between Germany and the territory now known as Kaliningrad.

"Everyone who has studied the history of the Second World War without prejudice knows that it began because of Poland's refusal to satisfy the German claims," the article's author states. Although the item has now been removed from the Defence Ministry's site, it can still be read in Russian here.

Puppeteers

At KHPG.org, Halya Coynash considers the place of the Holocaust in the 20th century history of Eastern Europe and Ukraine, and shows how the almost unimaginable forces of evil that worked together to create the atrocities engendered by Hitler and Stalin are still at work in contemporary society:

It is entirely unrealistic, I believe, to hope to convince people that there was no difference at that time between Hitler and Stalin, that it was necessary to fight both simultaneously. This is not necessarily because people don’t know about Holodomor, the Terror and the camps, but because the Nazi plague was in their country, bombing their cities, and we know that the death machine was murdering ever more people by the day. I am on principle not prepared to place different manifestations of evil on any scale of importance however I also believe at that historical moment it was first of all necessary to destroy Hitler and his evil. On the other hand, I can, and believe we all must, try to understand and respect people who in view of different, no less difficult circumstances decided to fight all those whom they saw as occupiers of their country. That is assuming, of course, that they took no part in the Holocaust, punitive actions against the civilian population or other military crimes.

Unqualified evil did not end with Nazi capitulation and was not eradicated at Nuremberg. We need to fight it together and for that we have to understand one another. Some find it convenient that there should be no such understanding and would seem to have their own reasons for perpetuating rancid lies and stereotypes. We are seeing the old, painfully familiar, puppeteers, as well, it would seem, as some new figures on the scene with no less dubious motives. Let’s not help them – in memory of the victims of unqualified evil and to ensure that there are no more.

May 5 - "Day of Anger"

In April, the Moscow-based SOVA Center, which works to document and counteract racism, xenophobia, hate crime and ultra-nationalism in the Russian Federation, reported the suicide in prison on March 25 of the National Socialist (Neo-Nazi) leader Maxim Bazylev, after he had been arrested and charged with several murders. A Russia-wide "Day of Anger" (also referred to as a "Day of Pogroms", a "Day of Vengeance" and a "Day of Violence") was set for May 5 and advertised on National Socialist websites (also here and here).

Via Marko Mihkelson

Hobsbawm's Choice

At Cif, Tristram Hunt is trying to claim that the historian Eric Hobsbawm is the victim of a "philistine" campaign by political right-wingers whose "bile" is aroused by Hobsbawm's communism. Yet the fact remains that in 1940 not only did Hobsbawm oppose any efforts by Britain to oppose Hitler - after 1941 he also actively worked to "make the British people understand their international obligations", and thus welcome the Red Army. In spite of his generous contribution to the history of French and British society, in retrospect it's ultimately hard to see him as anything but a willing tool of the Kremlin. Later in life, when asked in a television interview whether 20 million deaths would have been justified if the communist experiment had been successful, he is reported to have replied"yes".

The grand accusation

On the 'Z' Word site, a remarkable interview by Michelle Sieff with Terror and Liberalism author Paul Berman. At one point, Berman discusses the historical underpinnings of contemporary anti-Semitism:

The Nazis are generally regarded as the worst, most evil political movement in all of history - a political movement that not only committed crimes but stood for the principle of crime. By comparing Israel to the Nazis, people mean to suggest that Israel is likewise one of the worst, most evil political institutions that could possibly exist. The accusation is cosmically huge. And the cosmically huge accusation makes perfect sense - if you keep in mind the venerable idea that the Jews stand in the way of mankind's achievement of a perfected system of universal justice and happiness.

9/11 and the heirs of Stalin

The historian and Soviet GRU defector Victor Suvorov (pen-name of Vladimir Rezun) has published another controversial book which examines the origins of the Second World War and purports to show that far from fearing Hitler or mistrusting him, Stalin saw Germany's aggressive moves in 1939 as a valuable pretext for a major war against Germany, which would ultimately lead to a Soviet conquest of Europe. It was this, Suvorov argues, that led to Germany's preemptive war plan and the Nazi invasion of the USSR.

On his website, JR Nyquist reviews the book, and draws some parallels with the present day:

When asked by a journalist why so many historians missed the role that Stalin played in starting World War II, Suvorov responded: “Are you asking why they are all so brilliant?” If someone asks today why the CIA and FBI haven’t grasped Moscow’s role in 9/11, I must give Suvorov’s answer. It is an amazing truth, that most events aren’t properly examined after the fact. Myths are propagated and false interpretations become set in stone. This is because normal people don’t question first impressions. They are superficial in their analysis. That is the way the world works. To question a myth, one has to have a questioning mind. Facts speak truth only to the few. As Suvorov points out, “Poland was divided not in the Imperial Chancellery, but in the Kremlin.” We might also recall that modern terrorism wasn’t invented in Baghdad or Kabul, but in Moscow.

(via Mark)

The News of the Past

The process of de-Nazification that was begun and continued in Germany after World War II may have stalled a bit, especially since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the arrival of generations of Germans who never experienced the de-Nazification programme, as they were confined to East Germany under a repressive regime which forbade discussion of the Nazi era. Now. the Times reports, a British publisher is releasing facsimiles of Nazi-era newspapers - these may even eventually include the rabidly anti-Semitic Der Stürmer -  so that contemporary Germans can become acquainted with this dark era from their country's past. With the current rise of anti-Semitic sentiment in Europe as a whole, the project looks as though it may be distinctly double-edged - but it also marks a watershed:

The appeal of the facsimiles in the first instance is to Germans fascinated by the breach of a taboo that has been intact for more than 60 years. In Germany books are removed from the shelves if they bear a swastika, and the Hitler salute is forbidden. Mr McGee has been given special dispensation to reproduce the Nazi propaganda with all its insignia for its historical value.

Remembering Anne Frank

Watching the remarkable documentary Remembering Anne Frank on BBC4 prompted the reflection that history has stories which demonstrate why later events develop in the way that they do. The Nazi persecution of the Jews was a brutally conceived policy so uniquely vile and directed against humanity itself that later responses to it, and to its reincarnations, operate within a special historical and existential framework. Resistance to a total genocide ultimately needs to be total, for as Hannah Arendt showed, the alternatives usually prove to bring about the triumph of totalitarian ideologies and mindsets, and the denial of the human. The calls for the destruction of the state of Israel now current in much of the world give Israel the right to resist, not only to defend its own citizens, but also the aspirations of mankind in general. 

Marching in step

Window on Eurasia notes that

Sixty-nine years ago today, Soviet and Nazi German soldiers marched together in a military parade in Brest, just one month after Hitler and Stalin had concluded the non-aggression pact that made their countries allies, opened the way for World War II in Europe, and led to Moscow’s occupation of half the continent for 50 years.

That event and even more that alliance – which ended when Hitler invaded the USSR almost two years later -- are not things that most Russians are inclined to recall, especially because of the parallels such recollections invite between the policies of the Soviet government and those of the Nazi one.

Russia's annexation of Georgian territory first in Europe since Hitler and Stalin

...Earlier Saakashvili, commenting on Russia's actions, said that "this is the first time on the territory of Europe, after the Hitler regime and Stalin's Soviet Union, that a large state has made a unilateral attempt, with the use of force, to completely smash a neighbouring country and openly annexe its territory," the Novosti-Gruziya agency reported. "This is an act of unimaginable lawlessness and brazenry. The step that Russia has taken is completely illegal and will have no legal consequences either for Georgia or for the rest of the world," Saakashvili emphasized.

Doing the splits

A number of articles have appeared in the Western and Russian press suggesting that splits exist within the current Kremlin leadership, and that there is a tussle for power among various internal factions. On August 25, Pavel Felgenhauer reported that

presidential adviser Gleb Pavlovsky has said in a radio interview that there is a "party of war" inside the Kremlin - a group of high officials that are pressing for a direct attack on Tbilisi to overthrow the Georgian government. Pavlovsky states the alleged "party of war" wants to use the conflict with Georgia to undermine President Dmitry Medvedev's plans of modernize Russia, that "they say we must go further than Tbilisi," apparently indicating possible plans of further military action to subdue other pro-Western Russian neighboring nations like Ukraine. Pavlovsky stated that by signing a ceasefire agreement brokered by Sarkozy, Medvedev has defeated the "party of war" (Ekho Moskvy, August 12).

More recently, on September 1, Andrei Piontkovsky wrote in an article published in the Moscow Times that Georgia has "split the Kremlin":

The Georgia crisis revealed a new strategic force in the Kremlin that opposes both Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and President Dmitry Medvedev. We still cannot name its players, but we are aware of its interests and impact on events in the same way that astronomers discern a new but invisible planet by recording its impact on known and visible objects in space.

One after another, loyal Kremlin pundits have appeared on television and radio to denounce "provokers," whom they dare not name, for "planning the incursion of Russian troops all the way to Tbilisi and the establishment there of a pro-Russian government."

And on September 3, Yulia Latynina published an article in Yezhednevny zhurnal - quoted by Window on Eurasia - focusing on the conflict in Ingushetia and the increasing autonomy of the republic's President Murad Zyazikov, once more with a reference to a split:

“the destabilization of the Caucasus” since the Georgian events reflects a fundamental divide in the Russian Federation. As a country, “Russia needs peace [there], but the siloviki need stars and power,” something they can only win by stirring up trouble and engaging in more violent acts.

Moreover, she adds, “the contemporary Russian model of power is so constructed that those in power can do anything – from the most familiar things like corruption to the most exotic like loss of control over the territory of a republic.” In this situation, the real criminals are not those who take bribes or assist in murders but those who have made this system possible.

The view that the Kremlin's political system is traditionally characterized by power struggles and inter-factional competitions of various kinds is nothing new. During the Cold War it was the standard method used by Western Kremlinologists to explain the apparent shifts of emphasis in Soviet foreign policy. While throughout the post-World War II period there undoubtedly were divisions within the ranks of the Politburo, the notion that there were "liberals" vying with "conservatives" in the corridors of Moscow's power became a generally employed means of misleading western public opinion about Soviet intentions. One of the major examples that comes to mind is the Soviet War Scare of 1983, when belligerent statements of a most extreme kind began to come from the Soviet leader, Yuri Andropov, who until then had been carefully presented to Western opinion as a "liberal" by comparison with his predecessor, Leonid Brezhnev. One aim of this image campaign was to influence and support Western anti-war movements, and to create a general atmosphere of fear and uncertainty throughout Europe which might render Western politicians - especially American ones - more amenable to Soviet foreign policy aims. As Benjamin B. Fischer notes in his CIA monograph A Cold War Conundrum:

US-Soviet relations had come full circle by 1983--from confrontation in the early postwar decades, to detente in the late 1960s and 1970s, and back to confrontation in the early 1980s. Europeans were declaring the outbreak of "Cold War II." French President Francois Mitterrand compared the situation that year to the 1962 Cuban missile crisis and the 1948 face-off over Berlin. On this side of the Atlantic, the doyen of Soviet-watchers, George Kennan, exclaimed that the new superpower imbroglio had the "familiar characteristics, the unfailing characteristics, of a march toward war--that and nothing else." Such fears were exaggerated. Even at this time of heightened tension, nowhere in the world were the superpowers squared off in a crisis likely to escalate into full-scale nuclear war. But a modern-day Rip van Winkle waking up in 1983 would have noted little if any improvement in the international political climate; he would not have realized that a substantial period of detente had come and gone while he slept. The post-detente "second Cold War" was essentially a war of words--strong and at times inflammatory words. In March 1983, President Reagan denounced the Soviet Union as the "focus of evil in the world" and as an "evil empire." Soviet General Secretary Yuri Andropov responded by calling the US President insane and a liar.4 Then things got nasty. Following Andropov's lead--and presumably his orders--the Soviet propaganda machine let loose a barrage of harsh verbal assaults on the United States reminiscent of the early days of the Cold War. Moscow repeatedly accused President Reagan of fanning the flames of war and compared him to Hitler--an image even more menacing than that of Andropov as the evil empire's Darth Vader. Such hyperbole was more a consequence than a cause of tension, but it masked real fears.

As Fischer shows, the 1983 Soviet war scare was a real one, and the possibility that a nuclear exchange might have taken place between the United States and the USSR was not a fantasy. And in the end, the Kremlin's careful engineering and manipulation of terms like "hawks" and "doves", of "liberals" and "hardliners" which were supposed to exist within its power structures, mimicking the "hawk-dove" dynamics of US foreign and defence policy, turned out to be a mask for something much more disturbing - a call to arms which could have involved a military invasion of Western Europe. The painstakingly crafted KAL-007 crisis, involving the shootdown of a South Korean aircraft over Soviet territory,burgeoned into a mighty ratcheting up of military tension combined with ferocious anti-American rhetoric.

Radio Liberty interviews with Soviet citizens traveling abroad suggested that much of the Soviet public was genuinely alarmed. A series of officially sponsored activities at home fed the frenzy. Moscow organized mass "peace" rallies; sponsored "peace" classes in schools and universities; arranged closed briefings on the "war danger" for party activists and military personnel; designated a "civil defense" month; broadcast excerpts from Stalin's famous 1941 speech to troops parading through Red Square on their way to defend Moscow from the approaching German army; and televised a heavyhanded Defense Ministry film that depicted a warmongering America bent on world domination. The Politburo also considered, but rejected, proposals to shift to a six-day industrial workweek and to create a special "defense fund" to raise money for the military. What were the Soviet leadership's motives? Some observers who have studied the war scare have written it off as political theater--as an elaborate orchestration to release tensions over KAL 007 at home and promote the ongoing Soviet "peace offensive" abroad.99 But it clearly was more than that. The leadership would not have invoked the memory of World War II--which is emotionally charged and had an almost sacred significance for the Soviet people--solely for propaganda purposes. It would not have fueled popular fears about nuclear extinction just to boost morale and influence public opinion abroad.

Thus,when the chips were finally down, the notions cultivated in the Soviet-encouraged talk about the supposed presence of conflicting liberal and hardline interests within the Kremlin began to fall away. The KAL-007 incident became the signal for a sudden stiffening of resolve, which indicated the true manner in which the Kremlin machinery worked. So today, in the aftermath of the Georgia crisis, one can detect the beginnings of a change in Russia's foreign policy - the advertised presence of "splits" in Russian power is actually a sign that what may be imminent is not a softening or weakening of will on the part of the Kremlin's leaders, but rather its opposite: and it may point once again to the "war psychosis" that is latent in Russia's defence psychology and military thinking. The psychosis can be traced all the way back to the Nazi-Soviet pact of 1939 and its main consequence: Germany's (and in both Soviet and current neo-Soviet mythology also West's, and the United States') "betrayal" of Russia in 1941.

The Litmus Test

One of the features of the reporting of the Russian invasion of Georgia in the international media during the past week has been the appearance in the reports of certain tags or catchwords – “hubris” and “checkmate” are particular favourites of the pro-Moscow tendency, while “rhetoric” is intended to deflate statements by the Georgian president. It would never do for some international news outlets to accept at face value statement s by the leader of some non-NATO, non-EU state that has riled the Great Russian Bear. No, his remarks must be construed as rhetorical constructs – “propaganda”, in the words of some reporters and analysts.

Another such tag is the expression “litmus test” – but here the emphasis is slightly different, and the phrase is used with varying connotations and inflections depending on who it's being applied to. Indeed, there have been rather a lot of litmus tests during the week. The one that sticks primarily in one’s mind is the deafening silence of many Western leaders in the face of the obvious fact of Russia’s aggression – it took Britain four whole days to issue a statement condemning Russia’s action in Georgia, and even then it came not directly from Prime Minister Brown, but from his Downing Street office on his behalf.

But there were many other instances where either silence or equivocation prevailed, and where this failure to respond or confusion in doing so became a revealing factor – in the blogosphere many of the sites that are normally profuse in their comment on events in Iraq, for example, were curiously silent on the topic of Georgia and Russia. In some quarters, after days of silence a troubling consensus began to emerge: sites like the resolutely anti-Islamist Jihad Watch began to publish posts where the main thrust of the argument appeared to be that supporting Georgia might not be such a good idea, as there was nothing that Islamists would like better than to see a split develop in the ranks of its enemies. While it was heartening to see Charles Johnson’s LGF express a critical stance towards Russia’s invasion, it was depressing to read Victor Davis Hanson admiring Russia’s Sinister Brilliance, or Michael Binyon in the Times evoking the above-mentioned chess analogy

For my own part, the really meaningful litmus test came on Thursday, when Sky News and other channels showed footage of the Russian-backed ethnic cleansing in parts of South Ossetia and the areas of Georgian territory immediately adjacent to it. It was above all the interviews with terrified Georgian civilians – mothers, sisters, elderly men – who unarmed and without protection were faced with the terrorist gangs that are still today, Saturday, being unleashed by Russian forces. These images brought to mind others from a past that was supposed to be irrevocably gone: the Warsaw ghetto, Kristallnacht, or the large-scale murders of civilians committed by Soviet forces in the Baltic States during and after the second world war.

That terrorism and brutality of this kind should be considered – not only by Russia, but also, apparently, by a number of other states –as a legitimate weapon in 21^st century conflict seems almost incredible. Yet by its actions, Russia is showing that is indeed a terrorist state, not much different in this respect from pariahs like Iran. The actions are backed up by an ideology that is not that of a New Cold War or a resurgent Soviet dialectical materialism: the ideas that lie behind it are those of Great Russian imperialism, modified through the prism of a Nazi ideology which in its turn derived in large part from ideas that were prevalent in Russia in the years before 1914.

As some commentators have pointed out, confronted with such a lethal mish-mash of ideology and military might, some of the de-Nazified or de-Sovietized countries of mainland Europe are baffled, at a loss how to react. Yet the right response is not too hard to formulate: what’s needed above all, given the hindsight granted by the experience of 1938 and 1939, is a firm and united “no” to military aggression, a willingness to accord membership of NATO to countries like Georgia and Ukraine, to call Russia's energy bluff, and to confront Russia in international forums. Russia's leaders, being the global bullies and intimidators that they are, above all respect strength – faced with a sufficiently strong and united resistance, and the threat of economic and political isolation, Russia will back down, as was shown during the Cold War in the Cuba missile crisis of 1961, in Hungary in 1956 and in Czechoslovakia in 1968, where it similarly overreached itself in terms of its reputation and of world opinion, paving the way for the ultimate collapse of its Soviet construction A willingness to unite in this fashion is probably the only true litmus test of Europe’s will to survive.

Georgia is the Finland of Our Day

In an interview with the Huffington Post's Nathan Gardeis, ex-U.S. national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski compares Russia's present invasion of Georgia to Hitler's strategy in the Czech Sudetenland, and to the Soviet assault on Finland in 1939:

Fundamentally at stake is what kind of role Russia will play in the new international system. Unfortunately, Putin is putting Russia on a course that is ominously similar to Stalin's and Hitler's in the late 1930s. Swedish foreign minister Carl Bildt has correctly drawn an analogy between Putin's "justification" for dismembering Georgia -- because of the Russians in South Ossetia -- to Hitler's tactics vis a vis Czechoslovakia to "free" the Sudeten Deutsch.

Even more ominous is the analogy of what Putin is doing vis-a-vis Georgia to what Stalin did vis-a-vis Finland: subverting by use of force the sovereignty of a small democratic neighbor. In effect, morally and strategically, Georgia is the Finland of our day.

Sweden evokes Hitler in condemning Russian assault

 

Via AFP:

Sweden has evoked the memory of Adolf Hitler in condemning Russia's
attacks on Georgia over the breakaway region of South Ossetia, saying
the protection of Russians there did not justify the assault.

"No state has the right to intervene militarily in the territory of
another state simply because there are individuals there with a passport
issued by that state or who are nationals of the state," said Swedish
Foreign Minister Carl Bildt in a statement.

"Attempts to apply such a doctrine have plunged Europe into war in the
past... And we have reason to remember how Hitler used this very
doctrine little more than half a century ago to undermine and attack
substantial parts of central Europe," Bildt said.