BUT WE INSTALLED DEGAULLE!:

Dark Soviet record of WWII (Tunne Kelam, May. 13, 2005, UPI)

The surrender of the Nazi Wehrmacht was signed on May 7, 1945, in Reims, France, with the participation of all four allied powers, including representatives of the Red Army. Still, Stalin insisted on a separate act of capitulation on May 9, according to his own scenario in order to accentuate the Red Army's role in defeating Hitler.

These two dates symbolize two different and dramatically antithetical dimensions of World War II. May 7 marks the triumph of a hard-won victory over Nazi totalitarianism. But May 9 symbolizes rather the victory of one totalitarian dictatorship over the other. Therefore, the venue and style of the ceremonies in Moscow were unsuited to the fundamental principles for which the historic victory in World War II was achieved.

It is morally devastating that one of Europe's least democratic regimes, which is directly associated with its Stalinist predecessor, was able to make the leaders of free countries celebrate the continent's liberation exclusively under its auspices.

I saw Estonia invaded by the Red Army. As an eyewitness to the subsequent general marauding and destruction, I still remember the words of the Soviet captain who entered the farm where my family was staying in September 1944: "My soldiers are not the worst ones. But beware of the NKVD (later KGB) troops who will follow us -- they are the ones you should be afraid of". In an effort to make human contact and to forestall the Soviet officer's obvious desire to grab my father's watch, my parents had started a conversation with him in Russian and also put my 2-year-old brother on his lap. Frustrated in their attempts at this farm, the captain and his unit then raided the neighboring one and took by force everything they wanted -- as victors they felt it all belonged to them.

Sadly, the Soviet captain's warning very soon came true. In the first five years after its "liberation," Soviet-occupied Estonia, with a population of 1 million, saw the arrests of 65,000 people on political grounds. Of those, many thousands were killed outright or died in concentration camps. In just one month, March 1949, 22,000 persons were deported from their homes to Siberia while about 10,331 who were also on the lists, managed to hide themselves, but lost all their property. Most remained outlawed for years.

The real experience of May 9 for those of us living in Soviet-"liberated" Eastern Europe was deprivation of all civic freedoms and of any right to a democratic and independent state. Estonia was subjected intensive Sovietization and Russification, which brought the Estonian people to the brink of becoming a minority in our own country. May 9 meant a "poisoned peace," as Gregor Dallas titled his recent book. This poisoned peace was rooted in the criminal alliance signed between two tyrants - Stalin and Hitler -- on Aug. 23, 1939.

Those Eastern Europeans, they just don't know what was good for them...

Posted by Orrin Judd at May 13, 2005 2:18 PM