MINSK, 4 May (BelTA) – Opening a criminal case on the genocide of the Belarusian people during the Great Patriotic War is definitely the right decision, Rector of the Academy of Public Administration under the Aegis of the President of the Republic of Belarus Vyacheslav Danilovich told the SB. Belarus Segodnya newspaper, BelTA has learned.
According to him, the Nazis committed crimes unprecedented in scale, cruelty and inhumanity. Our sacred duty is to keep memory of the terrible tragedy that took 27 million Soviet lives and the life of almost every third resident of Belarus.
"Earlier, according to Soviet historians, there were just several bourgeois falsifiers of the history of World War II. Today resolutions are adopted at the level of inter-parliamentary assemblies.
Thus, on 19 September 2019, the European Parliament adopted a resolution where it called the German-Soviet treaty of non-aggression of 23 August 1939 as the reason for the start of World War II. Thus, the West has taken the falsification of history to a fundamentally new level. The Polish Sejm has already found the USSR responsible for the outbreak of World War II in September 1939: allegedly the non-aggression pact concluded between Germany and the USSR untied Hitler's hands to attack Poland and provided the possibility of large-scale war in Europe,” the historian recalled. “The European Parliament is now engaged in the discussions on the topic ‘Distortion of European history and the memory of the Second World War'. They see the non-recognition of the USSR as an ally of the Reich as a distortion!" Vyacheslav Danilovich believes that the result is the destruction of monuments to Soviet soldiers-liberators in a number of European countries and some former Soviet republics.
“Moreover, what should especially alert us, Belarusians, are the attempts to recognize the entry of the Red Army into Western Belarus and Western Ukraine in September 1939 as an act of aggression. This is a very dangerous trend. The recognition of this historical event as the entry of the USSR into World War II on the side of Germany not as the reunification, as the restoration of historical justice for the Belarusian and Ukrainian peoples may lead to a revision of the Yalta and Nuremberg treaties, redrawing of postwar borders. Western countries are pursuing a policy of double standards today. They are against Nazism on paper but in fact turn a blind eye and actually give permission for the glorification of Nazis in the Baltic States and Ukraine. The United States and Ukraine voted against Russia-sponsored UNGA resolution to combat glorification of Nazism on 16 December 2020,” Vyacheslav Danilovich said.
He is convinced that the distortion of historical memory, the loss of communication between generations actually lead to the degradation of society and a state.
“It benefits external destructive forces. Being located at the geopolitical crossroads, Belarus gets into the limelight of the geopolitical struggle between West and East. Belarus is, in fact, the last true sovereign country in Europe, which, despite all the shortcomings, pursues a domestic and foreign policy in the interests of its people rather than the global players. It causes irritation, especially among our western and southern neighbors who, in fact, have long ceased to be sovereign and pursue the policy imposed on them by the Western major powers,” the expert summed up.
