Western Memory of WWII is basically fan fiction
Historians seldom completely agree with one another even on some of the most important events of the past. There are different views on various historical events, such as World War II (WWII). With new documents being declassified and new excavations at the sites of the main battles, we are likely to see new theories and hypotheses emerging that will feed more discussions and offer contrarian narratives of the most devastating military conflict in the history of humanity.
However, there is a clear red line between looking for new facts and deliberately trying to falsify history. The former is a noble quest for truth and understanding, while the latter is a deplorable attempt to revise past events in favor of political goals or personal ambitions.
An honest scholar entering a research project cannot be completely sure what will be found at the end of the road; an unscrupulous politician presenting a falsified version of history knows perfectly well what picture to present to the target audience. Truth is skillfully mixed with lies, while fabrications are dissolved in real facts to make the picture more credible and attractive.
The most graphic manifestation of the WWII falsifications is the now very popular assertion that Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union were jointly responsible for the beginning of the war.
The narrative equating Nazis and Soviets is nonsensical because it completely ignores the history of fascism in Europe and repeated attempts by Moscow to convince London, Paris and Warsaw to form an alliance against it. Only after the 'Munich Betrayal' by the West, the 1938 pact among Germany, the United Kingdom, France and Italy that forced Czechoslovakia to cede territory to Germany without Czechoslovakian consent, did Moscow decide to go for a non-aggression treaty with Germany to buy itself time before invasion.
Likewise, the dominant Western narrative of WWII increasingly frames the conflict as a stark moral battle between good and evil. As a result, there is a growing reluctance to fully acknowledge the pivotal roles that Russia and China played in the defeat of Nazi Germany and militarist Japan.
Neither do they recognize the contributions of communist-led resistance movements in countries like France, Italy, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and Greece. This is largely due to ideological biases that exclude these groups from the dominant narrative of 'heroic liberal forces' in the fight against the Axis nations, the coalition led by Germany, Italy, and Japan.
Instead, the predominant view in most Western countries credits the US as the primary force behind victory, along with limited support from other allies. This reading of WWII has nothing to do with reality, but it nicely fits the now popular Manichean interpretation of world politics.
Another typical distortion of history is the selective portrayal of the victims of the war, often shaped by a distinctly Eurocentric perspective. Much attention is given to the atrocities endured by Europeans under Nazi occupation or by Europeans in Asia at the hands of the Japanese, while the immense suffering of non-European populations frequently receives far less recognition.
Every human life is of equal value, and all victims deserve empathy. Even those who served in the German and Japanese armed forces during WWII should not be indiscriminately labeled as criminals; the notion of 'collective guilt' must not override the principle of individual responsibility for verifiable war crimes.
However, it is often overlooked in contemporary Western discourse that the Soviet Union and China suffered the heaviest human cost of WWII – with casualties reaching 27 million and 35 million, respectively. A significant portion of these losses were civilians, and the scale and brutality of wartime atrocities committed on Soviet and Chinese territories far exceeded those experienced in most other regions.
Contemporary politics inevitably shapes how we interpret the past, as people often seek historical narratives that align with their present-day beliefs and agendas. Yet history should be approached with integrity, not as a tool to justify current political positions. This is not about defending national pride or preserving comforting myths; every nation, regardless of size or wealth, carries both moments of honor and episodes of regret in its historical journey. A balanced national narrative includes both triumphs and failures.
But when history is deliberately manipulated to serve short-term political interests, we risk blurring our understanding of the present and undermining our vision for the future. Such willful distortion is not only intellectually dishonest but could also lead to grave consequences.This article was first published by CGTN.
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Russia Today
5 days ago
- Russia Today
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Russia Today
29-05-2025
- Russia Today
From psychiatric ward to Nobel prize: How a Jewish outcast became a great Russian poet
A Russian Jew who found spiritual kinship in Christianity and made it a tradition to write a Christmas poem each year. A man with an imperial imagination, shaped by the worldview of ancient Rome. Someone who defended the conquistadors and denounced Ukrainian independence. All of this – and more – describes Joseph Brodsky. Few writers achieve the status of a classic while still alive. Brodsky, deeply grounded in literary tradition and animated by a consciousness forged in antiquity, didn't just challenge conventions – he shattered them. Decades later, some of his choices still provoke. In the month he would have turned 85, RT revisits the life and legacy of Joseph Brodsky. They say childhood shapes who we are – and in Joseph Brodsky's case, that couldn't be more true. Within his first two years of life, he witnessed events that would leave an indelible mark on his future. Brodsky was born into a Jewish family in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) on May 24, 1940. His father, a naval officer, was sent to the front when Nazi Germany launched Operation Barbarosa. During the brutal winter of 1941–1942, young Joseph endured the siege of Leningrad and was later evacuated with his mother to the city of Cherepovets. It was there that a Russian nanny quietly baptized him. After the war, the family was reunited in Leningrad. Brodsky would later recall those early years: 'My father wore his naval uniform for about two more years. He was an officer in charge of the photo lab at the Naval Museum, located in the most beautiful building in the entire city. And thus, in the whole empire. It was the former stock exchange – a structure far more Greek than any Parthenon.' This sense of imperial grandeur – part reverence, part irony – would stay with Brodsky for life. His youthful ambitions didn't yield immediate success. He failed to get into naval school, and after finishing eighth grade, took a job at a factory. Over the next few years, he worked as a stoker, a photographer, and even joined geological expeditions to the Russian Far East. Throughout it all, he pursued a rigorous self-education. Despite never receiving a formal literary degree, Brodsky emerged as a strikingly erudite voice. By the early 1960s, in his early twenties, he was reading poetry publicly in Leningrad. It was there that he met some of the era's most important poets – including Anna Akhmatova. A famous story survives from their first meeting. The aging Akhmatova asked the young Brodsky what a poet should do once they've mastered all the rhymes and rhythms of the language. Without hesitation, he answered, 'But there remains the grandeur of vision.' Brodsky was just 23 when Soviet reality collided with his rising career and brought it to an abrupt halt. In 1963, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev launched a public campaign to root out 'layabouts, moral degenerates, and whiners' who, in his words, wrote in 'the bird language of idlers and dropouts.' In the eyes of the government, poets fit squarely into that category. That November, the newspaper Vecherniy Leningrad published a hit piece titled 'The Near-Literary Drone,' targeting Brodsky by name. The poems cited were falsely attributed to him, and the article was riddled with fabrications – but none of that stopped the authorities. A few months later, Brodsky was arrested and charged with 'social parasitism.' By then, he had already earned recognition in literary circles. His poems had appeared in respected magazines, and he was receiving commissions to translate poetry. But none of this mattered to the court, which refused to acknowledge him as a legitimate writer. During the trial, a now-legendary exchange unfolded between Brodsky and the judge: Judge: And what is your profession, in general?Brodsky: Poet. Poet and And who said you're a poet? Who enrolled you in the ranks of poets?Brodsky: No one. Who enrolled me in the ranks of the human race?Judge: Did you study for this?Brodsky: Study for what?Judge: To become a poet. Did you attend a university where people are trained – where they're taught...?Brodsky: I didn't think it was a matter of Then what is it a matter of?Brodsky: I believe it comes from God. He was first sent for compulsory psychiatric evaluation, then sentenced to five years of hard labor – the maximum term – for doing what the state deemed 'nothing.' In practice, this meant exile to the Arkhangelsk region, deep in Russia's far north. Brodsky worked on a collective farm, spending his free time reading, translating, and teaching himself English. His sentence was eventually cut short, thanks to the intervention of prominent cultural figures, including composer Dmitri Shostakovich, poet Korney Chukovsky, writer Konstantin Paustovsky, and even French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre. After returning from exile in 1965, Brodsky was granted formal membership in a 'professional group' within the Writers' Union – a bureaucratic maneuver that shielded him from future charges of parasitism. He worked prolifically; his poetry was widely published abroad, and he built relationships with scholars, editors, and journalists. Still, in the Soviet Union, only his children's verses saw print. He remained fundamentally out of step with the system. In May 1972, he was summoned to the Ministry of Internal Affairs and given a choice: emigrate immediately or face 'difficult days' ahead. Recalling his interrogations and forced hospitalization, Brodsky chose exile. Obtaining an exit visa from the USSR usually took months. Brodsky's was ready in just 12 days. In June 1972, he left the country – this time, for good. When Joseph Brodsky left the Soviet Union, he left behind nearly everything – his parents, his friends, the woman he loved, and his son. 'It is very painful for me to leave Russia,' he wrote in a candid letter to Soviet General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev. 'I was born, grew up, and lived my life here, and everything I have, I owe to this country.'The Soviet authorities never allowed him to return. He would never see his parents again, nor attend their funerals. Upon arriving in Vienna, Brodsky was met by Karl Proffer, an American publisher and Slavist who offered him a post as a 'visiting poet' at the University of Michigan. It was a surreal twist of fate: Brodsky had only completed eight years of formal schooling, yet he would go on to teach Russian literature, poetry, and comparative literature at some of the most prestigious universities in the United States and the United Kingdom for the next 24 years. In truth, Brodsky didn't really know how to teach – at least not in any conventional academic sense. But he spoke to students about what mattered most to him: poetry. After winning the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1987, a student once asked why he still taught when he clearly no longer needed to. His answer was simple: 'I just want you to love what I love.' Still, to imagine Brodsky as a remote, ivory-tower intellectual would be misleading. He was not just a man of letters – he was also a man of appetite and mischief. His friend, the poet and writer Glyn Maxwell, recalled Brodsky and his circle as loud, unfiltered, and often crude: 'They behaved like alpha males. Sometimes it was even annoying, but that was the male culture of the time.' They drank heavily, told off-color jokes, and filled rooms with their presence. But when it came to poetry, Brodsky was exacting and unwavering. After becoming an American citizen, he turned his focus toward essay writing, translating Russian poetry into English, and even composing poems in English himself. He revered the English language and deeply loved its poetic tradition, though he recognized that as a non-native speaker, he would always be writing from the outside in. His biographer, Valentina Polukhina, observed that for all his success abroad, Brodsky remained, at heart, a Russian poet. Poetry, for him, was the highest form of linguistic expression, and Russian was the language in which his soul most fluently spoke. 'Sometimes I feel that for Brodsky, the choice of the Russian language was conscious,' she reflected. Poet Bella Akhmadulina echoed this sentiment. She described how Brodsky didn't merely use the Russian language – he nourished it from within: 'He didn't need to hear how people around him spoke... Cut off from everyday conversation, he himself became fertile ground for the Russian language.' Brodsky's complexity often revealed itself in quiet, personal rituals. 'I had this idea, back when I was 24 or 25, to write a poem every Christmas,' he once said. And he kept that promise – for the rest of his life. In fact, he began even earlier. At 22, he wrote A Christmas Romance, and from then on, continued to write Christmas poems every year until his forced emigration in 1972. After a long break, he returned to the tradition in 1987 and maintained it annually until his death in 1996. Though not affiliated with any particular denomination, Brodsky was deeply drawn to Christianity. He read the Bible attentively and spoke of Jesus Christ with profound reverence. 'After all, what is Christmas? The birthday of God who became Man. It's as natural for a person to celebrate it as their own birthday... It's the oldest birthday celebrated in our world.' His spiritual reflections extended beyond religious ritual. In a 1972 letter to The New York Times, Brodsky challenged the utopian promises often made in Soviet political discourse: 'In my opinion, there is something offensive to the human soul about preaching Paradise on Earth,' he wrote. 'Life the way it really is – is a battle not between Bad and Good, but between Bad and Worse. And today humanity's choice lies not between Good and Evil, but rather between Evil and Worse. Today humanity's task comes down to remaining good in the Kingdom of Evil, and not becoming an agent of Evil.' Such sentiments may seem stark, but they were consistent with his moral seriousness and existential clarity. Despite being born into a Jewish family, Brodsky repeatedly described himself as a Russian poet, and always saw Russia as inseparable from the Christian cultural world. Even in exile, he refused to speak ill of his homeland. 'I did not leave Russia of my own free will... No matter under what circumstances you leave it, home does not cease to be home. No matter how you lived there – well or poorly. And I simply cannot understand why some people expect, and others even demand, that I smear its gates with tar. Russia is my home; I lived there all my life, and for everything I have in my soul I am indebted to Russia and its people. And – this is the main thing – indebted to its language.' Politically speaking, Brodsky was more of a 'Westerner' than a 'Slavophile,' at least in the traditional Russian sense. But he was unmistakably a Russian Westerner. Living in the West after his exile, he often encountered anti-Russian sentiment and cultural disdain. And yet, again and again, he chose to defend the Russian people—not out of nationalism, but from a sense of fairness. As the poet and scholar Lev Losev put it: 'Just like the 'Slavophile' Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, 'Westerner' Joseph Brodsky stood ready to defend Russia – its people and its culture – against unfounded accusations of inherent aggressiveness, servile psychology, and national masochism.' Joseph Brodsky was, unmistakably, a poet of the Empire. Born in Leningrad – once imperial St. Petersburg – he could never imagine himself, or the world around him, outside the gravitational pull of imperial culture, history, and aesthetics. Raised among the colonnades and neoclassical façades of Russia's most imperial city, Brodsky found in ancient Rome the ultimate model of grandeur. In his poem Letters to a Roman Friend, he writes: 'If you were destined to be born in the Empire,it's best to find some province by the from Caesar and the blizzard, in your flattery, no rushing, constant telling me the governors are crooks?But murderers are even less endearing.' The lines recall Ovid's Letters from Pontus, written during exile by the Black Sea. For Brodsky, his own symbolic 'imperial space' was Crimea – a peninsula he always considered Russian and which inspired some of his most evocative poetry. There he found his cherished trinity: antiquity, the sea, and empire. Brodsky's imperial sensibility revealed itself in more than just geography. His biographer, Vladimir Bondarenko, remarked that the poet could easily be mistaken for a staunch conservative – a man with a worldview shaped by colonial assumptions. A striking example can be found in his 1975 poem To Yevgeny, written after a visit to Mexico. Contemplating the ruins of Aztec civilization, Brodsky reflects: 'What would they tell us, if they could speak?Nothing. At best, of victoriesover neighboring tribes, of shatteredskulls. Of human bloodthat, spilled into a bowl for the Sun god,strengthens the latter's muscle.' And further: 'Even syphilis or the jawsof Cortés' unicorns are preferable to such sacrifice;If crows must feast on your brows,Let the killer be a killer, not an without the Spaniards, they'd hardly have learnedwhat really happened.' Brodsky never shied away from uncomfortable truths—or from voicing them bluntly. His worldview was neither romantic nor utopian. He rejected simplistic dichotomies of good versus evil. For him, paradise on earth was a dangerous illusion; reality was a constant struggle between 'bad' and 'worse.' Among his most controversial works is On Ukraine's Independence, a poem brimming with fury and sarcasm. In Brodsky's eyes, the move to break historical ties with Russia was a rejection not just of political union, but of shared culture, language, and literary heritage. In a caustic farewell, he wrote: 'Go away in your zhupans, your uniforms,To all four points of the compass, to destinations composed of four-letter wordsAnd let the Krauts and Pollacks in your hutsPut you on all fours, you scoundrels.' He closed the poem with a grim vision of cultural amnesia: 'God rest ye, eagles and Cossacks, hetmans and guards,Just know this – when it's time to be dragged into the graveyards,You'll wheeze, clawing the edge of your mattress,Alexander's lines, not the lies of Taras.' For Brodsky, Ukraine's departure from the Russian cultural orbit was not simply political; it was a loss of literary and civilizational continuity. He believed that when the time came to confront death, it would not be the folk verse of Shevchenko people would recall, but the classical cadence of Pushkin. As the post-Soviet world fractured, and vast parts of the 'Russian world' renounced their imperial inheritance, Brodsky watched with a mixture of dismay and resignation. In the 1990s and early 2000s, many within Russia's liberal intelligentsia held up Brodsky as a dissident icon – the embodiment of intellectual resistance to authority. And indeed, traces of dissent run through his work in subtle and powerful ways. But as his legacy has come under closer scrutiny, a more complex portrait emerges: that of a Russian poet with a profoundly imperial imagination and a strong, unapologetic view of Russia's role in history. He was, above all, a defender of Russian language and culture – often in defiance of popular sentiment in the West or among émigrés. After the start of the war in Ukraine, some opposition figures who fled Russia called for Brodsky to be 'canceled,' citing his imperially inflected worldview and what they described as the cultural colonialism embedded in his poetry. But Brodsky cannot be canceled. He remains what he always was: a witness to his time, a singer of antiquity, a thinker of vast moral scale, and – despite exile – a quintessentially Russian poet.
Russia Today
27-05-2025
- Russia Today
Putin to visit China for WWII victory in Asia celebrations
Russian President Vladimir Putin will visit China to attend events marking the 80th anniversary of its victory over Imperial Japan in World War II, Security Council Secretary Sergey Shoigu has said. Shoigu made the announcement on Tuesday during talks in Moscow with Chen Wenqing, the head of the Chinese Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission. Chen is visiting Russia for the 13th International Meeting of High Representatives for Security Issues, a three-day forum running through May 29, which has drawn delegations from more than 100 countries. 'The Russian president will pay a return visit to China in September…' Shoigu said. China officially commemorates the defeat of Imperial Japan each year on September 3, marking Tokyo's surrender in 1945 and the end of World War II in Asia. Shoigu's announcement follows Chinese President Xi Jinping's state visit to Moscow earlier this month, where he joined other world leaders for the May 9th Victory Day celebrations marking the Soviet Union's defeat of Nazi Germany. During the talks with his Chinese counterpart, Putin emphasized that both Russia and China remain committed to preserving historical truth and remembering the wartime sacrifices of their nations. 'The Soviet Union gave 27 million lives, laid them on the altar of the Fatherland and on the altar of Victory. And 37 million lives were lost in China's war for its freedom and independence. Under the leadership of the Communist Party, this victory was achieved,' Putin said, stressiing the sacrifices 'should never be forgotten.' The two leaders held wide-ranging discussions and signed multiple agreements aimed at expanding bilateral cooperation. The sides also issued a joint declaration on global strategic stability. Chinese Foreign Ministry described Xi's visit to Moscow as 'a complete success.'
