September 1, 1939, the day of the beginning of World War II, has long been a day of historical and moral watershed. This is the day that separated the Soviet consciousness from the human. Soviet - it is always focused on one single day in a mournful military chronicle: June 22, 1941, "the treacherous attack of Hitlerite Germany on the world's first state of workers and peasants". Soviet consciousness always uses this word - "treacherous", but never asks: why is this Bolshevik dictator Joseph Stalin so selflessly believed Adolf Hitler that he refused to believe in the attack of a recent ally even when the enemy was already in the territory of the USSR? Why did Stalin not believe his own companions, fellow citizens, even his own wife - but did Hitler believe? Maybe because the very idea of ??the division of the world, which the Fuhrer seduced the gullible seminarian, was - and still is - the Kremlin's main dream. And when there is at least a ghost of this idea, it is impossible to resist. Stalin assured himself that he would share the world with Hitler - and for this his insanity was paid by his own lives to tens of millions of people. Putin expects that he will force the West to negotiate a new section with himself - and for this hereditary madness has yet to be paid. The reluctance to remember September 1 is not just ignoring obvious historical facts. It is also an unwillingness to take responsibility for the past. It is more pleasant to imagine yourself a victim of aggression, to yell "grandfathers fought" and trade someone else's pain - but for this it is simply necessary that the war begin on June 22. To understand that the war began on September 1, that it was the direct result of a Soviet-German collusion, that the Soviet Union, until 1941 and after 1945, behaved in Europe a little better than Hitler's Germany, is responsibility. The responsibility that most Russians are unable to take on themselves. Responsibility, which can be not only state, but personal - in fact, with personal responsibility and the recovery of the state begins. I do not want to prescribe the recipes for this recovery. One can simply remember that 1941-1945 was the time of heroic resistance of millions of Soviet people - and at the same time the tragedy of those millions who found themselves in the occupied territory or chose the side of the Reich. But at the same time, do not forget that the years 1939-1941, the attack on Finland, the occupation of Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, the destruction of Poland are years of shame. And 1945-1991 - the actual occupation of the countries of central Europe - a decade of shame. But these are common words. And there are also personal experiences. I remember well my own. It was 1991, the train to Bonn. We talked with an elderly German professor, a specialist in Russia - and it turned out that his father was wounded in the same battle on the Kursk Bulge in which my grandfather died. I once again thought about whether denazification and repentance can cancel personal experiences. And then I thought about another of my grandfather, a heroic officer who passed the entire World War II and died from the effects of front wounds several years before my birth. When I was young, I loved to consider his rewards, for liberation and for taking. And, of course, I did not think then that until June 22 in my grandfather's life there was a Finnish war and was Lviv. And I realized that the train could not be to Bonn, but to Tampere or to Wroclaw. And I could sit in front of the grandson of a Finnish or Polish soldier who defended his homeland from the aggressor and died in battle. I would differ from the German professor only in that in a country that then disappeared before my eyes, there was neither denazification, nor awareness of responsibility. On the grave of the Finnish and Polish soldier I would have stood alone. That is why it is so important for me that I turned out to be a citizen of Ukraine, a country in which the history of the war is counted from September 1, and not June 22. This change of date is a very important and very difficult step towards humanity and self-respect. To have the right to be proud of something, you need to learn to shame. Original.