Oleg Konstantinov in his editorial column touched on a very painful topic for many: the crimes of the Red (Soviet) Army during the Second World War. I have long wanted to write about this, about that direct connection between the crimes of that time and the current atrocities of the Russian army in Ukraine.

But for many people, any criticism of the Soviet Army during the years of WW2 is perceived as a personal insult - they are the \! And now, for long decades of silence - we have these atrocities today. It's like a payment for the fact that we all turned a blind eye to it..

The most visible and famous is the Katyn massacre. In the USSR, they did everything possible and impossible to prove that it was the Germans who shot the Poles, and not the Soviet special services.. This case was covered by personal authority - the famous Soviet doctor, chief military surgeon - Nikolai Burdenko. But everything is clear with the USSR: a country that tried to hide the names of millions of people turned into camp dust, of course, also hid the names of those twenty-odd thousand executed Polish intellectuals: officers, teachers, priests, engineers. However, for Russia, which arose on the ruins of the USSR, the Katyn case became a “check for lice”.

Perestroika demanded an audit of the most scandalous pages in the history of the USSR, including the Katyn tragedy.. In April 1990, Mikhail Gorbachev acknowledges the responsibility of the USSR for the Katyn massacres.. I didn’t find exactly when, but I remember that at about the same time - in the early 90s, Boris Yeltsin also spoke about the wine of the USSR. And then, with the beginning of the 2000s and the coming to power of Putin, the return to normal began. And here one very sad thing must be said: post-Soviet legends about the “great role of the USSR” are based on numerous works of Western historians.

Yes, yes, not Soviet, but Western. They all blow in the same Soviet pipe in agreement. Thousands of books have been written about. Everything that Solonin and Suvorov talk about in Russian and Ukrainian is “revisionism”, “revision of history” for Western historians.. Yes, there are several books by Western historians, but I don’t even doubt that if you refer to those courses that are taught in the most famous universities on the history of the twentieth century, then you will get texts that differ little from Russian texts. The mass Western reader and viewer knows about the Second World War precisely from the same traditional historians..

Therefore, you will not find stories in universities about how Western politicians gave Stalin the former White Guards, sending him wagons with men, women and children, many of whom were immediately shot.. And often they themselves committed suicide, just not to be in the hands of Stalin's scum.

And just like that, the study that the occupying Soviet army raped MILLIONS of German women of all ages, from teenagers, has been booed by professional historians and politicians, and is, without a doubt, not one of those studied in universities..

Some of the eyewitnesses were shocked that the Russian troops drove around in their transports not only over the bodies of the killed Ukrainians, but also over the bodies of their killed soldiers.. But this is in the spirit of the Soviet army. We were told about this at the military department at the institute during the PPR lessons (part-political work), in the common people it was called:. zdeli - dispersed " Our curator, who is also a teacher of this discipline, spoke about one of the “cauldrons”. Now I have a feeling of deja vu - I read about Bucha, and I see our PPR in front of me.

When Putin launched his campaign against the " Of course, not with falsification, but with the truth. That's exactly the truth that reminds Butch.

Ukrainian military every day transmit how many Russian soldiers and officers died. And I remember my post, which was not long ago, but BEFORE the war: in Russia then they publicly admitted that during the years of the “Great Patriotic War” not 28, but more than forty-two million people died.

I specifically emphasize that not during the Second World War, but during the years of the so-called "

That is, sixty-seven years after the war, Russia finally officially reported how many people died in it. Moreover, they reported it quite by accident: these figures were named at the request of the "

Characteristically, the experts of the Israeli Institute of Memory " But personally, I have no doubt that we finally heard the truth.. All these useless throws into minefields, all these frontal attacks, hundreds of thousands thrown at machine guns - all this is the ESSENCE of the Red and Soviet Army. And we see all this now in Ukraine. Neither Putin nor his General Staff are interested in how many tens or even hundreds of thousands he will put. But the worst thing, and it was clearly visible in the 2000s, the Russians themselves were not interested in how many they were " They themselves were not interested in this truth.. Yes, power slowly choked all manifestations of truth. I remember very well how the tonality of the Ekho Moskvy programs about the war slowly changed.. And then they just replaced one author. But even the audience was almost satisfied with it.. That's scary.

“Sleep to yourself, brothers, everything will come again.

New commanders will be born.

New soldiers will receive Eternal government apartments"