"THE ACTION UKRAINE REPORT - AUR"
An International Newsletter
In-Depth Ukrainian News, Analysis, and Commentary

"The Art of Ukrainian History, Culture, Arts, Business, Religion,
Sports, Government, and Politics, in Ukraine and Around the World"

BUSH: U.S. HAD HAND IN EUROPE'S PAINFUL DIVISION AFTER WWII
A decision that helped cause "one of the greatest wrongs in history"

"RIGA, Latvia - Second-guessing Franklin D. Roosevelt, President Bush
said Saturday the United States played a role in Europe's painful division
after World War II - a decision that helped cause "one of the greatest
wrongs of history" when the Soviet Union imposed its harsh rule across
Central and Eastern Europe. Bush said the lessons of the past will not be
forgotten as the United States tries to spread freedom in the Middle East."
[article one]

"THE ACTION UKRAINE REPORT - AUR" - Number 479
E. Morgan Williams, Publisher and Editor
morganw@patriot.net, ArtUkraine.com@starpower.net
Washington, D.C. and Kyiv, Ukraine, SUNDAY, May 8, 2005

------INDEX OF ARTICLES------
"Major International News Headlines and Articles"

1. BUSH: U.S. HAD HAND IN EUROPE'S PAINFUL DIVISION AFTER WWII
A decision that helped cause "one of the greatest wrongs in history"
By Terence Hunt, AP White House Correspondent
AP, Riga, Latvia, Saturday, May 7, 2005

2. PUTIN QUESTIONS NATO ENLARGEMENT, SAYS UKRAINE
MEMBERSHIP COULD POSE PROBLEMS
Associated Press (AP), Paris, France, Sat, May 7, 2005

3. PRESIDENT YUSHCHENKO WISHES HEALTH AND WELL-BEING
TO WW-II VETERANS
Ukrainian News Agency, Kyiv, Ukraine, Sat, May 7, 2005

4. CHAIRMAN OF VR SUBCOMMITTEE FOR WAR VETERANS VALENTIN
ANASTASIYEV SAYS VET CELEBRATIONS IN KYIV CITY WILL BE HELD,
IN ACCORDANCE WITH SCENARIO, SUGGESTED BY WAR VETERANS
By Larysa Kozik, Ukrinform, Kyiv, Ukraine, Sat, May 7, 2005

5. UNDERSTANDING THE GREAT PATRIOTIC WAR
OP-ED: David Marples, Edmonton Journal
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, Saturday, May 7, 2005

6. WORLD WAR II - 60 YEARS AFTER: MYKOLA LEBED AND
THE UKRAINIAN PARTISAN ARMY
Possible to use the conflict to establish an independent Ukrainian state
By Roman Kupchinsky
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL)
Prague, Czech Republic, Friday, 06 May 2005

7. UKRAINE FACTIONS STILL AT ODDS 60 YEARS ON
Agence France Presse (AFP), Lviv, Ukraine, Thu, May 5, 2005

8. TRAPPED BETWEEN HITLER AND STALIN: EAST REMEMBERS
THE DAY EUROPE SPLIT IN TWO
'How can we celebrate with the Russians when we were forced
to escape from them?'
By Rupert Cornwell in Washington
The Independent, London, UK, Fri, 06 May 2005

9. MEMORIES OF SOVIET REPRESSION STILL VIVID IN BALTICS
By Peter Baker, Washington Post Staff Writer in Riga, Latvia
The Washington Post, Washington, D.C., Sat, May 7, 2005, Page A11

10. MR. PUTIN'S HISTORY
EDITORIAL: The Washington Post
Washington, D.C., Saturday, May 7, 2005; Page A16

11. RIGHTS AND REMEMBRANCE
The collapse of the Nazi empire did not lead to my country's liberation.
OP-ED: By Vaira Vike-Freiberga, President of Latvia
The Washington Post, Wash, D.C., Sat, May 7, 2005, Page A17

12. GEORGIAN LEADER SPURNS MOSCOW WWII CELEBRATION
President Saakashvili will boycott celebrations in Moscow
By Christian Lowe, Reuters
Moscow, Russia, Saturday, May 7, 2005; Page A10

13. 'REVOLUTION ROADSHOW' ROLLS IN TO URGE REGIME CHANGE
Four Belarussians, a Moldovan politician, and an American
Daniel McLaughlin in Riga
Irish Times, Ireland, Sat, May 07, 2005

14. BELARUSIAN PRESIDENT SCORNS US-BALTIC SUMMIT IN RIGA
Interfax-Ukraine news agency, Kiev, in Russian, 7 May 05
BBC Monitoring Service, UK, in English, Sat, May 07, 2005

15. EU TAKES SWIPE AT RUSSIA IN BARBED VICTORY MESSAGE
Reuters, Brussels, Belgium, Friday, May 6, 2005

16. VE DAY: CELEBRATION INSTEAD OF RECONCILIATION
James Sherr, Fellow, Conflict Studies Research Centre
Defence Academy of the United Kingdom [1]
Nezavisimaya Gazeta's Diplomatic Courier
Moscow, Russia, Monday, 25 April, 2005

17. HISTORY SHOWS THIS DRIVE TO THE EAST COULD BRING DISASTER
Denial of Russia's role in defeating Hitler feeds a dangerous mentality
COMMENT: by Jonathan Steele
The Guardian, London, UK, Friday May 6, 2005

18. MAY 9TH AND RUSSIA: PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE
By Celeste Wallander, Director of the CSIS Russia and Eurasia Program
Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS)
Washington, D.C., Friday, 6 May 2005

19. WHO NEEDS ALLIES LIKE THESE?
Russia celebrates liberation from fascism, Europe celebrates
liberation from Russia
By Andrei Scherbakov, Megapolis, No. 18 (423)
Moscow, Russia, May 2005
==============================================================
1. BUSH: U.S. HAD HAND IN EUROPE'S PAINFUL DIVISION AFTER WWII
A decision that helped cause "one of the greatest wrongs in history"

By Terence Hunt, AP White House Correspondent
AP, Riga, Latvia, Saturday, May 7, 2005

RIGA, Latvia - Second-guessing Franklin D. Roosevelt, President Bush said
Saturday the United States played a role in Europe's painful division after
World War II - a decision that helped cause "one of the greatest wrongs of
history" when the Soviet Union imposed its harsh rule across Central and
Eastern Europe. Bush said the lessons of the past will not be forgotten as
the United States tries to spread freedom in the Middle East.

"We will not repeat the mistakes of other generations, appeasing or excusing
tyranny, and sacrificing freedom in the vain pursuit of stability," the
president said. "We have learned our lesson; no one's liberty is expendable.
In the long run, our security and true stability depend on the freedom of
others."

Bush singled out the 1945 Yalta agreement signed by Roosevelt in a speech
opening a four-day trip focused on Monday's celebration in Moscow of the
60th anniversary of Nazi Germany's defeat. In recent days Bush has urged
Russia to own up to its wartime past. It appeared he decided to do the same,
himself, to set an example for Vladimir Putin, the Russian president.

Bush also used his address to lecture Putin about his handling of the
emergence of democratic countries on Russia's borders. "No good purpose
is served by stirring up fears and exploiting old rivalries in this region,"
Bush said. "The interests of Russia and all nations are served by the growth
of freedom that leads to prosperity and peace."

Bush spent the day with the leaders of three Baltic republics - Estonia,
Latvia and Lithuania. Many in the Baltic countries are still bitter about
the Soviet annexation of their countries and the harsh occupation that
followed the war for nearly 50 years. Acknowledging that anger and
frustration still linger, Bush said that "we have a great opportunity to
move beyond the past." His message here - and throughout his trip - is that
the world is entering a new phase of freedom and all countries should get
on board.

While history does not hide the U.S. role in Europe's division, American
presidents have found little reason to discuss it before Bush's speech.
"Certainly it goes further than any president has gone," historian Alan
Brinkley said from the U.S. "This has been a very common view of the far
right for many years - that Yalta was a betrayal of freedom, that Roosevelt
betrayed the hopes of generations."

Bush said the Yalta agreement, also signed by Britain's Winston Churchill
and the Soviet Union's Joseph Stalin, followed in the "unjust tradition" of
other infamous war pacts that carved up the continent and left millions in
oppression. The Yalta accord gave Stalin control of the whole of Eastern
Europe, leading to criticism that Roosevelt had delivered millions of people
to communist domination.

"Once again, when powerful governments negotiated, the freedom of small
nations was somehow expendable," the president said. "Yet this attempt to
sacrifice freedom for the sake of stability left a continent divided and
unstable."

Bush said the United States and its allies eventually recognized they could
not be satisfied with the liberation of half of Europe and decided "we would
not forget our friends behind an Iron Curtain."

The United States never forgot the Baltic peoples, Bush said, and flew the
flags of free Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania over diplomatic missions in
Washington.

"And when you joined hands in protest and the empire fell away," the
president said, "the legacy of Yalta was finally buried, once and for all."
Putin, writing in a French newspaper Saturday, said the Soviet Union already
made amends in 1989 and his country will not answer the demands of Baltic
states for further repentance. "Such pretensions are useless," Putin wrote
in Le Figaro.

Bush reminded Baltic countries that democracy brings obligations along with
elections and independence. He said minority rights and equal justice must
be protected, a nod to Moscow's concerns about the treatment of
Russian-speakers in the three ex-Soviet republics.

Bush applauded the Baltics for supporting democracy in Ukraine and spoke
approvingly of democracy progress in Georgia and Moldova.

At a news conference, Bush rejected the suggestion that Washington and
Moscow work out a mutually agreeable way to bring democracy to Belarus -
the former Soviet republic that Bush calls the "last remaining dictatorship
in Europe."

"Secret deals to determine somebody else's fate - I think that's what we're
lamenting here today, one of those secret deals among large powers that
consigns people to a way of government," Bush said. He called for "free
and open and fair" elections set for next year in Belarus, now run by
authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko.

Bush placed a wreath at the Latvian Freedom Monument, a towering obelisk
symbolizing this small country's struggle for independence. While he is
unpopular across much of Europe because of the Iraq war, Bush got a
warm welcome here.

Latvian President Vaira Vike-Freiberga presented Bush with the nation's top
honor, the Three-Star Order, calling him a "signal fighter of freedom and
democracy in the world." Bush has irritated Russia by bracketing his visit
to Moscow Sunday with stops in two former Soviet republics, Latvia and
Georgia. He arrived in the Netherlands on Saturday night, ahead of a
speech Sunday at an American cemetery. -30-
==============================================================
2. PUTIN QUESTIONS NATO ENLARGEMENT, SAYS UKRAINE
MEMBERSHIP COULD POSE PROBLEMS

Associated Press (AP), Paris, France, Sat, May 7, 2005

PARIS - Russian President Vladimir Putin said NATO enlargement has
not necessarily improved world security, and warned in a television
interview broadcast Saturday that bringing Ukraine into the alliance could
pose problems.

Ukrainian officials say they want their country to join NATO eventually, but
Putin said Russia would not keep sensitive weapons in Ukraine if the
alliance had a military presence there.

Russia's current cooperation with its southern neighbor is "enormous," Putin
said in the interview with France-3 recorded Friday. But "if there were a
NATO military presence in Ukraine, I wouldn't maintain our latest
technologies and our sensitive armaments." "Ukraine could have problems,"
Putin said through a translator.

Russia's relations with former Soviet states became a subject of discontent
with the United States after President Bush decided to bracket his visit to
Moscow for Monday's World War II commemoration with trips to Latvia and
Georgia, which is in the Caucasus.

Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko last month set joining NATO and the
European Union as a key goal, and Putin was likely reacting to the new push
that would move Ukraine further from Moscow's influence.

In the interview, he said NATO's decision to admit the Baltic states to the
alliance last year did not enhance security in the world. "The fact that
NATO exercises a great influence on the Ukraine or Georgia does not
indispose us," Putin was quoted as saying by the translator. "On the other
hand, all enlargement of NATO does not (necessarily) improve security in
the world." "I don't see in what way enlarging to our Baltic neighbors, for
instance, can improve the security of the world."

Latvian President Vaira Vike-Freiberga is the only Baltic leader to accept
an invitation to attend the commemoration in Moscow. The leaders of
Estonia and Lithuania said they could not go because Russia has refused
to acknowledge five decades of Soviet domination of the Baltics following
WWII.

Putin reiterated that Russia will not answer the demands of Baltic states to
repent for years of Soviet domination. "I would like to underscore in this
regard that such pretensions are useless," Putin wrote in the daily Le
Figaro.

He suggested that in 1989 the Supreme Soviet had already made amends,
giving a "judicial and moral appreciation" of the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop
Pact with Nazi Germany that led to the Soviet role in the Baltics.

Russia insists the three Baltic states willingly joined the Soviet Union on
the basis of the pact. Putin said Friday that the 1989 resolution criticized
the pact as "a personal decision by (Soviet leader Josef) Stalin that
contradicted the interests of the Soviet people."

Putin suggested the Baltic states are using their complaints "to justify a
discriminatory, reprehensible policy of governments toward a considerable
part of their own Russian-speaking population," referring to claims that
Russian speakers face discrimination today in the Baltics. -30-
===============================================================
3. PRESIDENT YUSHCHENKO WISHES HEALTH AND WELL-BEING
TO WW-II VETERANS

Ukrainian News Agency, Kyiv, Ukraine, Sat, May 7, 2005

KYIV - President Viktor Yuschenko has wished veterans of the Great Patriotic
War health and wellbeing. This follows from a statement by Yuschenko's
press service, quoting his letter of congratulation sent to departments of
the all-Ukrainian union of veterans on the occasion of the 60th anniversary
of victory in the Great Patriotic War.

"You belong to that glorious cohort of people, who took a worthy place in
the history of our nation, who deserved eternal respect and love of
descendants with their sacrifice and majestic deeds." The president
thanked veterans for their deeds.

"I bow low to You to express endless filial piety for independent free
Ukraine," the letter of congratulation reads. As Ukrainian News reported
earlier, Yuschenko expects the commemoration of the sixtieth anniversary
of the victory in the Great Patriotic War to reconcile the veterans that
fought in the war. -30-
===============================================================
4. CHAIRMAN OF VR SUBCOMMITTEE FOR WAR VETERANS VALENTIN
ANASTASIYEV SAYS VET CELEBRATIONS IN KYIV CITY WILL BE HELD,
IN ACCORDANCE WITH SCENARIO, SUGGESTED BY WAR VETERANS

By Larysa Kozik, Ukrinform, Kyiv, Ukraine, Sat, May 7, 2005

KYIV - Celebrations to mark the 60th anniversary of Victory in the Great
Patriotic War will be held in Kyiv the way the war veterans have suggested,
people's deputy Valentin Anastasiyev, chairman of the Verkhovna Rada
Subcommittee for matters of war veterans, told journalist in Kyiv.

According to him, on May 5 Vice Premier Mykola Tomenko conducted
deliberations, which resulted in the endorsement of the final scenario of
VED celebrations in the capital city.

The President, Mr Anastasiyev noted, is supposed to attend the VED military
parade in Moscow, Russia on May 9 morning. Between 13:00 and 13:30 May
9 President Yushchenko will arrive at Khreschatyk street, the venue of a
march of about 3,000 war veterans.

After the march the war veterans will be brought by buses to the Museum
of the Great Patriotic War, where a rally will be held. The President, Prime
Minister will congratulate the war veterans, who will together partake of
traditional soldiers' porridge. -30-
===============================================================
5. UNDERSTANDING THE GREAT PATRIOTIC WAR

OP-ED: David Marples, Edmonton Journal
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, Saturday, May 7, 2005

The forthcoming 60th anniversary of the Allied victory in Europe has already
elicited heated debate and controversy, particularly over the role of the
former Soviet Union as a partner of the Western allies. Lithuania, for
example, has declined to participate in the celebrations in Moscow on the
grounds that the war brought 40 years of Soviet occupation. Why is there
such diversity of opinions on a war that brought some 61 million deaths
worldwide? Why is it impossible to reach a consensus today on what
happened?

To begin with, a few basic facts might be of relevance. In the Western
world, we commemorate the loss of some 42,000 Canadian troops, along
with 388,000 British and 295,000 Americans. Most of our troops died at
Dieppe and Hong Kong, and in the post-Day campaigns in France,
Belgium, and Holland.

The war on the Eastern Front, however, was on a different scale and
signified different things to different participants. War losses in the
Soviet Union are estimated at 25.6 million (higher in some sources),
almost 50% of total losses worldwide, and the Axis occupation of
Belarus and Ukraine brought proportionally more deaths than for any
other single region of occupation. The brutality of these years surpassed
anything seen in the century.

In the immediate aftermath of the Allied victory, the Soviet authorities
developed a myth of a united anti-Fascist struggle that belied certain
realities; that the border populations had for the most part welcomed the
German invaders, particularly after the Soviet NKVD massacred the prison
populations before retreating; and that the Soviet leadership under Stalin
and Zhukov intimidated and persecuted their own officers in the early
months of the war, causing thousands of unnecessary casualties rather
than order retreat from encirclements.

The Germans, in turn, alienated the population through their brutality,
massacring Communists, Jews, and other "enemies of the Reich," and
establishing brutal camp systems of slave workers. Throughout the war, the
Allies preferred to ignore Soviet atrocities in a common effort against the
Axis powers. Subsequently, undivided attention to German war crimes has
at times left the public with a highly misleading impression of the role of
the Soviet leadership. Why for example, were Soviet losses on the Eastern
Front four times higher than those of the defeated Germans? The great
advance of 1943-44, which brought the Red Army close to the German
border, occurred through the calculated sacrifice of Soviet troops for
short-term gains.

In the Baltic States, western Belarus, western Ukraine and other border
regions, the return of the Red Army was regarded with far more trepidation
than the arrival of the Germans in the summer of 1941. Once outside Soviet
territory, the Red Army went on a rampage that left some 3 million dead, an
orgy of revenge that affected mainly civilians and refugees, while in the
borderlands civil wars broke out as early as 1943, resulting in brutal
massacres on both sides. Ukrainian insurgents, for example, killed one of
the heroes of Stalingrad, the Commander of the First Ukrainian Front,
General Nikolay Vatutin, in February 1944; they also fought against Poles
for control over the region.

These events, in short, were far too complex to be categorized within the
framework of a Great Patriotic War. Alongside the epic and brutal
German-Soviet struggle was a series of 'mini-wars', while the Soviet advance
left most of eastern Europe under Moscow's control for the next four
decades, partly with the compliance of the Western allies. Most soldiers
returning from the victorious Soviet advance were soon dispatched to the
Gulag, alongside captured German POWs. Ten years later, West German
Chancellor Konrad Adenauer was still appealing for the return of these
latter prisoners.

Ukrainian president Viktor Yushchenko has appealed for the recognition of
anti-Soviet insurgents affiliated with the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) to
be recognized as war veterans. Conversely, other Ukrainian leaders, such as
Communist Petro Symonenko, regard UPA as traitors who massacred their
own citizens and collaborated with the Germans. The umbrella organization,
the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), is even more
controversial, particularly as its most influential leaders made up part of
the postwar emigration to Western Europe and North America, and in its
earlier years OUN collaborated closely with the German High Command.

Like any conflict, the Second World War means different things to different
parties. For most Canadians, the war was a straightforward struggle,
alongside the British, for the defense of the Empire against Fascist
aggression.

After Pearl Harbor, Americans were similarly united for the campaign against
Japan and Germany. For the Jews of Europe, the war was simply a quest for
survival and one that barely succeeded.

Elsewhere on the Eastern Front, however, the war represented for many
citizens little more than a change of occupants, and it ended with the
complete victory of one dictator over another. To suggest therefore that
Canadians have a common cause with Vladimir Putin in celebrating the victory
of the USSR is to simplify the issue. On the one hand, the victory of the
West owed everything to the triumph of the Red Army; but on the other, the
relentless drive of the Red Army into the heart of Europe only strengthened
the regime of I.V. Stalin, a man who remains a hero to some; while to others
he was the perpetrator of appalling crimes against his own people. -30-
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dr. David R. Marples is Professor of History, Department of History
& Classics, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada T6G 2H4
David.Marples@ualberta.ca
===============================================================
6. WORLD WAR II - 60 YEARS AFTER: MYKOLA LEBED AND
THE UKRAINIAN PARTISAN ARMY
Possible to use the conflict to establish an independent Ukrainian state

By Roman Kupchinsky
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL)
Prague, Czech Republic, Friday, 06 May 2005

As the leaders of several former Soviet republics prepared to commemorate
the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe on 9 May in
Moscow, Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko announced on 5 March that
he wants to see a reconciliation between veterans of the Soviet armed forces
and those who served in the Ukrainian Partisan Army (UPA).

This announcement prompted the publication on various pro-Russian
websites, including http://www.anti-orange.com.ua, in Ukraine of a number
of articles denouncing the UPA as "German collaborators" and attacking
Yushchenko's statement.

Natalia Vitrenko, a leader of Ukraine's Progressive Socialist Party,
declared that she intends to present documents from the Nuremberg trials
in which the UPA is listed as an organization that participated in German
war crimes. However, Ukrainian-American historian Taras Hunczak says no
such documents exist and Vitrenko has not produced any. For its part,
Yushchenko's government has said it will exhibit formerly secret documents
from its archives that purport to show that the UPA, along with other
organizations, fought against the Germans.

The story of the UPA and of its founder, Mykola Lebed, has been distorted
in various ways for 60 years now. Soviet propagandists, Russian
nationalists, and Ukrainian Communists have denounced the UPA as
collaborators who, after the war, became "American agents" and actively
fought to separate Ukraine from the Soviet Union. Although Ukraine is now
independent, this has not prevented the UPA's detractors from continuing
their ideological attacks.Soviet propagandists, Russian nationalists, and
Ukrainian Communists have denounced the UPA as collaborators who,
after the war, became "American agents."

Lebed, a leader of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN),
founded the UPA in western Ukraine in 1942. Born in 1909, Lebed rose to
prominence for his role in planning the OUN's 1934 assassination of Polish
Interior Minister Bronislaw Pieracki. Arrested by the Gestapo as he tried
to cross Germany to the free city of Danzig, Lebed was turned over to
Poland and sentenced to death, a sentence that was later commuted to life
in prison. He was sent to a prison camp in the Belarusian town of Bereza
Kartuska.

When Germany invaded Poland in 1939, Lebed escaped and rejoined the
OUN in western Ukraine. Shortly afterward, the OUN split into two factions
and Lebed joined the group headed by Stephan Bandera that came to be
known as OUN-b.

The OUN-b anticipated that conflict between Germany and the Soviet Union
was imminent and believed that it would be possible to use the conflict to
establish an independent Ukrainian state. To achieve this, they sought a
tactical alliance with Hitler. The Germans allowed the OUN-b to form two
battalions -- Roland and Nachtigall -- which were dispatched to Ukraine on
the eve of the German invasion to conduct reconnaissance. The units saw
little action and were soon disbanded.

Following the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, the
Bandera's OUN faction proclaimed Ukrainian independence in Lviv on 30
June 1941. The Germans, however, had little use for the Ukrainian
nationalists by this time and the Gestapo arrested Bandera and most of
the OUN-b leadership in July 1941. Bandera spent most of the war in a
concentration camp.

Lebed took over as head of the OUN-b and began organizing the UPA in
western Ukraine as an anti-German guerilla force. In January 1944, Lebed's
wife, Daria, who had helped him plan the Pieracki assassination, was
arrested by the Gestapo and sent to the Ravensbruck concentration camp
along with their 2-year-old daughter. At that time the German police
circulated a "Wanted: Dead or Alive" poster for Lebed throughout occupied
Ukraine.

By mid-1944, the UPA was at its height and its estimated strength was
close to 50,000 troops brandishing captured German and Russian small
arms. The UPA is cited in German military and police documents as killing
numerous German troops during encounters in 1943-44. A guide to these
documents can be found on the website http://www.infoukes.com/upa/.

In 1944, the German occupation authorities began organizing the Ukrainian
Waffen SS Division Halychyna to fight on the eastern front. The UPA
actively opposed the formation of this division and instead urged young
Ukrainians to join the anti-German partisans. However, as the Soviet Army
advanced west, they encountered UPA guerillas against whom they fought
pitched battles in late 1944 and 1945.

The UPA continued its struggle after the war and was eventually liquidated
as a resistance force by Soviet secret-police (NKVD) troops in 1950, when
the last UPA commander-in-chief, Roman Shukhevych, was killed in an
ambush. In a measure designed to separate the partisans from local
residents who shared their goals, millions of Ukrainians were deported
from western Ukraine to secure regions in eastern Ukraine and Kazakhstan
in the late 1940s and early 1950s.

In 1944 Lebed was sent to abroad by the Ukrainian Supreme Liberation
Council, an underground political body that oversaw the UPA, to garner
support for its struggle from the Allies. Lebed managed to obtain limited
covert help from the United States, which in turn used the UPA as an early
warning system in case Soviet forces intended to invade Western Europe.

In 1949 he came to the United States at the behest of the CIA and
continued his activities on behalf of Ukrainian independence by
establishing the Prolog Research Corporation in New York. Prolog existed
until 1989. Lebed died in the United States in 1998, and his personal
archive is at the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute. -30-
===============================================================
7. UKRAINE FACTIONS STILL AT ODDS 60 YEARS ON

Agence France Presse (AFP), Lviv, Ukraine, Thu, May 5, 2005

LVIV, Ukraine - Rancour between rival factions of World War II veterans
in the Ukraine still boils as the country gets ready to celebrate the 60th
anniversary of the war's end on May 9.

During World War II nationalist militias rose up to claim independence for
Ukraine while many Ukrainians joined the Red Army to defend the Soviet
Union, and there will be little love lost if veterans from the still rival
factions meet at the celebrations.

The country's president Victor Yushchenko recently called for reconciliation
between the two, but in a country ruled by the Soviet Union for more than 40
years and whose population is still divided along pro and anti-Soviet lines,
his appeal made little impact.

"It's an inopportune initiative," said Kouzma Khobzey, 76, a former member
of both the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) and the Organization of Ukrainian
Nationalists (OUN) which united the two groups after 1942. "The president is
making a political error," said Colonel Timofiy Makhaniok of a Soviet Red
Army veterans organisation in Lviv, in the country's west.

Much of what is now the western territory of the Ukraine was under Polish
rule until 1939 when Soviet troops displaced the Polish ones after the war
broke out, and some Ukrainians took vengeance on their former masters.

But the region soon fell again to the advancing Nazis, who were at first
welcomed by the UPA in their drive for independence, before they engaged
the Wehrmacht in a bloody conflict. There were up to 40,000 UPA troops
who fought the Soviets, the Nazis and the Polish in their time before being
disbanded in the 1950s.

UPA veterans do not enjoy the same benefits today as recognised veterans
of the Red Army, who for example have paid 75 percent less in rent at
government properties since 1993. The matter of state recognition for the
insurgents is further complicated by Poland's assertion that the OUN and
UPA committed atrocities, and the fact that neither group was originally set
up by the state.

Only those UPA members jailed at Soviet prisons but officially rehabilitated
enjoy full veteran benefits and conditions. "I swear they treat us like
bandits," said Yuri Shukhevytch, the 72-year-old son of the UPA's former
commander Roman Shukhevytch. "We get no social benefits, just recognition
that we defended Ukrainian independence," added Shukhevytch, who went blind
after 30 years in Soviet labor camps. The Ukrainian presidency suggested a
new law that would see veterans on both sides enjoy the same benefits, but
former Soviet forces find the idea unacceptable.

The UPA and the OUN "left a trail of blood across Ukrainian history and can
never be rehabilitated," said an 85-year-old former Soviet soldier in a
still firm voice. "There was blood on both sides," Shukhevytch retorted. "We
were violent during the war," he added, but said Soviet repression forced
the insurgents' hand. -30-
===============================================================
8. TRAPPED BETWEEN HITLER AND STALIN: EAST REMEMBERS
THE DAY EUROPE SPLIT IN TWO
'How can we celebrate with the Russians when we were forced
to escape from them?'

By Rupert Cornwell in Washington
The Independent, London, UK, 06 May 2005

WASHINGTON - To understand why the festivities in Moscow to mark the
60th anniversary of the end of the Second World War in Europe will be less
than universally appreciated, consider the story of Irena Koncius.

Now 79, she is living quietly in Massachusetts, but will never forget the
trauma of her teenage years in Kaunas, Lithuania's old capital: the Soviet
occupation of her country in 1940 and the terror of the night of 15 June,
1941, when the Russian trucks rolled in to collect thousands of Lithuanians
for deportation to Siberia. More than 60 years on she recalls how her father
hid in the woods to escape them.

A week later, Hitler invaded the Soviet Union and German occupiers arrived
in Lithuania, bringing their own brand of terror. Then came Stalingrad and,
in 1944, Soviet armies were again at the gates of Kaunas bringing once again
the fear of deportation and forcing Irena and her parents to flee westwards
towards Germany, their possessions loaded on to a horse-drawn wagon.

Declared a displaced person at the war's end, she finally arrived in the
United States in 1949. By then Lithuania and the other Baltic states of
Estonia and Latvia, had vanished from the map of Europe, "voluntarily"
subsumed into Stalin's Soviet Union.

This, perhaps, will be the last major anniversary celebration; in 2015 few
will still be alive with direct personal experience of the conflict.
In 1975, history's wounds were too raw and the Cold War too hot for
much to be made of the event. In 1985, Ronald Reagan went to West
Germany to mark the 40th anniversary only to be mired in controversy when
it emerged he would visit a cemetery where SS soldiers were buried.

A decade later however, with relations between the US and Russia thawing,
Bill Clinton was able to travel to Moscow, acknowledging the colossal part
played by Russia in Nazism's defeat.

Next Monday, George Bush will follow in his footsteps. But Valdas Adamkus,
the President of Lithuania will not go, nor will Arnold Ruutel, his Estonian
counterpart. And for the leaders of former Soviet satellites who will
attend, the occasion will be tinged with bitter memories of how liberation
from one brutal foreign power was followed by enforced subservience to
another.

But there is no arguing with the choice of venue. Of the victorious powers
of the Second World War, the Soviet Union paid immeasurably the highest
price in terms of human lives and destruction. Six decades on, communism
may be no more but Russia - with its aspirations, its neuroses and its
special view of itself - remains the great piece that refuses to fit into
the jigsaw puzzle of a modern, ever more united Europe.

For Moscow, the "Great Patriotic War" is an utterly glorious moment of
Russian history. But Ms Koncius sees no reason to celebrate: "It's
absolutely right that the Lithuanian President is not going to Moscow. It's
unthinkable. How can we celebrate with the Russians when we had to
escape from them?"

What she didn't know about then, of course, was the secret protocol
appended to the non-aggression pact of 1939, in which Hitler and Stalin
carved up Poland and the Baltic countries between them. Even in the era
of glasnost and perestroika, the mere admission that the document existed
had to be extracted like a sore tooth from Mikhail Gorbachev - perestroika,
glasnost and all.

For Lithuania, the least to be expected next week would be some
acknowledgement and apology from Vladimir Putin for the cynical bargain of
1939. Alexander Kwasniewski, the Polish President will be in Moscow. He
too insists that Poland's wartime history must be heard: this anniversary,
he has said, "must be full of dignity and historical truth".Earlier this
year, the Russians infuriated Warsaw by saying that Poland should be
grateful for the Yalta agreement (which in effect consigned it to the Soviet
bloc).

On top of anger there is unease too - at Mr Putin's apparent throttling of
democracy, at the renewed nostalgia for Stalin and at the Russian
President's recent lament that the demise of the Soviet Union was "the
greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century". Mr Putin wants to
rebuild Russia as a great world power; such aspirations make half of
Europe wince.

Ironically, the person who will perhaps have it easiest in Moscow is Gerhard
Schröder, leader of the country that started the war. George Bush, by
contrast faces the trickiest of diplomatic tasks. Unencumbered by any
national experience of the bitter turmoil that ravaged Old Europe, this US
president will happily deliver his lines about democracy and freedom,
exhorting his audiences to look to the future, rather than the past.

However, he must also chide Mr Putin for his creeping authoritarianism and
for the war in Chechnya, while avoiding gestures that might provoke Russia
and increase its ancient neuroses and insecurities.

On his way to Moscow, Mr Bush will visit Latvia, the one Baltic state whose
leader will attend the celebrations but which is now a member of the EU and
Nato, institutions highly suspect to Moscow. On his way home he will stop in
Georgia, whose democratic revolution in 2003 was an inspiration for the
uprising in Ukraine last year that carried the pro-American Viktor
Yushchenko to power.

For Mr Bush, these upheavals are part of freedom's march. But in the
Kremlin they arouse the same fears of encirclement and constraint that
contributed to the Soviet Union's post-war occupation of eastern Europe.

Such are the treacherous currents of history and memory that will flow
beneath the ceremonies in Moscow this week. As the American novelist
William Faulkner once observed, and Irena Koncius's feelings prove:
"The past is not dead, it is not even past."

SUCCESSOR STATES ------

THE BALTIC STATES
Between the two world wars, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia were inde-
pendent states. They became part of the Soviet Union under the 1939
Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. After being occupied by Germany in the Second
World War, they were "liberated" by the Red Army in 1944 and became
Soviet Socialist Republics. They remained so until the Soviet Union's
dissolution in 1991.

POLAND
The Molotov-Ribbentrop pact sanctioned Hitler's invasion of Poland, the
event that triggered the Second World War. Stalin gained control of Poland
in 1945. But the disintegration of the Soviet Union began with the formation
of the Polish Solidarity trade union in 1980. In 1989, Poland was the first
Soviet satellite state to elect a non-communist government.

UKRAINE
Ukraine's borders have also shifted often. The east, religiously, culturally
and politically, leans towards Russia. The Catholic west Ukraine leant
towards the West and was long part of Poland. Stalin's famines of the
1930s created sympathy for invading Germans. After the war Ukraine, the
Soviet Union's "breadbasket", was tightly controlled by Moscow.

FINLAND
Once part of the Tsarist empire, independent Finland was awarded to the
Soviet Union under the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. In the 1939/1940 winter
war it resisted the Soviets, but succumbed. After the war, it escaped
occupation, but underwent "Finlandisation", under which the country was
basically Western but committed to a benevolent neutrality towards Moscow.

GERMANY
Germany started the Second World War by invading Poland, but ultimately
sealed its own destruction by attacking the Soviet Union in 1941. After its
defeat in 1945, it was divided between the Western powers and the Soviet
Union, whose sector became East Germany in 1949. In November 1989
the Berlin Wall fell. A year later, the two Germanys were reunited. -30-
===============================================================
9. MEMORIES OF SOVIET REPRESSION STILL VIVID IN BALTICS

By Peter Baker, Washington Post Staff Writer in Riga, Latvia
The Washington Post, Washington, D.C., Sat, May 7, 2005, Page A11

RIGA, Latvia, May 6 -- The rusted helmets, pistols and knives tell part of
the story. The worn boots, tattered prison clothes and slave laborer serial
numbers fill out the picture. And then there is the life-size reproduction
of a gulag barracks where inmates slept on wood-slatted platforms and
shared a single primitive toilet.

The nerves are still raw here at the Museum of the Occupation of Latvia
more than six decades after Soviet troops rolled across the countryside to
seize this seaside capital and all three independent Baltic states. As
Russia prepares to host President Bush and other world leaders for a Red
Square celebration of the end of World War II, Latvia and its neighbors find
themselves once again haunted by memories of the Soviet repression they
were left to endure.

"It's still a very, very living and present topic," said museum director
Gundega Michel. "Sometimes in passing by, people say, 'That's the old
stuff, why do you still focus on the old stuff?' But for the people who
lived through it, it's still part of their nightmares."

To show that the United States appreciates the ambiguous legacy of the
anniversary, President Bush, who landed here Friday night, will pay tribute
Saturday to Baltic independence from Communist tyranny before traveling
to Moscow. First lady Laura Bush will visit the occupation museum.

As the president begins his five-day trip to Europe, Russia and Georgia,
White House officials have been stunned at how quickly it has become caught
up in a fresh debate over the legacy of the Soviet Union. An acrid exchange
between Washington, Moscow and the Baltic capitals over long-ago events
has overshadowed the Victory Day commemoration.

Moscow has bristled at U.S. and Baltic suggestions that it should repudiate
the secret 1939 pact between dictators Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler that
led to the Soviet occupation of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. Although the
Soviet Union declared the pact null and void 16 years ago, Russia has lately
reprised the Stalinist assertion that it did not forcibly occupy the Baltic
states but was invited in.

Russian President Vladimir Putin told German television Friday that the
1989 declaration was enough. "We've already done this," he said. "We
must, what, do it every day, every year?" In a separate interview with the
German newspaper Bild, he maintained that Stalin was not as bad as Hitler.
"I cannot agree with equating Stalin with Hitler," he said. "Yes, Stalin was
certainly a tyrant and many call him a criminal, but he was not a Nazi."

As Bush headed his way, Putin rejected U.S. criticism of his crackdown on
democratic institutions in post-Soviet Russia. Russian elections may be even
more democratic than U.S. contests, he told CBS's "60 Minutes," because
the American president is selected indirectly by an electoral college.

The Russian refusal to accept responsibility for Soviet dictatorship in the
Baltic republics has renewed long-standing frictions with the three states,
which joined the NATO alliance and the European Union last year. The
leaders of Estonia and Lithuania are boycotting Monday's ceremonies in
Moscow.

"By coming to the Baltic states, President Bush is underscoring the double
meaning of these events," said Latvia's President Vaira Vike-Freiberga, who
plans to attend to improve relations with Moscow. While victory over Hitler
meant freedom for many, she told a news conference, "for others it meant
slavery, it meant occupation, it meant subjugation, and it meant Stalinist
terror."

In an interview, Foreign Minister Artis Pabriks said Russia appears intent
on reclaiming lost greatness through "domination" of its neighbors. "We do
not hate Russians, we do not hate Russia. We simply want to be left alone,"
he said. But, Pabriks added, "It's not easy to forgive, and it's especially
difficult to forgive those who never asked for forgiveness."

Russia often tries to turn the tables, accusing Latvia of Nazi sympathies
during the war and discrimination against its ethnic Russian minority today.
Some Latvians did join the Nazis to fight the Soviets and win their
independence. Latvian officials insist they have bolstered the rights of
Russians, who still make up 29 percent of the 2.3 million-strong population.

In an interview with Bush, a Russian television reporter pressed him on U.S.
culpability for abandoning Eastern Europe to Communist rule after the war,
noting that Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Winston Churchill went along with
Stalin's division of the continent at the Yalta conference in 1945.
"There's no question three leaders made the decision," Bush conceded to
NTV television in remarks released Friday.

The history of the period is documented at the occupation museum.
Opened in 1993 and visited by 65,000 people a year, it has become the
region's premier memorial to the suffering of the era.

By most accounts, the Soviets engineered provocations to send troops
into Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia in June 1940, then installed puppet
governments, supposedly elected by margins of up to 99 percent of the
population, which then asked to join the Soviet Union.

The Soviets moved quickly to deport Latvians en masse and relocate
Russians into the states. In 1941, the Nazis captured the republics and held
them until 1944, when the Soviets moved back in. About 550,000 Latvians, or
one-third of the population, died during the two wartime occupations. Moscow
remained in command until 1991, when the Soviet Union collapsed.

Gundega Michel was born 11 days before Soviet troops first moved in and
was a year old when 15,000 of her neighbors and countrymen were rounded
up one night and loaded aboard cattle cars bound for Siberia. When she was
4 years old, her family escaped, remaining in exile for half a century.
Eventually, she made her way to the United States, where she became a
chemistry professor in Chicago.

After she retired, Michel came back to Latvia in January 2002 and took
over as director of the museum. She found a homeland still bruised from
an occupation Russia denies ever happened.

This week's statements out of Moscow, she said, reminded her of the
museum's mission. "It makes us feel very, very badly," she said. "It's a
denial of reality. Those who have lived through it, they're told, 'What you
experienced, what you lived through, that's not real, that didn't happen.' "
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Museum of the Occupation in Latvia 1940-1991, Riga, Latvia
LINK: http://www.occupationmuseum.lv/
===============================================================
10. MR. PUTIN'S HISTORY

EDITORIAL: The Washington Post
Washington, D.C., Saturday, May 7, 2005; Page A16

IN 1989 THE rubber-stamp parliament of the dying Soviet Union finally
renounced the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, by which Adolf Hitler and Joseph
Stalin agreed to divide up central Europe in 1939. The secret treaty, the
Soviet body conceded, was a "deviation from Leninist norms" -- though that
did not, in its view, justify independence for the Baltic states of
Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, which were invaded by Soviet troops in 1940
and still ruled from the Kremlin half a century later. Since then the Soviet
Union has collapsed, and sovereign Baltic governments have joined NATO
and the European Union; you might expect attitudes in Moscow to have
evolved further.

In fact, as Russian President Vladimir Putin made clear in the run-up to his
vainglorious celebration of victory in World War II on Monday, the change
has gone in the opposite direction. Mr. Putin recently defended the
notorious bargain with Nazi Germany as a step by the Soviet Union to "ensure
its interest and its security on its western borders." His foreign ministry
has hotly objected to the planned visits by President Bush to Latvia and the
former Soviet republic of Georgia before and after the anniversary
celebration, and to Mr. Bush's reference to the Soviet "occupation" of the
Baltics in a letter to the Latvian president. "One cannot use 'occupation'
to describe those historical events," the Russian ambassador to the
European Union said Thursday, repeating the Stalinist propaganda.

Why is this important? Because Mr. Putin's neo-imperialism, like the huge
celebration to which he has lured more than 50 world leaders, is intended to
shape the uncertain identity of post-Soviet Russia. Mr. Putin would like
that identity to be one of a respected world power (even if Russia's per
capita income ranks behind 96 other countries), one that made the biggest
contribution to the defeat of Germany 60 years ago and still wields
geopolitical influence as well as a nuclear arsenal. Most Western leaders,
including Mr. Bush, are ready to recognize that Russia; that is why they are
traveling to Moscow.

But Mr. Putin's vision also contains elements that should deeply trouble the
world. His is a power where "democracy" is mostly a facade, independent
voices and private property are subject to arbitrary suppression and
confiscation by the state, and aspirations for self-rule by non-Russian
peoples, like the Chechens, are to be crushed by military force. Russia's
neighbors, ranging from Central Asian republics to Georgia, Ukraine and
the Baltic nations, are regarded not as truly independent states but as
something like rogue provinces, rightfully ruled from Moscow in Soviet
times and lost in a breakup that Mr. Putin recently described as "the
greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century."

In fact, the greatest catastrophe of the past 100 years for Latvia,
Lithuania and Estonia began with Molotov and Ribbentrop and continued
with the victory Mr. Putin will celebrate Monday. For her country, Latvian
President Vaira Vike-Freiberga said yesterday, May 9 "meant slavery, it
meant occupation, it meant subjugation, and it meant Stalinist terror."

Until Russia and its leaders can accept and fully repudiate that history, it
won't be possible to unambiguously celebrate the conquest of Berlin, and it
shouldn't be acceptable to treat as a strategic partner a Kremlin leader who
can't bring himself to reject the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. "We already did
it," an irritated Mr. Putin told a German television interviewer this week,
referring to the 1989 Soviet parliament. "What, we have to do this every
day, every year?" Actually, in his case, just once would be a good start.
===============================================================
11. RIGHTS AND REMEMBRANCE
The collapse of the Nazi empire did not lead to my country's liberation.

OP-ED: By Vaira Vike-Freiberga, President of Latvia
The Washington Post, Wash, D.C., Sat, May 7, 2005, Page A17

RIGA, Latvia -- As the president of a country that suffered immensely under
Soviet and Nazi rule, I recently faced a dilemma. I had to decide whether to
accept an invitation from Russian President Vladimir Putin to attend a rally
in Moscow on Monday. That is the date when Russia traditionally celebrates
its military victory over Nazi Germany, and this year is particularly
significant, as it marks the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II in
Europe.

Numerous heads of state and government, including George W. Bush,
Jacques Chirac, Gerhard Schroeder and Silvio Berlusconi, had already said
they would attend the Moscow celebrations. But unlike in France, Norway,
Denmark, Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands or Austria, the collapse of
the Nazi empire did not lead to my country's liberation.

Instead, with the full acquiescence of the western Allied powers, Latvia,
Lithuania and Estonia were reoccupied and annexed by the Soviet Union,
while a dozen other countries in Central and Eastern Europe experienced
renewed repression and decades of totalitarian rule as powerless satellite
states of the Soviet empire.

Latvia certainly rejoices with the rest of the world at the fall of Hitler's
regime. Like numerous other European countries, my country suffered
immensely under the German occupation, which lasted in Latvia from 1941 to
1945. During that time, the Germans and their local accomplices carried out
the most heinous and large-scale crimes against humanity ever committed on
Latvian soil. They murdered about 100,000 of Latvia's inhabitants, including
more than 90 percent of the country's prewar Jewish community, as well as
tens of thousands of other Jews whom they transported into Latvia from other
parts of Europe.

The Nazis also drafted some 115,000 Latvian men into various German military
units. Thousands more people were shipped to Germany as forced labor. For
a country with a population of less than 2 million, these figures
represented a staggering loss.

But Latvia's so-called liberation by Soviet troops in 1944-45 materialized
in the form of another calamity, accompanied as it was by the customary
rapes, lootings and wanton killings that the Red Army committed in a
systematic manner throughout the territories it occupied, and that continued
in Latvia well after the end of the war. These were followed by still more
killings, repression and wave after wave of mass deportations, the last
taking place in 1949.

After the war, Germany made great efforts to atone for the unspeakable
crimes committed under the Nazi regime. This process began with an honest
evaluation of the country's Nazi-era history and continued with Germany's
unequivocal renunciation of its totalitarian past. Russia would gain
immensely by acting in a similar manner and by expressing its genuine
regret for the crimes of the Soviet regime. Until Russia does so, it will
continue to be haunted by the ghosts of its past, and its relations with its
immediate neighbors will remain uneasy at best.

In the end, though, I accepted President Putin's invitation, because I
believe that the Allied victory over Nazi Germany should be seen as a
victory of democratic values over totalitarianism and tyranny. These values
form the very basis of our common social contract and lie at the foundations
of our civil societies. We the democratic nations of the world value respect
for human life and dignity. We value compassion for the suffering of others,
tolerance of differences and diversity, and freedom of choice and action, so
long as it does not result in harm to anybody else. We value the rule of law
as a basis for justice.

For decades after the war, Europe's former captive nations, including Latvia
and Russia, were robbed of the opportunity to flourish and to prosper in the
framework of these values. And it is on these core values that the
perspectives of our long-term partnership with Russia will depend. That is
why all democratic nations must urge Russia to condemn the crimes
committed during the Soviet era in the name of communism. Russia must
face up and come to honest terms with its history, just as Germany did after
the end of World War II, and just as my own country is doing today. -30-
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The writer is president of Latvia.
===============================================================
12. GEORGIAN LEADER SPURNS MOSCOW WWII CELEBRATION
President Saakashvili will boycott celebrations in Moscow

By Christian Lowe, Reuters
Moscow, Russia, Saturday, May 7, 2005; Page A10

MOSCOW, May 6 -- Georgia announced Friday that President Mikheil
Saakashvili would boycott celebrations in Moscow to mark the anniversary
of the end of World War II, bringing relations between the ex-Soviet
neighbors to a new low.

Saakashvili cancelled his trip to protest the lack of progress made during
talks with the Kremlin about the removal of two Russian military bases in
Georgia. Georgia wants the pullout completed in 2008, but discussions in
Moscow have failed to establish a timetable.

"Very important issues have been left unagreed," the Georgian foreign
minister, Salome Zourabichvili, told reporters here Friday after the talks.
"As progress has been not been made, the president will not fly to Russia."
Saakashvili, a pro-Western leader, will also miss a summit of leaders of
former Soviet states scheduled for Sunday.

President Bush is scheduled to visit Georgia after going to Moscow for the
May 9 festivities, and he and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, have
already differed on the Soviet Union's role in the Baltics during the war.

Georgia views the two Russian army bases as a legacy of the Soviet Union
and evidence that Moscow wants to exert influence on its small southern
neighbor despite the fact that it became independent in 1991.

The Russian Foreign Ministry said that representatives from the two
governments would meet again soon. "The Russian side confirmed its firm
willingness to reach mutually acceptable agreements, which will require the
efforts of both sides," a ministry statement said.

Bush will fly to Georgia after the Moscow celebrations for talks with
Saakashvili. The trip is widely seen as U.S. blessing for the young leader,
who came to power in a 2003 street uprising known as the Rose Revolution.

Analysts say Bush's trip is likely to further irritate the Kremlin, which
has long considered Georgia -- strategically crucial as the site of a major
new pipeline linking Caspian oilfields to Western markets -- as its
backyard. The first trip to Georgia by a U.S. president demonstrates that
Washington backs Saakashvili, analysts have said.

The Georgian leader is also at loggerheads with the Kremlin over its alleged
support for the separatist Georgian regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
Speaking before his boycott was announced, Saakashvili said he would not
back down on the bases. "This is our territory, and we want to see this done
in a civilized manner, but the occupation of Georgia must end," he told
Georgia's Rustavi 2 television. -30-
===============================================================
13. 'REVOLUTION ROADSHOW' ROLLS IN TO URGE REGIME CHANGE
Four Belarussians, a Moldovan politician, and an American

Daniel McLaughlin in Riga
Irish Times, Ireland, Sat, May 07, 2005

RIGA, Latvia - It was a line-up to torment the Kremlin: four Belarussian
democracy activists, a Moldovan politician and an American from the
International Republican Institute (IRI), with considerable recent
experience in Ukraine.

With a hall full of US and European political advisers, they debated
"democracy beyond the Baltics" ahead of president George Bush's
arrival in the Latvian capital.

The "revolution roadshow" that now accompanies Mr Bush on his east
European trips had come to Riga to push for regime change, of the sort
effected by the Georgia's so-called 'rose revolution' in winter 2003, and
its 'orange' equivalent in Ukraine a year later.

Latvia was not the target but the perfect host, a vibrant, ex-Soviet EU
member that likes to lecture its old master Moscow on democracy and
human rights, and is happy to see Russia's sphere of influence shrink as
that of Washington and Brussels expands. After Georgia and Ukraine,
Belarus and Moldova are the next targets for change.

Many of these opponents of Belarus's authoritarian president, Alexander
Lukashenko, met Mr Bush in Slovakia in February, on the sidelines of his
summit with president Vladimir Putin, and then plotted the political demise
of "Europe's last dictator" with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice,
down the road in Lithuania last month.

Stephen Nix, the man from the IRI, insists that Moscow has more to gain
than to lose from Belarus going democratic.

But, having destroyed independent TV and political pluralism in Russia, Mr
Putin is unlikely to cheer the Belarussian activists' appeals for US and EU
funding for opposition media, and their plans for huge rallies ahead of next
year's elections. -30-
===============================================================
14. BELARUSIAN PRESIDENT SCORNS US-BALTIC SUMMIT IN RIGA

Interfax-Ukraine news agency, Kiev, in Russian, 7 May 05
BBC Monitoring Service, UK, in English, Sat, May 07, 2005

MINSK - Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka has warned certain
European countries against the "revival of fascism". Lukashenka was
addressing a ceremony to mark the 60th anniversary of victory [in World
War II] in Minsk on 7 May.

"Neofascist marches authorized by the authorities are held in civilized
Europe, which bemoans human rights [violations in Belarus]. In some
countries fascism is raising its head again," Lukashenka said.

"Police in Latvia, which has forgotten horrors of death camps very quickly,
guards marches of SS veterans and disperses antifascist pickets. What is
more, in Estonia 9 May is not a holiday, and memorials are erected to
honour members of punitive expeditions, who have burnt villages and
towns in Belarus and Russia on their conscience," Lukashenka said.

He added: "Our homespun democrats, too, praise fascist aggressors as
liberators from the totalitarian Bolshevik regime, and present their cronies
who betrayed their people as leaders of national revival."

"Our sacred duty is to stand by and defend truth, and to show the entire
world the decisive role of the Soviet Union, of which Belarus was an
unalienable part, in defeating the Nazi Germany," Lukashenka said.

Lukashenka also described discussion of the situation in Belarus at a
meeting between the US, Latvian, Lithuanian and Estonian presidents
in Riga as interference in Belarusian domestic affairs.

"On the one hand, it's good that they have learnt the geographic and
political map, and showed to their master where Belarus is located. We
welcome such conversations, but I am afraid that other conversations will
strike back at the leaders of these Baltic states themselves," Lukashenka
said.

"Discussion of a certain situation in a country in the absence of that
country's representative has never happened in world practice before,"
Lukashenka said. "I think the Baltic states have more than enough of their
own problems to discuss with their master," he added.

Lukashenka said that in Belarus at present "the authorities are monolithic
as never before, as they are supported by the people, which is why we have
no fear of anyone or anything". "We don't want to swear but we warn that we
will be fighting for our soil, children and families in the same way as we
have always done so," he added. -30-
===============================================================
Letters to the Editor Are Always Welcome
===============================================================
15. EU TAKES SWIPE AT RUSSIA IN BARBED VICTORY MESSAGE

Reuters, Brussels, Belgium, Friday, May 6, 2005

BRUSSELS - The European Union said on Friday the fall of the Berlin
Wall, rather than Nazi Germany, was the "end of dictatorship" in Europe,
risking upsetting Russia as it prepares to celebrate the end of World
War II.

"We honor the many innocent victims of past conflicts and those who paid
the highest price in defense of freedom and democracy," the EU's executive
Commission said in a declaration marking the 60th anniversary of the end of
the war.

"We remember as well the many millions for whom the end of the Second
World War was not the end of dictatorship, and for whom true freedom was
only to come with the fall of the Berlin Wall."

World leaders will converge on Moscow on May 9 for anniversary celebrations
and three days of high diplomacy. The EU has been forced into a delicate
balancing act over how to mark the anniversary since it enlarged to 25
countries last May.

Three new member states, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, were integral
members of the Soviet Union, while several other new members are former
communist countries in eastern Europe which Moscow effectively controlled
after the war.

The Baltic republics in particular see May 9, which Russia celebrates as
Victory Day, as marking the beginning of Soviet occupation rather than as
liberation. The presidents of Estonia and Lithuania will boycott the
celebrations in Moscow.

The European Commission's Vice President Guenter Verheugen recently
called on Russia to recognize the Soviet presence in the Baltic republics as
an occupation, to Moscow's dismay.

"Verheugen's statement was inappropriate and inopportune in the runup to
an outstanding historic date," Sergei Yastrzhembsky, Russia's presidential
representative for EU relations, was quoted as saying by Interfax news
agency.

The EU and Russia hold a summit in Moscow the day after the Victory Day
celebration, making the EU comments on dictatorship even more sensitive as
both sides hope to sign a comprehensive deal redefining their relationship
following EU enlargement.

President Bush will weigh into the argument when he meets Russian
President Vladimir Putin in Moscow after a brief visit to Latvia, where he
will see all three Baltic presidents in a pointed gesture of solidarity.

He told reporters before leaving for Europe that there was "great angst" in
the Baltic states because "people don't view this as a liberating moment."
"Of course I'll remind him of that," he told Lithuanian state television
when asked if he would remind Putin that the end of the war brought Soviet
occupation to the Baltics. -30-
===============================================================
16. VE DAY: CELEBRATION INSTEAD OF RECONCILIATION

James Sherr, Fellow, Conflict Studies Research Centre
Defence Academy of the United Kingdom [1]
Nezavisimaya Gazeta's Diplomatic Courier
Moscow, Russia, Monday, 25 April, 2005

Who are you celebrating against? VE Day properly celebrates the
defeat of Nazism and Fascism in Europe. But does it also celebrate a
victory? For many Europeans it does: not only for Russians, but for
Britons, Dutchmen, Danes, Norwegians-and, needless to say, for
Europe's Jews.

But for many, perhaps most of those who live in Central and Eastern
Europe, it does not, and President Putin surely knew as much when he
extended his invitation to honour that day's sixtieth anniversary in
Moscow.

In principle, thanks to the Soviet Union's cardinal contribution to the
defeat of Nazi Germany, that invitation requires no justification. It is,
at one level, a grand initiative from the president of a country to which
honour is due. But it is also designed to transfer historical prestige to
the present.

And, for this reason, it cannot avoid serving as an expression of present
day political and geopolitical interest. At this level, the President
doubtless hopes that the Moscow celebrations will serve two purposes.

First, at a time when NATO and EU enlargements appear to be drawing new
lines in Europe-and doing so in the name of Euro-Atlantic standards and
values-they are intended to serve as a reminder of older bonds and deeper
perils than today's irritations between Russia and its problematic Western
partners.

Second, in so doing, the celebrations are also intended to serve as a stigma
and instrument of exclusion against those who do not share these older
bonds: those for whom VE Day marks simply (pace Latvia's President,
Vaira Vike-Freiberga) the replacement of one 'brutal occupation' by another.

For this reason, the controversy about the presence or absence of the
presidents of the Baltic states is beside the point. Whether their leaders
stay home or attend, this celebration excludes them. To a significant
extent, it excludes most of the new members of the EU and NATO, who
celebrate 1989 or 1991 as their dates of liberation, rather than 1945. But
who, if anyone, will benefit?

The answer is likely to be no one. According to the drafts published by
Russia's Foreign Ministry on 1 February, President Putin hoped to sign
bilateral declarations with the three Baltic states on the occasion of the
Moscow summit. The texts say much about commitments to ethnic
minorities, about the place of the UN and OSCE and about the need to
'open a new chapter' in relations, but they say nothing about the Molotov-
Ribbentrop pact or anything that followed it.

Even if the three Baltic presidents had decided to attend the summit, they
would almost certainly have declined the opportunity to sign these texts,
and none of their EU or NATO partners would have pressured them to act
otherwise. The rhetoric surrounding the decisions of Presidents Ruutel and
Adamkus to absent themselves from the 9 May celebrations will benefit no
one either.

Similarly, the attendance of Presidents Bush and Chirac, Chancellor
Schroeder et all in Moscow will not make an awkward situation appreciably
better. To be sure, the NATO-EU leaders have grasped President Putin's
invitation not only with pleasure, but with evident relief after the damage
done to relations by events in Ukraine and by bursts of plain speaking about
Russia's 'retreat from democracy'.

For these leaders, the VE Day celebrations provide a painless way of
improving atmospherics without making any concessions of principle or
substance. The occasion will come and go. The problems-about
integration, security, investor confidence, human rights and political
change in the CIS-will remain.

Need it be this way? Sixty years after the destruction of the Third Reich,
is it not time that celebration and remembrance served an ecumenical rather
than a political purpose? Is it not yet possible to confront the myths we
hold about ourselves and others? The defeated nations began this process
decades ago, and the reconciliations we have witnessed in Europe would
have been inconceivable if they hadn't.

Yet these reconciliations are demonstrably incomplete, and whatever other
reasons exist for demarcation lines in Europe, the survival of mid-twentieth
century antagonisms surely reinforces them. If they are to diminish, then
the victors as well as the defeated will need to re-examine their past.

The Moscow summit has every potential to launch this process if the
leaders assembled have the will to launch it. Russia does not bear the
sole responsibility in this regard, but it carries a greater responsibility
than most. The Russian state is not the Soviet state, still less the Soviet
state of Stalin. Yet there is a blatant inconsistency, if not
schizophrenia, in claiming credit for the triumphs of this state whilst
refusing to accept the magnitude of its evils.

The inconsistency need not worry Russia but for the fact that it is a
blatant impediment to good international relations and twenty-first century
Russian interests. If the evils committed under Stalin are denied, who will
believe they have been repudiated? If the half truths and legends of
Stalinist historiography are recycled and regurgitated, who will believe in
the possibility of a 'new chapter' in relations?

Today these half truths not only sustain images of the Red Army's
'liberation' of Central Europe; they also sustain negative stereotypes about
the allied war effort. Contrary to what is widely believed in Russia,
Western publications and documentary films about the Soviet war effort
have been abundant and most of them objective and overwhelmingly
respectful.

Yet few Western leaders attending the VE Day celebrations realise how
grudgingly and cynically the contribution of their own countries tends to be
perceived in Russia. These leaders take it for granted that neither the
Anglo-Americans nor the USSR could have defeated Hitler's Germany on
their own, and they assume that this is understood in Russia as well.

Whether this is so or not, images need to be revised and questions asked.
At a minimum: Why, if Britain was determined to turn Hitler east, did it
make Poland the casus beli for war? Why, if Britain was narrowly
imperialistic, did it choose to stand alone against Germany between May
1940 and June 1941, just when Hitler was eager for a peace settlement
that would have left the British Empire intact?

Why did Britain intern Rudolf Hess at a time when it knew that the invasion
of the USSR was imminent? And given the fact that the Normandy invasion of
1944 nearly failed, why was it erroneous to cancel plans to invade in 1943
when the Allied forces were vastly weaker, let alone in 1942 when they were
unseasoned in strategic offensive operations and on the brink of defeat by
Japan? What would have been the prospects for victory in Europe had an
Allied landing force been defeated and destroyed?

These questions, to be sure, are far less difficult to confront than those
which Poles and Lithuanians would pose. Yet it is not only Russians who
need to re-examine history.

More painfully, there is the Holocaust. The reality of that seminal event
is not susceptible to exaggeration or dispute. No mitigating 'revision' of
the conventional wisdom about it has proved sustainable, and no denial of
it will ever be admissible. But as with all historical tragedies, the
Holocaust has generated myths-in this case, the myth of uniqueness. In
Western Europe and North America, there is a striking absence of
knowledge of genocidal acts almost as unimaginable in their scope,
meticulousness and horror. True, 'almost'.

The historical record presents meaningful distinctions between Nazi policy
towards Slavs and other untermenschen on the one hand and Jews on the
other: those who from the outset were regarded as racial 'poison' and 'the
authors of our misfortune'. No resident of Warsaw would have exchanged
his tenuous existence for residence in the Warsaw ghetto. But this truth
should not obscure others.

For those, Jews and non-Jews, who experienced the full fury of Nazi and
Stalinist totalitarianism, distinctions are about as meaningful as those
between different shades of black and different journeys through Hell. Until
that is recognised, there will be no reconciliation between Europe's victims
or within Europe as a whole.

By comparison, the war in most of Western Europe was less apocalyptic in
character and the myths more benign. But myths there were and still are.
In France, the myth of 'resistance' was strong enough to persuade the
French film director, Louis Malle, that he had no future there. In England,
they were strong enough to delay proper examination of the Channel
Islands occupation until recent years.

Indeed, the 1966 British film, 'It Happened Here', was not screened for a
mass audience in the UK until the mid 1990's because its imaginary depiction
of British defeat and collaboration was so documentary in its realism that,
without any government censorship, film distributors simply refused to
show it.

Myths sustain individuals and communities, particularly in time of war. But
after 60 years of peace, it is no longer appropriate for pride and pain to
take precedence over reason, compassion and truth. If President Putin
can recognise this, he will enhance Russia's prestige at this summit, and
he will restore his own. -30-
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[1] The views expressed are those of the author and not necessarily
those of the UK Ministry of Defence.
[2] Grammatically, 'whom' is correct, but 'who' is more idiomatic
and direct. The question has more resonance and irony in the
Russian language.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
NOTE: James Sherr, Conflict Studies Research Centre, Defence Academy
of the United Kingdom, Camberly, Surrey, England. James Sheer has worked
on Ukrainian issues for many years especially in the defence area, including
NATO. He is an outstanding analyst and speaker. He is in much demand as
a speaker on issues related to Ukraine. The article above is published with
the permission of the author. Contact: james.sheer@lincoln.oxford.ac.uk
===============================================================
17. HISTORY SHOWS THIS DRIVE TO THE EAST COULD BRING DISASTER
Denial of Russia's role in defeating Hitler feeds a dangerous mentality

COMMENT: by Jonathan Steele
The Guardian, London, UK, Friday May 6, 2005

As the old joke has it, "nostalgia is not what it used to be". Not so on
Monday, when the world marks the 60th anniversary of the Soviet Union's
stupendous prowess in defeating Nazism. Russians have always looked
back on their wartime sacrifices with pride, but this year's events will be
bigger than ever.

The range of foreign guests surpasses last month's papal funeral, as North
Korea's Kim Jong-il shares the same reviewing stand in Red Square as
George Bush. The leaders of China and Japan will be on hand, as will
Britain's prime minister, happy to be congratulated on his election victory.

Like other recent "60ths" - D-day last June, and the liberation of Auschwitz
in January - this year's remembrance in Moscow has the poignancy of being
the last in which significant numbers of survivors will be able to join. But
will it make the breakthrough in western minds that previous postwar
historiography has failed to do? Will the Soviet Union's overwhelming role
in defeating Hitler finally be accepted, or is Monday's event just another
empty ritual of being polite to the memory of a foreign country's dead
soldiers and civilians without understanding how much we owe them?

The "role denial" of what the Soviet Union and the Red Army achieved is not
as perverse as "Holocaust denial" but it is considerably more widespread in
the western world. During the cold war, western leaders routinely laid
wreaths at the tomb of the unknown soldier below the Kremlin walls or
visited the immense cemetery for the 1 million civilians who died in the
siege of Leningrad. But their gestures often masked an inner view that
Nazism and communism were somehow two sides of the same evil coin.

Few paid public tribute to the relief that swept through all of Europe with
the victory of Stalingrad in 1943, bringing for the first time a sense that
the fascist tide had turned. How many European or American politicians, let
alone school textbooks, admit the Red Army inflicted 80% of the Nazi war
machine's casualties, or that at the D-day landings the allied troops faced
58 German divisions in the west while Soviet forces had to overcome 228
divisions in their march to Berlin - and did?

With the end of the cold war the equation of Nazism and communism
became more prevalent. It was given a superficial new legitimacy by
Russians who could not say such things before.

But as Moshe Lewin and Ian Kershaw argued in their book, Stalinism and
Nazism, the concept of totalitarianism distorts reality. "Looking for common
ground is more fruitful than the search for sameness," they wrote, while
also outlining crucial differences. "The Nazi regime, unlike Stalin's,
cannot be regarded as a modernising dictatorship. Its concern was with
national rebirth and supremacy built on racial purification and
regeneration."

Under Stalin there was nothing comparable to the Nazis' compulsory
sterilisation of the "unfit", euthanasia of people considered to be a burden
on society, the concept of certain nations as "subhuman", and the
extermination camps for Jews. Mass terror and purges were not intrinsic to
Soviet rule, as was clear after Stalin's death. Millions of Russians look
back to the long Brezhnev period as a time of personal security and
economic stability.

The lifting of censorship in Russia has ended many historical taboos.
Stalin's incarceration of returning Soviet PoWs was known to most families,
but publicly suppressed for too long. Many Russians acknowledge his war-
time blunders and the cruelty of his indiscriminate use of peasants as
cannon fodder - not unlike the crassness of British generals in the first
world war. As Alexander Yakovlev, the now fierce anti-Marxist and anti-
communist who used to be Gorbachev's ideology chief, argues, "victory
was achieved despite Stalin's leadership, not because of it".

But there are other black holes that ought to be explored in Russia. Around
1 million Soviet PoWs, or almost 30% of those in German hands, did fight
for the Nazis, albeit usually under duress or to avoid starvation. The
Nazi-Soviet non-aggres sion pact which gave Stalin the chance to build
better defences is well-known, but Russians still underplay the secret
annexes that allowed him to send troops into eastern Poland, adding its
lands to Soviet Ukraine and Belarus, and to occupy the Baltic states a year
later. Or it is spuriously stated that the people in these places voted
freely to join the Soviet Union.

To claim, as Vladimir Putin did recently, that the Nazi-Soviet pact was no
worse than Britain's and France's earlier agreement with Hitler at Munich is
misleading. By appeasing Hitler, London and Paris were certainly hoping he
would move against the Soviet Union, but their immediate goal, however
foolish, was to buy peace in the west rather than territory. But it is
equally wrong of today's Baltic leaders to pretend the prewar Baltic regimes
of the 1930s were not authoritarian and chauvinist, or to claim Soviet
occupation was as bad as that of the Nazis or worse.

You only have to read the memoirs of the few Lithuanian Jewish survivors or
the reports of the Nazi Einsatzgruppen when they invaded the Baltics to get
a more accurate version. In his book, Messages of Murder, the historian
Ronald Headland says of the anti-semitic massacres: "In the Baltic countries
the collaboration in the killing operations was immediate and extensive."

Nor was Stalin's behaviour in Ukraine, however atrocious, on a par with
Hitler's total extermination strategy. The Groucho Marx aphorism that "any
club that's willing to have me as a member is not worth joining" has its
all-too-serious counterpart in the chilling words of Reichskommissar Erich
Koch: "If I find a Ukrainian who is worthy of sitting at the same table with
me, I must have him shot".

So the leaders of Estonia and Lithuania, who are staying away from Moscow
this weekend, only shame themselves.

But Monday's celebrations should not be about the past alone. The lesson
for the future is that competing for influence or dividing Europe into
"pro-western" or "pro-Russian" camps, whatever internal system a country
has, leads to disaster.

In the first post-cold war years, that was accepted. Under Polish and, to a
lesser extent, Czech pleading, Bill Clinton regrettably changed the line.
Although Boris Yeltsin was doing all Russia could to build friendly
relations, Washington embarked on expanding Nato. The appetite grew with
the eating, and Nato's reach has been moving towards every one of Russia's
neighbours. Consider US concern over Cuba, and then imagine all of Latin
America plus Canada in a Moscow-led alliance.

Surely the time has come to call a halt to this dangerous process.
Washington wants to continue, but haven't Europe's Nato members enough
sense of history, enough understanding of geography, and enough political
courage, to tell Bush this club has closed its list? -30-
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Contact: j.steele@guardian.co.uk
===============================================================
18. MAY 9TH AND RUSSIA: PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE

By Celeste Wallander, Director of the CSIS Russia and Eurasia Program
Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS)
Washington, D.C., Friday, 6 May 2005

History is complicated, and important. One of my dearest friends was
born in a refugee camp in Germany after the war: her family was one of
the lucky ones that escaped Estonia as Soviet troops occupied the country
after defeating Germany's Nazi forces in the Baltics.

Another dear friend and colleague who is a native son of St. Petersburg
has shared with me stories of how his grandmother found food for her
daughter, his mother -- during the brutal Siege of Leningrad: everyone I
know who is from that city has such stories of desperate survival, of
grandparents starving so the children could live, of eating rats, horses,
anything to survive.

I remember the day I learned that one of my mom's acquaintances was a
Holocaust survivor: I saw the number tattooed on his arm and he told me
how he would have perished in a death camp, but for liberation by Soviet
forces.

Does the survival of my Estonian friend and her life of service as an
American citizen negate the value of the survival of my Russian friend's
mother, and through her the life and work of a brilliant Russian
scholar? Does the value of a life lived by a Jewish survivor because
Soviet soldiers destroyed Hitler's armies justify the trauma of my Estonian
friend's family forced to flee their country for fear of occupation or
worse by those same Soviet armies?

From the commentary issuing from official and private antagonists in the
weeks leading up to the May 9 commemoration of the 60th anniversary of
victory over Nazi Germany, you would think so. You would be under the
impression that one has to choose which of these lives had more value,
or was the greater victim of repression and the evil that totalitarian
political systems and their leaders wrought in the 20th century.

You would think it was impossible to stand in Moscow on May 9th and
honor the few remaining veterans of the Soviet Army, those who suffered
unspeakable hardships in breaking the back of the Nazi military machine
in Stalingrad truly the beginning of the end for Hitler's insane dream --
while also denouncing Stalin's imposition of Soviet rule in eastern Europe
by exploiting the presence of those same armed forces.

An open letter is circulating that criticizes commemoration in Moscow of
the defeat of fascism because Russia's political system fails to meet
European standards of civil liberties, political freedom, rule of law, and
democratic institutions. In an interview this week, Russian Defense
Minister Sergei Ivanov justifies the occupation of eastern Europe as a
better fate for those countries than the failure to defeat German
fascism.

Both statements claim, in effect, that one of those lives was
more valuable than the others. Both statements are tragic failures to
accept the responsibility to make the 60th anniversary of the liberation of
Europe an honest embrace of history in all its complexity, one in which
equally valuable lives were lost because of political systems that crush
the value of the individual and fail to acknowledge that heroism and
sacrifice are achieved by individuals, not by political systems.

Given that the defeat the Soviet Army would have given Hitler control of
strategic resources and territory that almost certainly would have made
Germany's defeat impossible, it is entirely appropriate for President Bush
to acknowledge in Moscow the historic debt of the American people to
those 27 million Soviet soldiers and civilians who died in the war.

Given how Stalin used that victory and the sacrifices of those soldiers and
civilians, it is at same time entirely appropriate for President Bush to
travel to Riga to denounce how the Soviet leadership turned wartime
cooperation in defeating one totalitarian regime into the pretext for
imposing another totalitarian system in eastern Europe.

American citizens and their leaders should be deeply troubled that Russia's
leadership has not only failed to denounce Stalin's annexation of the
Baltic states and Soviet occupation of eastern Europe, but has sought to
justify and even glorify the Nazi-Soviet Pact and post-war imposition of
Soviet-style regimes in eastern Europe. This failure is both a symptom and
cause of Russia's inability to become a successful and modern major power
in the 21st century.

The failure to face their history with honesty in its entirety prevents
Russia's leaders and citizens from fully acknowledging how its contemporary
political system is weakening the country and squandering the opportunity
of its post-Soviet transition. Russia's leaders and the country's people
aspire to security, prosperity, and a global role.

Instead, Russia's failure to build democratic institutions, rule of law, and
protections for individual rights has perpetuated corruption, ineffective
government, and an economy dependent on simple resource extraction
for growth. Russia will not be a 21st century great power as long as it is
not a democracy, and a weak Russia is not in American national interests.

However, Americans should also understand the truly heroic role that the
citizens of what was the Soviet Union played in World War II. Americans
should work hard to distinguish the people from the regime indeed,
precisely because the Russian political system is not democratic and
understand that millions of Soviet citizens were themselves victims of
Stalinist repression.

Americans should use the May 9th anniversary of the defeat of fascist
Germany to acknowledge the great sacrifice and role of Soviet citizens,
and re-affirm our common interest in a secure and prosperous democratic
Russia. -30- (Contact: cwallander@csis.org)
===============================================================
19. WHO NEEDS ALLIES LIKE THESE?
Russia celebrates liberation from fascism, Europe celebrates
liberation from Russia

The May 9 festivities are supposed to show that the world still
respects and honors the Soviet Army soldiers who contributed more
than anyone else to the defeat of fascism. But it hasn't taken the
new members of the European Union long to forget that they were
saved from Nazism by the Soviet Army.

By Andrei Scherbakov, Megapolis, No. 18 (423)
Moscow, Russia, May 2005

On May 9, Moscow will celebrate the 60th anniversary of victory
in the Second World War. The festivities are supposed to show that
the world still respects and honors the Soviet Army soldiers who
contributed more than anyone else to the defeat of fascism. But it
seems that we should be prepared for something entirely different:
for cynical speculations about the post-war occupation of Europe by
Soviet troops and the need for Russia to pay compensation.

It hasn't taken the new members of the European Union (the
Baltic states, Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary) long to
forget that they were saved from Nazism by the Soviet Army. Their
leaders are demanding that May 9 should be recognized as marking
the start of the Soviet occupation and the Cold War. These demands
are actively supported by the United States and old members of the
European Union - including Germany, which pursues a revenge-driven
policy despite Schroeder's sugary rhetoric at meetings with his
"friend Vladimir Putin."

"Sure, Eastern Europe knows what fascism means, based on its
own experience," says Alexander Rahr, leading expert on Russia at
the German Foreign Policy Council. "But this period was shorter than
the 45 years of communism. The West has never doubted that America
won World War II. We have always viewed Russia as a potential enemy.
The idea that Russia liberated Europe no longer exists in the West:
hence the opinion that there is no point in celebrating May 9 in
Moscow or in going to Moscow for the celebrations. Germany has been
free of Russian occupation for 15 years now. Russia has to deal with
the new world order."

Note that this prominent German political analyst compares the
Soviet regime with fascism, presenting it as the greater evil. Even
Rahr, however, doesn't come close to the genuine hostility of Baltic
leaders who ignored invitations to celebrate the 50th anniversary of
Victory a decade ago, and who intend to stage a global performance
now with their "special position" and new grievances against Russia.

The Kremlin's hopes that participation in the festivities would
force EU leaders to recognize the liberating mission of the Red Army
are apparently futile. Of all Baltic leaders, only President
Freiberge of Latvia is coming to Moscow - apparently in order to
publicly question Russia's contribution to the Victory. President
Kwasniewski of Poland will probably back her claim. On May 9, he
intends to advocate a radical revision of the outcome of World War
II.

It is common knowledge that smelly initiatives of the new
members of the European Union are encouraged and approved by
Washington. This assumption is further confirmed by Bush's visit to
Riga scheduled for May 7-8. European newspapers accuse Putin of
reviving Stalinism and reluctance to accept responsibility for the
"post-war sufferings of the millions who found themselves under the
tyrannical Soviet occupation." Hysterics followed the plans to
commemorate memory of leaders of the Yalta Conference. All of
Europe backed the Ukrainian right-wingers who were outraged by
plans for a statue of Stalin, Churchill, and Roosevelt in Yalta. (Because
of Stalin, needless to say.) In the meantime, the West makes no
response to demonstrations by S.S. veterans in the Baltic states and
the publication of Nazi memoirs there.

The stance taken by America and Europe position is fairly
clear: "Fascism was bad, but communism was even worse, and
Russia must be held accountable for the occupation. It must return
the art objects and territory it acquired after 1945." The post-WWII
world order is history. Russia is now a secondary state at best, only
taken into account because it still has nuclear weapons.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, one of the West's leading Russophobes: "I
can make a fairly good guess about the terms on which Russia may
be readmitted into Europe. Along with the territorial grievances of
Finland and Japan, part of the Leningrad and Pskov regions will have
to be handed over to Estonia and Latvia. The agenda will also
include independence for Chechnya and a return to Germany of the
'occupied' East Prussia (Kaliningrad). Besides, Russia will have to
pay compensation to the Baltic states, Eastern Europe, and Germany
for damage inflicted by the occupation. That is the price Russia
will have to pay."

Hence the question: does Russia really need to be where nobody
wants it and where it can only expect to be humiliated and forced to
pay for the imaginary crimes of the past? After all, the West is
clearly trying to destabilize the situation in Russia itself and
around its perimeter. These so-called orange revolutions aim to
split the CIS permanently, and subjugate Russia to the new order in
a world dominated by America.

It's truly amazing to see the Kremlin's patience and politeness
in hearing out the Western leaders who don't even try to conceal
their aspirations for revenge and remain unperturbed by the rise of
neo-fascism.

Take a look around, Russia. Take a look at China. Everyone
knows about China's outrage when history was falsified in Japanese
text-books, and Tokyo's aspirations to the status of a permanent
member of the UN Security Council. Notes of protest from the Foreign
Ministry were augmented by demonstrations in the streets,
accompanied by looting of stores and destruction of Japanese cars.

Who can imagine the Japanese being invited to any celebrations in
China dedicated to the end of the war? So how much longer will
Russia be masochistic enough to sit by and listen as our war
veterans are humiliated instead of congratulated? Do we really need
to take that, especially at our own expense? (Translated by A. Ignatkin)
===============================================================
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