Lately numerous attempts have been made to revise the role of the Soviet Union in the Second World War. To us that war was not just World War Two; to us it was Great and Patriotic. And although in 2010 we will be marking 65 years since Victory Day, a really long time, our land still bears the scars of the war. But let us try and be objective. Let us look back once again and cast an unbiased historian’s eye at everything that occurred before the war broke out…

The roots of the Second World War go back to the beginning of the 20th century, to the outcome of World War I. In essence both world wars were fought for the purpose of redividing the world. Three countries claimed global dominance: Great Britain, Germany, and the United States. Neither the Russian Empire nor the Soviet Union had ever entertained similar ambitions.

In the Great War that began on 28 July 1914 Germany had been defeated by 11 November 1918. In the summer of the following year it was forced to sign the Treaty of Versailles on extremely unfavorable terms. French Marshal Ferdinand Foch observed at the time: “This is no peace. This is a truce for twenty years.” His words proved prophetic. As it transpired later, he was just a couple of months wrong.

The Nazis came to power in Germany with the start of the world economic crisis of 1929. Nazi propaganda promised the country salvation — through making short work of the ethnic minorities at home and plundering other countries. Notably, the German authorities at first saw Hitler as a lesser evil than the Communists.

The interlude between the two wars did indeed exacerbate Germany’s woes. Dependent on raw materials and food imports as it was, in a crisis it could not find markets for itself. The way out of the impasse seemed to lie in redividing spheres of influence in the world. Germany wished to create a trade area it would be fully in control of. It fancied that Eastern Europe could make just such an area if turned into a part of the German Lebensraum.

Stalin was only too well aware of the imminent danger of war and was trying to find a solution in a system of collective security. In 1935 the Soviet Union signed an agreement on mutual defense with France and Czechoslovakia. Moreover, the latter country’s territorial integrity was guaranteed by Great Britain.

Yet on 5 September, 1938, Hitler demanded the Sudetenland to be handed over to Germany — it was a frontier area in Czechoslovakia of enormous strategic and economic importance. To consider the German claims a conference was called in Munich with the heads of four powers taking part (Britain’s Prime Minister Chamberlain, head of the French Government Daladier, Italy’s Premier Mussolini, and Germany’s Reichskanzler Hitler).

In Munich the leaders of France and Great Britain betrayed Czechoslovakia: on 30 September, 1938 an accord was signed under which the Sudetenland went to Germany. That day the last chance of averting the war was lost.

Chamberlain announced on return from the Munich conference: “I have achieved peace with honor. I believe it is peace in our time.” Churchill would later have a different view of the matter: “England has been offered a choice between war and shame. She has chosen shame and will get war.”

As for Hitler, he was simply stunned by the ease with which he had scored success: “Do you think,” he said to the Hungarian foreign minister on 16 January, 1939, “that six months ago I myself deemed possible that Czechoslovakia would be handed over to me on a platter by its friends?”

Munich became a serious blow to the Soviet position. France and Great Britain made it unequivocally clear that they were determined to disregard our country’s interests. After Czechoslovakia Hitler turned his attention to Poland. Germany, interested as it was in the Danzig Corridor, yet again recalled that a German community lived on Polish territory and, ostensibly to protect those people, clamored for the German-Polish border to be redrawn. However, Great Britain declared itself ready and willing to protect Poland, and at the talks of 4-5 April, 1939 gave it guarantees of protection. From then on Europe witnessed a new political crisis gathering momentum, which eventually plunged the world into the Second World War.

In June-July 1939, negotiations started in Moscow to conclude an accord with France and Great Britain on mutual assistance and joint defense of East European states.

However, Stalin could not afford to overlook the fact that merely a year earlier those two countries had cheerfully betrayed Czechoslovakia. He saw that the agreement with the Soviet Union would be but a card in their political game with Germany. Besides, Chamberlain had previously said that he would sooner resign than sign an alliance with the Soviets, and the makeup of the Anglo-French delegation and its lack of powers to sign the ultimate agreement caused serious doubts among the Soviet leadership. Besides, Poland itself, for historical reasons (the latest of which was the Soviet-Polish war of 1920), refused to take part in any coalition that included the USSR.

Stalin was faced with a difficult choice. On the other hand, Germany proposed “reviving the policy that had benefited both states over the past centuries.” And so on 23 August, 1939, a Soviet-German non-aggression pact was signed in Moscow for the term of 10 years. Yet that did not make the Soviet Union Germany’s ally. The point was simply to maintain neutrality.

Stalin saw that war was inevitable anyway and merely wished to play for time. The pact with Germany gave the Soviet Union time to get ready for war by pushing back its western borders. But for the frontier revision under the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, the Germans would have attacked the Soviet Union straight from the threshold of Leningrad and Kiev. That would have meant a certain defeat in the war for us.

Although the non-aggression pact was at the time to the advantage not only of the Soviet Union, but of Germany as well, Stalin was very well aware that it was a temporary affair. In the picture of the future world Hitler painted for Germany there was no room for the Soviet Union. Hitler thought it his duty to sooner or later do away with our state, and better sooner than later. That was no secret to the Soviet leadership.

The rout of France left Hitler to do as he pleased. Great Britain had lost its position on the continent and switched over to strategic defenses, with little but protection of its territories on its mind. And from that moment on Germany prepared for an assault on the USSR. On 26 July, 1940 Hitler gave orders to start devising a plan later code-named Barbarossa.

Hitler assumed that the defeat of the Soviet Union would let him use our country’s enormous natural wealth for Germany’s needs and expand the living space for Germans. He imagined that he would thus strengthen the Nazi position inside Germany, and also demoralize Britain and induce it to conclude peace on his terms.

It was those aggressive plans of Hitler that brought Germany to war with the Soviet Union and to the start of the Great Patriotic War, the biggest and bloodiest tragedy of the entire 20th century, which eventually determined both the outcome of World War II and the shape of today’s world.

It was not our country that prepared that war. The Soviet leadership did everything within its power to avert it. But it was the Soviet participation in the war and our great victory that allowed the world to overcome the “Brown Plague of the 20th century,” and get the better of the inhuman ideology of Nazism.

Our site is dedicated to the 1945 Victory Parade. That parade became one of the symbols of the end to the great tragedy of humanity, the Second World War, in which our people, at the cost of superhuman efforts and dozens of millions of lives, halted the worst madness in history.

Yet lately there have been attempts to accuse the Soviet Union of unleashing World War II. Incredibly, talk to this effect has been heard in the countries Germany once occupied, whose revival was only possible thanks to the Soviet victory.

It is appalling to see injustice come from the nations whose current freedom was purchased with the lives of Soviet soldiers.

But it is not just a matter of memory and gratitude. Forgetting the lessons of history for the sake of political games is dangerous. Doubly so for those who start these games oblivious of the past and never bothering to look far enough ahead. By this site we intend to remind people once again of the outcome of the Second World War. No one has been forgotten, nor indeed anything!