Russia to outlaw criticism of WWII tactics

jetsetter

jetsetter

Forum Addict
Joined
Dec 11, 2005
Messages
7,257
Location
Seren?sima Rep?blica de California
Car(s)
1997 BMW 528i
By Adrian Blomfield in Moscow
Last Updated: 5:09PM GMT 05 Mar 2009

The controversial plan comes after a television documentary exposed the scale of human losses during one of the conflict's bloodiest battles.

The programme stirred deep emotions in a country that has traditionally glorified the heroic exploits of ordinary soldiers during the 'Great Patriotic War' but has often ignored the immense human cost behind the victory over Nazi Germany.

As anger among veterans swelled, the government sensed an opportunity to capitalise on the public mood at a time when the threat of economic recession is threatening prime minister Vladimir Putin's popularity.

Sergei Shoigu, the respected emergency situations minister, has called for a law, based on Holocaust denial legislation in Germany, that would make it a criminal offence to suggest that the Soviet Union did not win the War.

Mr Shoigu indicated that the legislation would also seek to punish eastern European or former Soviet states which deny they were liberated by the Red Army. The leaders of those countries could be banned from Russian soil, he said.

The minister's comments appeared particularly aimed at Estonia, which relocated a statue a Red Army soldier from a central square in the capital city Tallinn two years ago to a nearby war cemetery, prompting outrage in Russia.

"Our parliament should pass a law that would envisage liability for the denial of the Soviet victory in the Great patriotic War," Mr Shoigu said. "Then the presidents of certain countries denying this would not be able to visit our country and remain unpunished."

"Mayors of certain cities would also think several times before pulling down monuments."

The Estonian government has said it views the Soviet Union as an occupier rather than a liberator. Soviet troops invaded Estonia twice during the War, once as Nazi Germany's ally and then, in 1944, as its enemy. They remained until 1991.

Mr Shoigu has won support for his proposal from the prosecutor general, Yuri Chaika, and other legislators who say that a bill will be presented before parliament in the next few months.

Liberal Russians fear that the legislation will be used to punish anyone who criticises the manner in which Stalin conducted the war or addresses incidents such as the Soviet massacre of 22,000 Polish prisoners of war at Katyn Forest in 1940, which Moscow maintains was not a war crime.

Academics estimate that more than 26 million Soviet soldiers and civilians were killed between 1941 and 1945, a death toll that dwarfed the losses of any other country. Yet in Russia itself, where Stalin is still revered as the country's wartime saviour, the subject remains a forbidden one.

The NTV documentary attempted to address that taboo with a sensitive depiction of the Battles of Rzhev, fought in 1942-3, which killed up to 1.5 million soldiers, two-thirds of them Soviet.

The battles are little known in Russia, and even Marshall Georgy Zhukov, the Soviet war hero who led the Rzhev operations, barely mentioned them in his biography.

The documentary showed re-enactments of the battles and included interviews with German war veterans who expressed horror over the manner in which Soviet troops appeared to be used as "cannon-fodder".

The film was greeted with widespread opprobrium. Critics demanded the arrest of its presenter, the well known news anchor Alexei Pivovarov, who was accused of being part of a Jewish conspiracy financed in the West to belittle the Soviet war effort.

"It has become the fashion to smear the heroic deeds of the Soviet people and to defame the Soviet way of life," said Ivan Korbutov, a retired general who heads the Russian council of war veterans. "Such actions, orchestrated at the behest of the West to discredit our glorious past, must be brought to court and the journalists responsible punished."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...ssia-to-outlaw-criticism-of-WWII-tactics.html
Click to expand...

Why am I not surprised that this is happening in Russia?
 
I've got a Russian politics professor who likes to say, "Two things won WWII: US industry and Russian blood." From what he says (and the Georgian and Russian girls in my class), for many older generations in Russia it's still taboo to talk about Stalin as doing wrong. We in western countries can't even really get our heads around it. The man really defined "cult of personality".

But hopefully this legislation fails. Not only is it just stupid, but this is something that should be discussed, to (hopefully) prevent anything like that from ever happening again.

Just for reference, my professor is a guy named Dale Herspring, if you want to look him up. The man is a walking encyclopedia of info on Russia, Eastern Europe, Pentagon politics, etc.
 
Oh man, I can't wait to see how this is abused.

"it sucks that 20 million people had to die"
-NOBODY DIED, WE WON WITHOUT A SINGLE DEATH, YOUR PUNISHMENT FOR TREASON IS DEATH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Seriously though, why should Estonia call them a liberator? They were their own country until the soviet union strongarmed a forced annexation than couldn't even protect them as the Nazi's came in. Sorry but the USSR in Estonia was nothing more than a forceful takeover of another country, not the "agreement" they try to say and Estonians should be allowed to say that. The fact that they FOUGHT Estonians to get back in after the Nazi's kicked them out shows that they were nothing more than an occupying army.
 
That's bullcrap. Back in 2006 one of the national networks aired a series (96 half hour episodes) about WWII, every episode was dedicated to one month in WWII, some episodes covered specific weeks of certain months, it was the "100% available truth" about the war i.e. a massive critique of Soviet army, it's Commanders and Stalin's policies, along with certain "respect" for German army, it's tactics, "achievements", and so on. It's available on DVD and back then it didn't cause any problems with Mr.Putin so i am thinking this is bogus.

Obviously there is no question in Russia whether we won the war, but even the school program about WWII contains a massive amount of Soviet and Stalin critique, the spotlight of WWII victory kinda shifted from army commanders to Soldiers.

Yeah and btw it's not 20 million deaths, if you count everyone killed by Stalin's repressions before, during, and after the war, including millions of soldiers who were shot in the back for falling back or fleeing, the actual number is close to 50 million.
 
Last edited:
Who cares about the fricking dogs. There were men being wasted against machine gun fire. The dogs that were wasted against tank don't count. If you go there then you have to account for all the wildlife blown to smithereens because of artillery fire, logistics horses killed and everything else...
 
Labcoatguy said:
And the haven't even touched on the worst issue: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-tank_dog
Click to expand...

This article or section has multiple issues. Please help improve the article or discuss these issues on the talk page.

* It is missing citations or footnotes. Please help improve it by adding inline citations. Tagged since November 2008.
* It may not present a worldwide view of the subject. Tagged since November 2008.
* It may contain improper references to self-published sources. Tagged since November 2008.
Click to expand...
 
God! Every time I think Russia may be making some progress towards some form of Western democracy... I hope this one doesn't pass, I have to go to St Petersburg in a couple months and I doubt I won't be dealing with the Occupation of Leningrad and other WWII topics in my cultural and history courses...

On another note: anyone have a link to the original documentary?
 
Just as ridiculous as not being able to deny the Holocaust, this is an infringement on the right of free speech on the most basic level.
 
How can you not criticize russian tactics. They had the Zap Brannigan approach.
Send troops until the germans run out of ammunition. Russian strategy might have been "well" planed but russian tactics sure sucked.
 
Labcoatguy said:
And the haven't even touched on the worst issue: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-tank_dog
Click to expand...


Sorry but killing dogs doesn't even rank in the top 10, hell in my book it doesn't even rate as "bad", just another reason war sucks. Human life > wild animal life. And as mentioned above they would put a bullet in your back if you didn't rush into the german machine guns, shooting soldiers because they have to retreat because of bad planning trumps almost everything they did. Hell I would put their treatment of german POWs above blowing up dogs. Only ~10% would make it out alive, and some would still be in Siberia being tortured I mean "reeducation in communist ideology" 10 years after the war ended.
 
What are the odds of this passing? Is it some cooky lawmaker, or a mainstream one? (Think Kucinich vs. Kennedy)
 
In Soviet Russia, news writes you?

/got nothin'
 
phuckingduck said:
What are the odds of this passing? Is it some cooky lawmaker, or a mainstream one? (Think Kucinich vs. Kennedy)
Click to expand...

I am afraid it's about 50/50, if it passes, 6 months from now i am moving to Switzerland for life, cause you wudn't believe how much stupid legislation has been shoved thru the non-existent system by our president(s) over the past few years.
 
DarkReaper said:
Who cares about the fricking dogs. There were men being wasted against machine gun fire. The dogs that were wasted against tank don't count. If you go there then you have to account for all the wildlife blown to smithereens because of artillery fire, logistics horses killed and everything else...
Click to expand...

Well, what you've also got to look a is there were in upwards of 45 million humans and many less "anti-tank dogs".

However, though human life would trump animal life anyway, that is one of the most sick and dishonourable things you could do in a war, lucky they didn't do it with humans. Even with dogs though... :mad:

This is on the same level of Germany denying the holocaust. It happened, get over it. Why can no country bear to say "We got it wrong"?
 
freeferrarisdonotexist said:
This is on the same level of Germany denying the holocaust. It happened, get over it. Why can no country bear to say "We got it wrong"?
Click to expand...

:blink:
I hope you're just using this as an example for the gravity of Russia's denial, because Germany is doing anything but denying the holocaust really.


On the original issue:
This is just one more example that makes me think that Russia probably was more of a free, democratic state in the last days of the Soviet Union than it has been under the reign of Putin. It's shameful how he has turned the country in a de-facto dictatorship, without any of the other countries having enough balls to say that out loud.
 
shad_68 said:
:blink:
I hope you're just using this as an example for the gravity of Russia's denial, because Germany is doing anything but denying the holocaust really.


On the original issue:
This is just one more example that makes me think that Russia probably was more of a free, democratic state in the last days of the Soviet Union than it has been under the reign of Putin. It's shameful how he has turned the country in a de-facto dictatorship, without any of the other countries having enough balls to say that out loud.
Click to expand...

Well as a russian i can tell you that's partially wrong. Putin and his team created somewhat of an authoritarian regime, but people are separated from their own state (true, even if it sounds ridiculous) so there's a law abuse from both sides, probably even more from people side than the authorities, but they get their fair share too.
 
ViperVX said:
... so there's a law abuse from both sides, probably even more from people side than the authorities, but they get their fair share too.
Click to expand...
Tell me if I'm wrong here, but Russian society sounds something like our conception of 'liberty' (albeit a simplified one). That is, you can do whatever you want to provided you don't keep others (or the government) from doing what they want.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top