An Overdue Alliance

There is a Russian proverb that explains why everything always takes so long in Russia. “Russians are slow to harness a horse, but once they finally do it, they ride fast.”

Coming to grips with World War II has certainly taken a very long time in Russia. In the West, the 65th anniversary of victory over the Nazis, or Victory in Europe Day as it is known in the English-speaking world, was a fairly minor event. It was rather perfunctorily marked in Europe and almost completely ignored in the United States. On May 8, when it is officially celebrated by the Western Allies, newspapers were more concerned with the unfolding crisis in European financial markets than with long-ago battles on European battlefields. The world has moved on. Controversies about the war have long been consigned to ivory towers and the pages of academic journals.

Russians are miffed at how the U.S. media and public ignore the anniversary. In Russia, preparations for the celebration had gone on for much of the past year, and the occasion was marked by a major military parade and a slew of official festivities.

There were also heated arguments in the mass media and on the Internet as to who won the war — the people or the Communist Party — and whether the brutal collectivization and industrialization of the 1930s helped or hindered the war effort. Everything was endlessly debated — Stalin’s purges of the top ranks of the Red Army, the pact with the Nazis and the Soviet military strategy. It seemed as if every one of the 40 million Internet users in Russia had a passionate opinion about historical events.

The war remains so important for Russians because it is the only major occasion over the past 100 years in which the nation was truly united. Russians feel tremendous pride in defeating Adolf Hitler. This pride, moreover, has a wounded quality, as such national pride often does. Western nations and the United States are often accused of minimizing Russia’s suffering, of claiming too much credit for the victory and of equating Hitler with Stalin. The latter is the worst sin of all because it turns the war, which for every Russian was the ultimate contest between good and evil, into a struggle between two grotesque mass murderers.

Civilized nations came together to oppose Hitler, and the Soviet Union joined their alliance, albeit only out of dire necessity. It was a great tragedy for Russia that after 1945, it once again withdrew from the world community and became its enemy.

Russia’s leaders are at last starting to realize this. There has been official acceptance of Soviet responsibility for the 1940 mass murder of more than 20,000 Polish officers at Katyn. NATO troops participated in the Victory Day parade on Red Square. The West’s contribution to the Soviet war effort, especially the Lend-Lease program from the United States, has been acknowledged.

It has taken Russia a long time to figure out that the only act of national heroism of the past century was achieved in alliance with the West. Having taken 65 years to harness, perhaps Russia will now ride rapidly to rejoin the world community.