Mahir Ali :
Saturday’s parade in Moscow, commemorating the 70th anniversary of the defeat of the Nazi war machine in Europe, also served as a reminder of a less auspicious outcome of World War II: the Cold War that very soon afterwards pitted former allies against one another, and which persisted at varying levels of intensity for close to four decades.
Although the festivities in the Russian capital were attended by a reasonably impressive array of foreign dignitaries, including the presidents of China, India, Egypt and South Africa, the West was generally represented at the ambassadorial level in a pointed snub that was intended to remind Vladimir Putin of the cost of Moscow’s machinations in neighbouring Ukraine.
The only Western leader who felt obliged to pay her respects was the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, who turned up on the day after the parade to lay a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, graciously acknowledging the enormous Soviet sacrifice in defeating the forces of Adolf Hitler.
She also used the occasion to berate Russia for “the criminal and illegal annexation of Crimea and the war in eastern Ukraine”.
President Putin was, in turn, relatively conciliatory, telling Merkel: “We do face some problems today, but the sooner we can end their negative impact on our relations, the better it will be.” He also couldn’t resist a barb clearly aimed at the United States, albeit without naming it, for its “attempts to set up a unipolar world order”.
The unprecedented scale of the military parade marking Victory Day was no doubt intended to underline Russia’s continued claim to superpower status. The fact that such displays of lethal hardware are still considered an acceptable means of underlining a nation’s clout is a sad reflection on the ways of the postwar world, redolent of lessons unlearned.
But Russia is hardly the only culprit in this regard, and it could easily be argued that military parades are infinitely preferable to battlefield deployment of the latest weaponry, which is all too often the means whereby the US chooses to demonstrate its prowess in this sphere.
Russian actions in respect of Ukraine, meanwhile, are easy to deplore, but surely deserve to be viewed in the broader context of Western-backed regime change in Kiev, as well as Moscow’s apprehensions about the eastwards expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato), a part of the Cold War architecture that remained intact even after its obvious adversary ceased to exist.
Much the same could be claimed in respect of the controversies that continue to swirl around the Soviet role in World War II. Hardly anyone goes as far as Arseniy Yatsenyuk, the Ukrainian Prime Minister, who declared some months ago that the USSR was in fact an aggressor in that conflict. However, it is not unusual to come across the claim that whereas the Red Army was undoubtedly instrumental in defeating Hitler, the Soviet Union also bears some responsibility for enabling Hitler to launch the conflict.
This argument centres around the infamous Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, a non-aggression agreement between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany that was concluded just days before the official start of World War II. It is not an argument that can easily be disregarded. But again, the context matters: it is all too often forgotten that the reprehensible pact followed unsuccessful efforts by Moscow to form an alliance with western European nations such as Britain and France.
Had those efforts not been summarily rebuffed, who can say what effect it might have had on Nazi war plans, given the prospect of conflict on two fronts. As things panned out, Hitler was able to overrun much of Western Europe before picking an opportune moment to launch a massive attack on the eastern front.
Another aspect of the conflict that is unpleasant for Russians to recall is that nationalist groups in several constituent states of the USSR collaborated with the Nazis, seeing them as allies against Russian hegemony. In some of the post-Soviet states, not least Ukraine, there is a tendency to celebrate these nationalists as heroes.
It is not uncommon for the Red Army’s role as a liberation force to be weighed against its repressive inclinations in eastern Europe thereafter, but postwar Western machinations in countries such as Italy and, perhaps most notably, Greece rarely score a mention.
The Cold War that was in full flow by 1946 wasn’t a one-way affair, and the same could be said about its recurrence today.
Who can say whether a sizeable contingent of Western leaders led by Barack Obama might have helped to break the ice in Moscow last week, but it may well come to be seen as a wasted opportunity. When asked about the boycott, Putin responded: “Everyone we wanted to see was here.” His churlishness is unsurprising, but it does not augur well.
( Mahir Ali is a Sydney-based writer)
Saturday’s parade in Moscow, commemorating the 70th anniversary of the defeat of the Nazi war machine in Europe, also served as a reminder of a less auspicious outcome of World War II: the Cold War that very soon afterwards pitted former allies against one another, and which persisted at varying levels of intensity for close to four decades.
Although the festivities in the Russian capital were attended by a reasonably impressive array of foreign dignitaries, including the presidents of China, India, Egypt and South Africa, the West was generally represented at the ambassadorial level in a pointed snub that was intended to remind Vladimir Putin of the cost of Moscow’s machinations in neighbouring Ukraine.
The only Western leader who felt obliged to pay her respects was the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, who turned up on the day after the parade to lay a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, graciously acknowledging the enormous Soviet sacrifice in defeating the forces of Adolf Hitler.
She also used the occasion to berate Russia for “the criminal and illegal annexation of Crimea and the war in eastern Ukraine”.
President Putin was, in turn, relatively conciliatory, telling Merkel: “We do face some problems today, but the sooner we can end their negative impact on our relations, the better it will be.” He also couldn’t resist a barb clearly aimed at the United States, albeit without naming it, for its “attempts to set up a unipolar world order”.
The unprecedented scale of the military parade marking Victory Day was no doubt intended to underline Russia’s continued claim to superpower status. The fact that such displays of lethal hardware are still considered an acceptable means of underlining a nation’s clout is a sad reflection on the ways of the postwar world, redolent of lessons unlearned.
But Russia is hardly the only culprit in this regard, and it could easily be argued that military parades are infinitely preferable to battlefield deployment of the latest weaponry, which is all too often the means whereby the US chooses to demonstrate its prowess in this sphere.
Russian actions in respect of Ukraine, meanwhile, are easy to deplore, but surely deserve to be viewed in the broader context of Western-backed regime change in Kiev, as well as Moscow’s apprehensions about the eastwards expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato), a part of the Cold War architecture that remained intact even after its obvious adversary ceased to exist.
Much the same could be claimed in respect of the controversies that continue to swirl around the Soviet role in World War II. Hardly anyone goes as far as Arseniy Yatsenyuk, the Ukrainian Prime Minister, who declared some months ago that the USSR was in fact an aggressor in that conflict. However, it is not unusual to come across the claim that whereas the Red Army was undoubtedly instrumental in defeating Hitler, the Soviet Union also bears some responsibility for enabling Hitler to launch the conflict.
This argument centres around the infamous Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, a non-aggression agreement between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany that was concluded just days before the official start of World War II. It is not an argument that can easily be disregarded. But again, the context matters: it is all too often forgotten that the reprehensible pact followed unsuccessful efforts by Moscow to form an alliance with western European nations such as Britain and France.
Had those efforts not been summarily rebuffed, who can say what effect it might have had on Nazi war plans, given the prospect of conflict on two fronts. As things panned out, Hitler was able to overrun much of Western Europe before picking an opportune moment to launch a massive attack on the eastern front.
Another aspect of the conflict that is unpleasant for Russians to recall is that nationalist groups in several constituent states of the USSR collaborated with the Nazis, seeing them as allies against Russian hegemony. In some of the post-Soviet states, not least Ukraine, there is a tendency to celebrate these nationalists as heroes.
It is not uncommon for the Red Army’s role as a liberation force to be weighed against its repressive inclinations in eastern Europe thereafter, but postwar Western machinations in countries such as Italy and, perhaps most notably, Greece rarely score a mention.
The Cold War that was in full flow by 1946 wasn’t a one-way affair, and the same could be said about its recurrence today.
Who can say whether a sizeable contingent of Western leaders led by Barack Obama might have helped to break the ice in Moscow last week, but it may well come to be seen as a wasted opportunity. When asked about the boycott, Putin responded: “Everyone we wanted to see was here.” His churlishness is unsurprising, but it does not augur well.
( Mahir Ali is a Sydney-based writer)
