04/05/2024 17:00 | Comment
IVAN HOFFMAN’S VIEW The generation that experienced the Second World War died out, and with it historical memory. History is being rewritten, says publicist Ivan Hoffman. According to him, only the future will show whether the Russians finally freed us from the Germans, or vice versa. History will be written by the winners, adds Hoffman.
The Ivan Hoffman Archive
Description: Ivan Hoffman
There are places where no human foot has set foot in years and where time has stopped because of it. For example, someone inherits a plot of land in the British countryside and finds a collection of dusty vintage cars of enormous value in some barn that has been locked for decades. This is how I recently entered a metal garage that had been locked for decades and found a metal sign from the 1960s hanging under its ceiling. On one side it read “USSR OUR FRIEND” and on the other “WITH THE USSR FOREVER”.
If today’s young progressive Russophobe opened this garage, he would experience a culture shock. Friendship with Russians? In addition to the eternal times? That doesn’t make any sense! After all, our best friends are Germans! Or the Americans, when Trump is not the president. The generation that experienced the Second World War died out, and with it the historical memory. History is being rewritten to suit contemporary political tastes. The idea that the Red Army liberated us from German Nazism does not fit with the current, anti-Russian one.
Photogallery: – Blaník with Klaus
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When history is not compatible with the present, it can be corrected by deleting and erasing the inappropriate from the textbooks. Another option is to change the winner. Credit the victory to the Allies and leave Russia out. Or reclassify the Russians from liberators to occupiers. Something tells me that maybe I belong to the last generation that has a problem with this kind of rewriting of history. It’s because of childhood memories.
As a pioneer, I held a guard of honor at the grave of an unknown Russian soldier. In my childhood, we all had memorials and a favorite motif to draw on them was a Russian tank with a red star. In May, we pasted paper doves of peace and the numbers 1, 5 and 9 on the school windows. These were the famous days of May: May Day, the Prague Uprising and victory over the Germans. On the anniversaries of the Soviet Socialist Republic, we carried lanterns in parades. And as part of the company, I received a photo book “Here every stone knows Lenin” from a classmate from Leningrad.
The Russians lost with me in August 1968. In the following years, however, it became clear that most people did not mind the occupation. They adapted, just as most once adapted to the German occupation. We don’t conform in our family. My grandfather and uncle joined the Slovak National Uprising and went to the mountains. My father did not adapt after August 68 and as a revisionist historian he lost his job. It would be embarrassing if I were to adapt to the EU and accept NATO today.
However, the Russians, as liberators, end up in Europe. In Germany, they are unwelcome at celebrations of the liberation of the concentration camps they liberated. On the anniversary of the liberation of Bratislava, no Western diplomat arrived at the monument in Slavín this year. Koněv is cleaned from Prague 6 to a deposit somewhere. In the traditional convoy of historic vehicles heading from Prague to Pilsen, it is said that only American ones are counted. And in the independent media, there is sarcastic banter about celebrating victory without a liberator.
And the lesson? History is optional. This applies both to the old history, which no longer suits the West, and to the new, rewritten one. Only the future will tell whether the Russians finally freed us from the Germans, or vice versa. All we know is that history will be written by the winners.
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author: Ivan Hoffman
Tags: Russians liberators Europe Ivan Hoffman rewriting history
