If you feel like shopping in big stores on May 8, you can go to Poland. Unlike the large Czech ones, Polish stores are open. And for a simple reason: Poles have not celebrated May 8 for decades. Even they remember the end of World War II in Europe, which brought them and other inhabitants of interwar Poland enormous suffering with a huge number of victims. But they don’t celebrate him.
Prague
4:30 p.m May 8, 2024
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Old Town Square, May 1945 | Source: Archives of the city of Prague
Because for democratic and nationally conscious Poles, the Nazi occupation ended on May 8, but a new, Soviet occupation began.
Luboš Palata: Poles do not celebrate May 8, 1945, for them it is just another occupation. But we continue to celebrate him
Soviet troops were stationed in Poland, which left the country only in the early 1990s. Poland was also moved several hundred kilometers to the west by the decision of the Kremlin.
The eastern part of interwar Poland was annexed to the Soviet Union, almost exactly as stipulated in a secret amendment to the Berlin-Moscow Pact of August 1939 dividing Poland between German Nazis and Soviet Communists.
Poland’s compensation at the expense of defeated Germany was nowhere near 1:1, although it is true that post-war Poland gained hundreds of kilometers of coastline and the developed, albeit destroyed, eastern part of Germany at the end of the war.
Communist totalitarianism the lesser evil?
At the same time, however, the Soviets insured the Poles, so to speak, because the Federal Republic of Germany did not want to come to terms with the new border on the Oder and the Neuse for decades. It only definitively recognized it within the framework of the agreements on the unification of Germany.
For a large part of Poles, the post-war Soviet occupation ended only with the departure of Soviet troops in the early 1990s. It was not until 1990 that the Polish government-in-exile in London ended its activities.
In connection with the anniversary of May 8, 1945, we can therefore ask ourselves whether the Czech Republic should also follow the Polish example. However, despite some similarities in our destinies, it would not be out of place.
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Although Czechoslovakia lost the Transcarpathian Ukraine, in violation of the treaties with Moscow, it was compensated, so to speak, by the Soviet support of the plan to expel the Sudeten Germans.
The Soviet army, together with the American one, left Czechoslovakia in the autumn of 1945. It did not return until August 1968. The Czechoslovak elections in 1946 were the freest in all of Soviet-liberated Europe. The Czechs, however, were the only nation in Europe that freely chose the communists out of several other options.
Despite the length and enormity of the crimes, Communist totalitarianism and the later Soviet occupation were a lesser evil in their consequences than the preceding Nazi occupation and Berlin-induced war.
May 8, 1945 is therefore, despite all its “buts”, a positive turning point in Czech history. And as such, he is worthy of celebration. That’s why we keep celebrating on May 8. Despite Putin’s Russia.
The author is a commentator for the Daily
Luboš Palace
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