Recently I had a fight with my beloved granny Tamara, who was born in 1945, the year that World War II ended. In Ukraine, people of her age are dubbed “the children of war.” She was born in the family of a Soviet Army pilot.
On May 9, the day Ukraine, Russia and other post-Soviet republics celebrated their 72nd anniversary of the victory against Nazism, she was crying and blaming the modern generation for hating her generation and veterans of World War II.
“Those damn Right Sector nationalists dare to rip off the medals from the chests of two senior women just because those medals were on Saint George’s Ribbon. They burnt the ribbons and gave back the medals to those shocked women. Why? These are just old harmless women! Why doesn’t your generation let us die with our own beliefs,” granny said, referring to one of the numerous clashes between nationalists and the Immortal Regiment commemoration walk participants, happened all over Ukraine.
She blamed my generation in glorifying the nationalist Ukrainian Insurgent Army instead –people, who, in her words, betrayed the Soviet Union and collaborated with Nazi Germany.
It was hard, but I calmed her down and tried to explain that she should understand the Ukrainian insurgents. It was Joseph Stalin who collaborated with the Nazis in 1939, dividing Poland and occupying western Ukraine.
“He didn’t occupy! He liberated those territories,” granny said.
I tried to convince her, that people on those lands didn’t want to be “liberated” by the dictator, that they fought against two bloody empires and didn’t see themselves as Soviet people. Yes, some of them collaborated with Nazis. So did Hungarians, Romanians, Italians and even Stalin himself.
“But we didn’t know that back then. I discovered that only in the 1990s. Unlike the current government, the Soviet Union had a strong propaganda machine and knew how to hide its dark pages,” granny explained.
The U.S.S.R indeed had a strong brainwashing machine. It collapsed 26 years ago but why do only Ukrainian Insurgent Army, or UPA members, remain Nazis and “fascists” nowadays? Why is our society still being divided into Soviet “vatniks” and Ukrainian fascists?
Because of U.S.S.R.’s strong brainwashing techniques are still being effectively used by the current Russian government and some representatives of Ukrainian authorities also.
In 2014, Russian President Vladimir Putin also “liberated” Crimea. The so-called republics of Donetsk and Luhansk separatists, backed and armed by Russia, are born of the imperial aim of Soviet rebirth.
Ukraine’s Opposition Bloc has been using Victory Day as the main factor to win voters by provoking the other radical group of people –Ukrainian nationalists, many of whom see the Soviet Union as the root of all evil.
“I know there’s no black and white. But sometimes it is so hard to stay cold-minded when watching the oligarchic TV channels showing such episodes as the one with two senior women and nationalists. In the Soviet Union we at least were told what’s wrong and what is right,” granny said.
And she is right. Nowadays you definitely have to choose a side, a camp and cut the ties with the all the opposite symbols, languages, goods and politics.
Both nationalistic and pro-Russian camps have the clear vision of what’s wrong and what is right and who the enemy is.
Kremlin lovers don’t understand the difference between nationalism and fascism and nationalists sometimes see threats in ribbons and flags and LGBT propaganda in a rainbow.
As my beloved granny, I also feel lost sometimes in this sea of controversy and anger. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko keeps telling me that the main evil is Vladimir Putin and Russia. But he has been using them as an excuse for too long, declaring them as enemies while trading with them and more.
Maybe, the same way my granny discovered the truth about Stalin long after his death, I will also find out the ugly truth in the future.
Now I am trying to survive in this brainwashing machine. And all my anger is directed to those people who know perfectly well how to manipulate the masses and use it only to enhance their already selfish powers.
