blindpig
05-19-2016, 09:37 AM
Piskorski: The war against historical memory is NATO's long-term campaign
May 17, 2016 -
Mateusz Piskorski, Izvestiya -
Translated by J. Arnoldski
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On July 8th-9th, Warsaw will host the latest NATO summit, the meeting of the heads of the alliance’s member states in the format of the North Atlantic Council. The Warsaw meeting will be the 25th summit in NATO’s history at which agreements achieved at the previous meeting of the alliance’s heads of states in Newport in 2014 will be developed. In particular, we are dealing with the creation of a rapid reaction force on the territory of the countries of Eastern Europe which would be capable of conducting combat operations on the so-called eastern flank of the alliance. The Minister of Foreign Affairs of Poland, Witold Waszczykowski, emphasized that the establishment of permanent NATO and, in particular, US military bases on the territory of Poland will be announced during the summit.
2.5 thousand participants are expected to be present along with 1.5 thousand foreign journalists. For this event, the modern National Stadium in the center of Warsaw has been rented out. Security measures have been tightened in connection with possible terrorist threats and the protests of public organizations who have already declared their intent to hold a kind of anti-summit in the Polish capital.
In tandem with preparations for the event, an intense information campaign has been conducted, the main task for which is whipping up fears of the allegedly aggressive actions and plans of Russia. The war over historical memory is part of this long-term campaign. Here it should be recognized that the revaluation of historical facts and the denial of the role of the Soviet Union in the Great Victory of 1945 have a certain historical and political soil in the Baltic states and Romania, where the authors of NATO-ordered history often directly refer to local collaborationist movements and present their activities as examples of the “fight for independence” from the Soviet Union.
The situation is seen differently in Poland, where it is quite difficult to find supports of the thesis that the liberation was not the salvation of the Polish people from Hitler’s genocide. The reformatting of modern history has been coordinated by state agencies such as the Polish Institute for National Remembrance. All these activities are aimed at avoiding cognitive dissonance so that the population of Eastern Europe can’t look at monuments and remember their liberation from Nazi Germany by the Red Army, something which would call into doubt that the Russia is the historical, eternal enemy and aggressor.
Reformatting perceptions of historical facts is part of this long-term, quite complex project. It is impossible to do something like this over the course of the two months leading up to the summit. However, other efforts can be undertaken.
In the framework of the information war, Eastern European media regularly publishes materials on the placement of nuclear warheads in the Kaliningrad region. The very existence of this region as a subject of the Russian Federation is exhibited as a threat to the existence of neighboring countries. On the southern flank, such a role in the process of escalating the sense of danger is given to Transnistria. Thus, Kaliningrad scares the Baltic peoples and the Poles, while Transnistria is used to scare the Romanians and, to a lesser extent, Bulgarians.
The information war is being conducted systematically and professionally. Its beginning was linked to the necessity of preparing public opinion for the deployment of missile defense systems in Eastern Europe.
In connection with the process of normalizing relations between the West and Iran, NATO’s PR managers were forced to finally admit: the missile systems are aimed exclusively at the imaginary Russian threat.
Poland is attempting to play a leading role in the North and Baltic zones of the arms race in Eastern Europe. In turn, Romania is trying to seize the initiative in the Black Sea region. But everything there is all the more difficult since Turkey has acted as the leader of the anti-Russian coalition for more than half a year. This same Turkey that has displayed certain geopolitical ambitions.
Nonetheless, Bucharest is trying to use Washington’s lack of total trust in Erdogan and provide the Pentagon with alternative services. The initiative for creating a Black Sea combined NATO fleet participated in by those countries which are not yet members of the alliance, Ukraine and Georgia, as proposed by the Romanian Defense Minister Mihnea Motoc is an example of such an approach.
The summit’s preparation has been carefully watched by the American State Department. John Kerry’s deputy, Anthony Blinken, recently visited a number of Eastern European countries. The American official’s talks with his Eastern European colleagues boiled down to one thing: the former members of the Eastern Bloc should unreservedly support Washington’s position during the summit, especially regarding NATO’s military build up on the so-called eastern flank, and should bear the defense expenses on their state budgets.
Blinken emphasized that Russia intends to provoke NATO forces ahead of the summit. As proof behind his words, Blinken referred to the patrols of the Russian air forces over the Baltic Sea. However, he forgot to say that what caused the concern of the Russian Air Force was the presence of U.S. warships. But according to American officials, this is a trifle which is not worth bringing up in the conditions of information war.
Blinken made sure that the American president will feel comfortable in the Polish capital. In order to hold the summit in a good setting, the government in Warsaw, referring to a terrorist threat, passed a bill according to which the holding of any rallies or sickest is prohibited during the time of the extremely important international event that is the summit.
All of this has been done over concern for the well-being of the boss of the new, pro-American Europe, Barack Obama. The official expenses of the Polish defense ministry for holding the meeting of the alliance’s heads of state is $40 million. This information alone can really cause some misunderstanding and bring the citizens of the Polish capital to the picket lines during the summer days of the NATO summit.
http://www.fort-russ.com/2016/05/piskorski-war-against-historical-memory.html
blindpig
05-19-2016, 09:43 AM
Pre-NATO Summit repression wave hits Poland; Piskorski arrested for "espionage"
May 19, 2016 -
By J. Arnoldski
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On the morning of May 18th, the Internal Security Agency of Poland launched a series of raids against anti-NATO activists and allies of the political party of the famous politician and analyst Mateusz Piskorski, Zmiana (Change).
Piskorski himself was arrested and remains in custody on charges of "spying for a foreign country," with various media sources hysterically spreading the "unconfirmed news" that he was employed by the intelligence services of Russia "and/or" China.
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Zmiana's general secretary, Tomasz Jankowski, was also arrested but has since been temporarily released. The party offices of Zmiana and allied organizations were raided and the homes of Zmiana-affiliated activists were searched. Computers, telephones, documents, and any other "data-carrying" devices were confiscated by security officers. Activists are reportedly on full alert and expect further such incidents at any moment.
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The wide-scale coordinated action against Zmiana comes on the heels of an increasingly tense political situation in Poland. Several weeks ago, activists from the Communist Party of Poland and the Grunwald Patriotic Workers' Union were sentenced to "restricted liberty," including community service, fines, and travel bans for "promoting totalitarianism." Following these events, just two days before his arrest, Piskorski warned that the Polish government will attempt to "pacify" oppositional organizations and individuals in the run-up to the NATO summit to be held in Warsaw on July 8th-9th.
Konrad Rekas, vice-president of Zmiana, published the following statement following the wave of attacks:
"This morning, officers of the Internal Security Agency (ABW) searched the homes of members of the party ZMIANA and demanded that hard drives, any data carriers, and documents, etc. be handed over. We believe such actions to be a form of political repression and an attempt to intimidate groups that have a different vision of Polish foreign, domestic, and socio-economic policies than the one promoted by the Republic of Poland’s authorities.
The Chairman of ZMIANA, Mateusz Piskorski and the organizations and independent groups around him are operating in compliance with Polish law despite harassment from state authorities, such as the prolonging of the procedure of ZMIANA’s registration as a party.
The ABW’s actions represent a flagrant violation of the rule of law unacceptable in a democratic country which claims to respect freedom of speech. Those subjected to unjustified repression will submit complaints, as provided by law, against the actions of the ABW, and any attempts to violate the good name of ZMIANA and its members will be taken by us to court.
We will not shut up and we will not be intimidated. Our activities always put Poland and its defense in the first place, even when this doesn’t suit the rampant security services."
While the harsh, whirlwind attacks may have caught some off guard, the general context is no surprise. Poland's overwhelmingly Russophobic media has whipped up hysteria against the alleged "Russian Fifth Column" and "Putin's agents" since the day of Zmiana's founding. In connection with preparations for the upcoming NATO summit in Warsaw, the Polish government also passed a bill prohibiting protest actions in the capital at the time of the event and has tightened security measures with vague references to a "terrorist threat".
Zmiana has been targeted for its openly anti-Atlanticist geopolitical stance and its pledge to demonstrate against NATO and the United States' deployment of additional troops and weapon systems on Polish soil.
The endless witch hunt for "Kremlin trolls", given new impetus with the desire to prepare a clean show for Barack Obama's attendance of the NATO summit, has now culminated in direct political repression.
http://www.fort-russ.com/2016/05/pre-nato-summit-repression-wave-hits.html
Other photos at link.
blindpig
05-23-2016, 09:09 AM
Why does the truth about the war still cause us to quarrel with the Crimean Tatars? Part 1
Original: Komsomolskaya Pravda
Translated by Alexander Fedotov
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The KP [Russian newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda – trans.] commentator Galina Sapozhnikova {GS} went to the Crimea to see why the premiere of the film about Stalin’s deportations turned into a political scandal in Simferopol.
He was thin and terribly laconic – this, compressed like a spring, man in a suit and a tie, behind whom loomed the Russian flag.
His desk was almost empty – only a pile of papers, left for the late working hours, and a pair of plastic toy soldiers as amulets. But they have not brought good luck to him – the Consul General of the Russian Federation in Crimea, Vladimir Andreev was departing after a scandal and, therefore, refused to be interviewed.
He allowed to record exactly three sentences: “My grandfather, Ivan Terentievich Batygin,was an air force general killed at Lutsk. My grandmother, an air force captain, also used to fly, and was one of the “Night Witches”. It is a taboo for my generation to make peace with someone in my lifetime”.
It sounded like a death sentence.
That was a sentence to the policy of silencing all uncomfortable questions we have inherited from the USSR. The policy that turned out to be a mine that could blow up the situation even after a few decades.
Tatar gambit
Recall the essence: at the end of May [2013 – trans.] Simferopol hosted a magnificent premiere of the film about deportation of the Crimean Tatars. The story is quite tragic because of the fact that one-tenth of the Crimean Tatar people were convicted of collaboration with the German occupiers. Stalin and Beria decided to punish them all. 18 May 1944 194,410 people (from existing 220 thousand at the time), including the families of those who did not betray anyone but rather served in the Red Army, were loaded into freight wagons and sent to Uzbekistan. Was it a crime? Of course! It was repeatedly recognised even by the Soviet power in 1967 and 1991.
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When the country began to completely fall apart, the Crimean Tatars were pulled back to their homeland. But, in contrast to the Baltic countries, no one was thinking to return houses to their former owners. Looking ahead, I will say that the issue with the land Crimean Tatars somehow sorted out themselves. They captured lots of land in some places and built houses with their own money. And now there are more of them in the Crimea than it was before the war – 270 thousand. The famous poem of the poet Boris Chichibabin (“How unseemly Crimea is without Tatars!”) is no longer relevant. The Tatars came back and brought a special flavour to the Crimean life, filling it with forgotten aroma of chebureks [Crimean Tatar’s dumplings – trans.] and thin arrows of minarets. Local residents initially treated this with caution, but then found that there is nothing tragic in the return of one of the Crimean indigenous peoples to their ancestral lands. Tatars are hard-working and hospitable. It is nice to be friends with them and to deal with. All people follow that. They eat at their cafes, ride on their minibuses, buy their vegetables, without ever mentioning mass collaboration in which they were once accused.
In war as in war
And now, 69 years since the deportation, Crimean Tatar TV channel ATR produced and released the first widescreen film Haytarma (translated as Return), the main character of which was Amet-khan Sultan, who was awarded twice Hero of the Soviet Union. Yes! He was a person of incredible scale! He was a test pilot and air adventurer who shot down 49 German airplanes. He had his own special style. He threw himself at the enemy from above, as if they were prey. Because of it, the Air Force commander of the South-Western Front, Air Force Colonel General Timofey Khriukin even allowed him to draw an eagle on the side of his plane.
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18 May 1944 Amet-khan Sultan arrived on a vacation for a few days at his parents’ home in Alupka [a small town in the Crimea – trans.] and witnessed the mass deportation. He managed to save his family: parents and the sister, but not the whole nation. How could he then continue fighting and reach Berlin is the question…
Imprinting the name of such a man into the history is a noble cause. That is what the Crimean Tatars did, having produced the film with the money from the Russian businessman Lenur Islyamov, a native Tatar. Advertising was provided. “They were expelled from the Crimea. We remember …”, a tragic voice breaks into the frivolous Crimean life. Disciples and colleagues of Amet-khan Sultan were invited to the premiere from Moscow. After the war he worked in Zhukovsky as a test pilot. A few respectable people, generals wearing pants with stripes, arrived, sincerely thinking they were going to continue celebrating the Victory Day. In a couple of hours before the premiere the Russian Consul Vladimir Andreev invited them to his office and said literally the following (I quote the words of the director of the Amet-khan Sultan museum Mustafa Mustafayev, who was also present at the meeting – GS): “Do you know that the people you’ve come to, all without exception sided with the fascist regime, and that the Crimean Tartar battalions were brutally killing our parents? The film is nationalistic. It distorted the history of the Second World War”.
The guests took a look at the invitations and saw what was actually written in them: “The first film in the history of the Crimean Tatar people about the deportation”. Four of the eight invited, made excuses and refused to go to the premiere.
The next day the Consul gave television channel ATR an interview that exploded Crimean information space:
” Russia could not be represented at the premiere of the film distorting the truth about the Great Patriotic War. If it was a serial film, in which 17 of 20 series were about the feat of the Soviet people and the Soviet soldiers, the legendary pilots, 2 series were about the collaboration of the Crimean Tatars with the fascist invaders and the last one was about the deportation, the tragedy and the state crime committed by the Soviet leadership, I would have come and watched all 20 episodes… Write it down and show it to any Crimean Tatar”. So a journalist did by compiling the acid concentrate from his most severe sentences. In war as in war. Perhaps, everyone in her place would have done the same. But … do you know, in which form, I found how the interview was retold among the people? Here it is: “the Consul said, that the right thing was done when the Tatars were evicted. He supported Stalin …”
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Crimean Tatar rally yelling “Andreev – fascist” gathered at the Consulate General. A poster, on which the Consul was depicted alongside Stalin and Beria, was publicly burned. The result was a bright TV screenshot. Ratings of both the film and TV channel had increased a lot. The situation was resolved unexpectedly: Russian Foreign Ministry recalled the Consul to Moscow and issued a statement in which they noted Andreev’s wording as incorrect. The outcome: Crimean Tatars celebrate the victory, the Crimean Russians evasively say: ”To be honest, we think in the same way as the Consul, but will not stand up for him because he is a very much disputed person”. The film is being successfully demonstrated all over the Crimea. The reaction of people was identical: all came out of the session with moist eyes. Asking them, if this deportation affected their families in particular, was silly because it affected all without exceptions.
Piecework
“Thank you for watching the film”, politely thanked me Tatar boy about ten years old. There were really not much Russians in the cinema hall.
I came to watch it for the second time to check the perception I felt after the first time.
So, here is the story. On one hand, there are absolutely harmless Tatars. They dance, sing, cry and nobly do not leave the old grandmother, although the soldiers shouted them: “You’d be better off taking the food!”.
Excellent work of the cameraman. Mountains, over which, like a bumblebee, aircraft is circling. The dance. A girl’s skirt is like a spinning top. Excellent performance of the main character (Amet-khan Sultan was played by the film’s director Ahtem Seytablaev). The crowd is another story. The producers invited for the roles of the exiled those who were in fact exiled! And thousands of people were patiently coming to be filmed every night. It would be hard even for young people to withstand such a test again. However, the old men did! One frame touched me to tears. In the general confusion an old man drags a sewing machine on his shoulder. It turned out it was the one, which his mother managed to grab at the last moment and which saved them from starvation in Uzbekistan! “Crimean Tatars! Traitors and accomplices of the fascist invaders”, NKVD [The People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs was a law enforcement agency of the Soviet Union – trans.] officer is shouting into a megaphone. …Tatars are humbly crying.
They are beautiful, innocent, generous and naive people, who a few hours before the future expulsion raised their glasses for “the father of all people”. There is really not a word in the film about the fact that 20 thousand of Crimean Tatars (it is the fact, despite how many people may try to challenge it, ascertained via German documents – GS) were serving in the Wehrmacht and fought against the partisans. It tells a different story as one wonderful girl, for example, baked bread for partisans and another girl heroically led a herd of horses to the mountains and saved them.
And in contrast to all this spiritual beauty there is a detachment of rabid paranoiacs of the NKVD with twitching eyes who every now and then make ” bang-bang”, because their happiness is in shooting more people and crossing out a cardboard folder with the red pencil as if they performed piecework. For example, the elders come to the officer and say: “We will not go anywhere, you will have to kill us here”. “You ought to know where it is the best”, he responds almost laughing. Bang-bang… There is no sympathy even towards the only normal NKVD officer, who eventually saved the family of Amet-khan. You are dreaming, soaking in the general mood of hall, for him to vanish quickly.
Spiritual propaganda
Now about the things that got me personally. Not hackneyed clichés of the movie “Wag the Dog”: sad children’s eyes in the window, soaked by the rain, or a girl who has lost her mother, or the chorus of women, children and the elderly, who in response to the violence sing a sad folk song. Everyone has read Gene Sharp, the theorist of “colour” revolutions. Thank God, the director had the sense not to force the deported to give any flowers to the soldiers. Otherwise, that would be an exact copy of any Taksim (Taksim Square is the place in Istanbul, where in May 2013 bloody clashes happened between protesters and Turkish police – trans.) or Maidan. A hint can be read without any decoding. Another frame: SMERSH [(acronym of “death to spies” in Russian) counter-intelligence agencies in the Red Army formed in late 1942 – trans.] officer grabs and drags somewhere a sheep. That is a cliché from another time – from August, 2008. Remember Georgian stories that Russian soldiers allegedly were stealing “strategic lavatories” in Gori and Poti… And that was what did wind me up: a row of machine gunners stand legs wide apart and set a shepherd dog on a girl. It was also a cliché… from my childhood. That was how SS was represented in Soviet films…
I tested myself once again. For a few days I recorded folk stories about the deportation. I almost cried. I went back to the cinema to look at the screen through the eyes of others. The effect was the same, it did not even vanish after the absolutely shrill finale. Amet-khan Sultan hastens up to the empty railway station in the hope of pulling out of the wagon his beloved, but he is too late. He kneels down and freezes on the ground like a stump… The film-makers said exactly what they wanted to say.
The audience in the hall do not get up for a long time while reading the captions: “More than 30 thousand Crimean Tatars participated in the Great Patriotic War, defending the homeland. Seven of them were awarded the title of the Hero of the Soviet Union. During the raid 18 – 20 May entire population of the Crimean Tatar people were expelled from Crimea to Central Asia, Siberia and the Urals – 194,110 people according to the official figures”. And then people at the exit buy badges and magnets “I am a Crimean Tatar man!” and “I am a Crimean Tatar woman!” and stickers for mobile phones with now clearly understood by every Crimean word “Haytarma”. If a party or movement had been created, “Haytarma” would have been a password. As a proclamation. As a signal. So wait for an order…
So what? There are plenty cinematic distortions in Russia too. In the landscape of classic films about the Great Patriotic War a couple drops of tar like “Bastards” [Сволочи] and “Penal military unit” [Штрафбат] does not make any difference. In this case it turns out to be a distortion as there is only one film, which, by definition, is destined to become a cult classic. But, on the other hand, who cares what is going on in the minds of one of the former USSR nation representatives.
That is, of course, propaganda, but spiritual propaganda, and seeing how the Stalin deportation looked in reality is useful to all. In the end, it is real absurdity to evict the whole nation in one night by the standards of any age: either of that time or today. Even though the example was given by Americans who drove 120 thousand Japanese from the West coast during World War II. The US Supreme Court, by the way, confirmed then the constitutionality of the action, stating: “A restriction of the civil rights of a racial group is permissible if required by a “public necessity”.
Public necessity of the XXI century requires that any injustice is called genocide and any nation, who suffered from it, is a victim. Let’s try to understand why?
Brother-2
“I, personally, liked the film. It was not the most important to show a hero or a heroism of an individual who fought for the Soviet power, but to see the meanness of this power, its position and attitude towards their own citizens or towards one of the nations living in the country”, says Ilmi Umerov, the chairman of Bakhchisaray district administration. And he adds: “I do not think that this film could injure any representatives of other nations. Only those who are nostalgic for that regime may be offended,” he said as he struck with a whip. By his logic, it turns out that we with the actor and director Vladimir Kosov are sitting at the cafe and missing Beria and Stalin, because our senses are still affected. Vladimir was too offered to act in this film as many Crimean actors, but he refused, even though the role was an “honorable” one – to play a German. He was lucky as one of his friends would urinate from the freight wagon on the heads of people who were being put in them … It seems that no people wishing to make an acting career in such a way were found in the Crimea, because there is no such a scene in this film. Though it definitely was in the script.
“Thank God I did not participated”, Vladimir says now: “In Crimea, we are taught to be tolerant towards deported peoples and it is unethical to recall how the Tatars cleansed Sevastopol and passed the whereabouts of guerrilla bases to the Germans. That is what we do. I would like to see the authors of this film to also switch on their tolerance. At the time we shot a series of documentaries about the Crimean partisans, and one of the characters, the commissar of the partisan detachment Nikolai Dementyev, told, for example, the story that they had been ordered to evacuate the family of Amet-khan Sultan as the Soviet leadership feared of their persecution by the Nazis. The guerrillas moved to Alupka, found the correct house, agreed with relatives to meet on the outskirts of the village, but, sensing something was wrong, they created an ambush. At night at the venue instead of relatives the Tatar Polizei came…
During the trip, I heard this story several times. Each time there was a different version of it. The Russian version also told about the younger Amet-khan’s brother Imran, who allegedly served in the police, for this he was later convicted by a military tribunal. The Tatar version hotly and categorically contested this nuance. There is not a word about it in the film. Is it important to us? Yes, considering that the producers set the task to show the fate of the nation through the fate of a particular person. In the same scenario, it turns out that the fate of Amet-khan was retouched for a different purpose, though no less noble one.
To be continued in part 2 of the article
The movie can be watched here (in Russian): Художественный фильм “Хайтарма”
https://slavyangrad.org/2016/05/22/why-does-the-truth-about-the-war-still-cause-us-to-quarrel-with-the-crimean-tatars-part-1/
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Why does the truth about the war create a conflict between us and the Crimean Tatars? Part 2
Original: Komsomolskaya Pravda
Translated by Alexander Fedotov
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The KP [Russian newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda – trans.] commentator Galina Sapozhnikova {GS} went to the Crimea to see why the premiere of the film about Stalin’s deportations turned into a political scandal in Simferopol.
The first part of the publication referred to the premiere of the film “Haytarma” in Simferopol. The film is about the deportation of 1944. The premiere of it ended in a political scandal. Today’s story is about what Crimean Tatars think about that.
Schindler’s list
“You cannot imagine what it is like to live with the stigma of the nation of traitors”, an elderly woman quietly complained to me before the session. I retold it to the Director-General of the media holding ATR Elzara Islyamova.
“We do not consider themselves as traitors!”, she exclaims: ”Simply a case was needed for evicting the entire nation. Imagine, the Crimean population before the war consisted of 75-80 percent of the Crimean Tatars (in fact, of 20% – GS). And, suddenly, a huge number of not the best variety of people, from exile and prisons, men without a tribe who had nothing to lose, were resettled here. For many years, the ideology that the Tatars were traitors was imposed upon them, that it was good they were evicted and the Crimea was cleared. Our team is multinational. A lot of Russians are working at our company. They told us they were brainwashed from their early childhood. It was inculcated to the entire population of the Soviet Union for more than 50 years”.
(In my opinion, everything was the other way around. I graduated from the most ideological faculty – Journalism. I learnt about the existence of the Crimean Tatars only when they came out to the Red Square in the late eighties…- GS)
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“For us it is like the Schindler’s list is for Jews. It is a wound that is not healing. No story in the film is invented. Each one has the archive reference. The woman who gave birth on the train is the grandmother of our producer. His uncle was actually born on 18 May 1944. There is an ocean of such stories. We were all crying while filming. Though it was only a film, it was hard. Now imagine that not a 1,000 of people were evicted like on the set but all 194,000? We had three ambulances on duty on the set. We took 15 people to a hospital”.
“The acute reaction of the Russian Consul to this film was due to the fact that you did not reference the collaboration of Tatars with the Nazis”, I reminded her.
“Why did we have to reference it?”, Elzara was surprised: “We are not going to do it. As far as we are concerned all of them fought on the side of the Red Army”.
I, frankly, swallowed some air in surprise. And I exhaled only a couple of hours later when I came to Alupka to the museum of the awarded twice Hero of the Soviet Union, laureate of the state prize, honoured test pilot of the USSR Amet-khan Sultan.
The museum director Mustafa Mustafayev began to list: “Seven Heroes of the Soviet Union, three full Chevaliers of Order of Glory, the chief of the largest underground organisation, the legendary scout, the commissar of the largest guerrilla unit in southern Crimea. All of them were Crimean Tatars!”
If the history of the Second World War was rewritten here to cater this cliché, then let it be rewritten. It would be terrible, if the people’s hero became someone who wore not a star but a swastika.
White and black
Of all the stories written by me in the Crimea, the story of Mustafa Mustafayev, definitely was the most terrible. At the time of the mass expulsion on 18 May 1944 he was three years old.
“Apparently, my mother was confused. She took with her to the train a mug of melted butter. I remember only one thing – I was terribly thirsty. I got to this mug and drank it instead of water. Can you imagine what happened to me? I know what had happened from my sister. I was almost dead, even my eyes did not move. At every stop soldiers were looking into the wagons to check if there were any dead. So I was thrown out of the train. My mother managed to run up and throw me back into the car. She remained outside and was killed by machine gun fire… We went on without her. Some old woman from a nearby car read a prayer over Koran and poured beads of water into my mouth and I was revived. In 1968, one of my older sisters, whom the Germans drove away to Austria in 1942, came back to the Crimea for the first time. She asked me again and again: “Please recall the place where the mum was left so I can build there a small chapel”. But I was not able to recall. I only remember that it was hot and I was dying of thirst…
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It is possible to make another film, as powerful as “Haytarma”, based on the stories of how the deported Tatars went to Uzbekistan, how some of them died on their way there and how they lived there for the next 45 years.
What are we arguing with the Crimean Tatars about if no one can find any contradiction in relation to the most important for them pain? Black is called black while white is called white.
“Maybe you yourselves should condemn the collaborators? We, Russians, did condemn the army of Vlasov”, I optimistically suggested to Rustem Umerov, the father of the head of Bakhchisaray district administration. He was deported when he was 18.
“Why should we blame them?”, he was genuinely surprised: ”Someone still had to work. War is war. Everyone wanted to survive”.
“I agree. A farmer can work under any authority and it is not a crime. The crime is when a person goes to work as a guard or policeman”.
I was patient, while he, from the height of his 87 years, was wise: “There was a camp at an open place nearby. People from Sevastopol were driven there and offered to become volunteers so they would live. If not, they would die of hunger. So it happened. So what, was the one who died a hero or not?
Life or death? Stomach or betrayal? Not that it is strange but the fact that discussing the aftermath of the war, for some reason, everyone has completely forgotten about its causes. The fact that, if there have been no war, no one would have been forced to make such a hellish choice. No one would have starved, no one would have forced anyone to serve in the police, no one would been deported. And almost 70 years after no one would be seeking answers to the question: “Why?”.
Fact for a fact, death for a death
A version that Stalin by the deportation avenged the Crimean Tatars for their collaboration during the Second World War has long been considered the main one. Everything is relative. Numbers of, for example, Ukrainians, as well as Balts, Belarussians and Georgians, who fought on Hitler’s side, were several times higher. But moving them all somewhere to Siberia was unrealistic. The demonstrative expulsion of a small nation was easier to arrange. Though what was the point if this topic was carefully silenced in the Soviet press for 45 years? Some people believe that Stalin did not forgive their ingratitude, considering the Soviet government even gave an autonomy to the Crimean Tatars! Others suggest that he only continued the work of Catherine II and was arranging a platform for further expansion. The Greeks, for example, generally had nothing to do with any collaborationism. Most of them were partisans, but they were evicted too. Another group of people claimed that Stalin had thus saved the Crimean Tatars from lynching because they did a lot of bad things during the war…
“The explanation must be sought in the very nature of the Soviet regime”, the first deputy chairman of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar people Refat Chubarov kindly guided me in the right direction: “The last thing I’m willing to see as a culprit is the NKVD officer that came into my mother’s house. Though I can recall by name those who deported the Crimean Tatars in Sudak region. They are listed for each village. You want to know if there was collaborationism in the Crimea, don’t you? Of course, there was. What was the reason for it? It was caused by the severe famine of 1921 -1923, by the fight against bourgeois nationalism of 1927 – 1928, by repressions of 1937. When the elite of a small ethnic group is cleansed several times during one generation, it’s a disaster. I think we still have to study the phenomenon of why did the vast majority of people stand up to defend the Soviet power?”.
I’m afraid that by following this route Refat Chubarov may make some unpleasant discoveries. Because the other side also knows everything: who of his relatives received his wages from the Germans, when, how much and for what exactly. Just this delicate subject was kept in the “friendly family of Soviet people” as “not to be stirred”. As it has turned out, this tactic was wrong.
https://slavyangrad.files.wordpress.com/2016/05/02-4.jpg?w=880
Protested love
It seems I’ve lived for quite a long time, but not long enough to listen to and relive some of the stories for the second time. Sometimes I’m forced to. None of the Crimean Tatars I met plainly told me: “My grandfather or father worked for the Germans”.
It’s good. That means the process of glorification of collaborators has not started here yet. In Estonia, I remember, where more than twenty years ago I, with tears in my eyes, recorded similar stories, it was the same at first. When asked “What was the reason your family was repressed?” the same answer was given: “For no reason!”.
…Now I regularly meet my past interviewees at conventions of former SS. They have nothing to be ashamed of anymore. Over the years, they have been given powerful exculpatory pills. It transpired that by giving an oath to Hitler their fathers in fact “fought against Bolshevism”. It is an honour now. Crimean Tatars are yet to learn it.
It’ll come soon. Over the Tallinn events of the furious spring of 2007 and the insulting transfer of the Bronze Soldier, we have lost sight of one remarkable fact: the solemn reburial in Bakhchisaray of the famous Crimean Tatar collaborator Edige Kyrymal, whose remains were brought from Munich.
“This man was defending our people from repressions”, nodding at the headstone the deputy chairman of Bakhchisaray administration Zamir Haybullaev explained without certainty: ”He could conduct some negotiations…”.
For reference. Edige Kyrymal was the only one officially recognized by Nazi Germany as the chairman of the Crimean Tatar centre. He was sent to the Crimea in 1942 for organising among other things an archaeological expedition to prove the historical affiliation of the Crimea… to Germany. He was not an executioner himself. But an illusory enthusiasm of Crimean Tatars that Hitler would certainly allow them to create a national state, was without exception on his conscience. The conscience which is quietly napping now at Bakhchissaray cemetery.
Protested love. That’s what distinguishes a teenager from an adult and a young state from mature.
Who won? Who was defeated?
“That is what is called in the collective human psychology as victimisation”, the Crimean political analyst Andrei Malgin, Director General of the Central Museum of Tauris, made his diagnosis in my interview with him. And he explained: “Any nation, especially a new one, must unearth the crime that was committed against it. The crime that would be able to unite its people. It has been a common direction since the XIX century for Hungarians, Poles, Jews… The old nations like the French and the British did not suffer it. It is unusual for Russians as well, while for the majority of nations that is a normal type of historical behaviour.”
“Does it not seem strange that the society is being rocked by scandals related to the historical memory? Why have the events of 70 years ago become for all of us an open wound?”
“All of a sudden it turned out that we, the Russians, in reality have nothing we could be proud of. We cannot be proud of the progress of the economy. The same goes for our past. The greatest country in the world was presented to the world as a prison of nations. The only thing that remained was the victory over fascism into which the Soviet Union made the most significant contribution. If that last remaining core broken down, there would no longer be any foundation for the existence of the Russian and Soviet identities. And that is why we are so painfully reacting to any attempts to revise the results of the World War II and its very essence.”
“Is the film “Haytarma”, which provoked the scandal in the Crimea today, an attempt by Tatars to rehabilitate themselves or to attack our positions? Who defends and who is on the offensive?”
“The Crimean Tatars are now experiencing a period of historical optimism since they returned home. The Russians are having another psychological background, which was formed by the loss of a great country. It looks like the Crimean Tatars are full of hope for the future while the Slavic population does not have a lot of hope. That is why it may seem to us that they are attacking us while they feel they are just restoring the historical justice. In the past it was a march of thousands of people shouting “Allah Akbar!”. There were recoilless guns in the building of the Council of Ministers and the detachments of armed policemen with shields. Today it is a film. That means the conflict goes into the aesthetic sphere.”
Instead of an epilogue
I cannot understand why the further we are from the war the more we are drowning in it. What have we not expressed fully? What have we not found out that we have to raise these issues again and again? Why, without saying a word, did we get on the defensive? Nobody, for example, from my family fought on the front in the Great Patriotic War. There were thousands of such families in the Urals rear. However, when in the centre of Tallinn the Bronze Soldier was torn off the pedestal, I became furious like I had never been in my life. I literally was not able to breathe. I would have forever stopped respecting myself, if I did not write what was then written.
Why was my office neighbour Ulyana Skoybeda wound up when the blogger Michael Berg from America wished through a victory to Hitler and Leonid Gozman, echoing him, compared SS with SMERSH?
What did happen to the Russian Consul Andreev as he lost his temper and uttered on the camera everything he was thinking about?
The answer is on the surface: both Russia and the Russians were bullied for so many years. We were told one nasty thing after another about the war. We are running out of strength to withstand all of it. We are on defensive, each one and all together. We are not giving up, but the effect of the metal fatigue is in progress. There were twenty-five years of incessant attacks, lies, vulgarity, pouring excrement on what was holy to your parents and grandparents. It seems sometimes that it was easier on the front. At least it was clear who was ours and who was the enemy. Now everyone is supposedly speaking the same language. However, take a look inside them and you’ll see an abyss.
There are only two roles in the present universal stage play. One is of the victim and another is of the executioner. For whatever reasons only the latter is always given to Russia and Russians… The French historian Joseph Ernest Renan once said a wise thing: “The community may exist if it is able not only to remember but also to forget”. The first part of this formula, we have learned well. We now have to learn the second part. All of us with no exceptions…
https://slavyangrad.org/2016/05/22/why-is-the-truth-about-the-war-creates-a-conflict-between-us-and-the-crimean-tatars-part-2/
Meanwhile here in the States George Takei makes a fucking [i]musical about the concentration camp where he spent some of his childhood. America, where historical memory is shorter than Trump's dick and class treason is an art form.
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