Both are untrue. About the rifle, “on three.” Everything was exactly the opposite. In total, about 10 million Mosin rifles were produced from 1891 to 1918. It is difficult to say how many of them were produced from 1918 to 1924, but the production does not stop. By 1941 in the arsenals of the red army, there were at least 12-15 million rifles. Under?????? Red Army on 22 June 1941 about 5.5 million people. Add here more than a million automatic rifles SVT, at least half a million automatic PPSH, a large number of machine and hand machine guns. Once it becomes clear: what-what, and small arms in the red army lacked.

But much more interesting the second myth

About the overwhelming superiority of the red army over the Wehrmacht in the number of literally everything. So can, are right liberal historians, and fought we mediocre? Look at numbers.

By June 1941 on the border with the USSR Wehrmacht had in three groups of armies and army “Norway” 127 divisions, two brigades and one regiment. In these troops there were 2 million 812 thousand people, 37099 guns and mortars, 3865 tanks and assault guns.

Note that increasing the number of divisions if done right gives a noticeable advantage, with an equal number of troops, and it is essential. But this force Germany is not exhausted, and that’s about it “forget” to mention the liberals.

Together with Germany in war with the USSR prepared to join Finland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania and Italy.

Finland: 17,5 divisions with a total number of 340 thousand 600 people, 2047 guns, 86 tanks and 307 aircraft;

Slovakia: 2.5 divisions with a total number of 42 thousand 500 people, 246 guns, 35 tanks and 51 aircraft;

Hungary: 2,5 divisions with a total number of 44 thousand 500 people, 200 guns, 160 tanks and 100 aircraft;

Romania: 17.5 divisions with a total of 358 thousand 100 people, 3255 guns, 60 tanks and 423 aircraft;

Italy: 3rd division a total population of 61 thousand people 900, 925 guns, tanks 61 and 83 of the aircraft.

That is almost a million people in 42.5 divisions, with 7 thousand guns, 402 tanks, and this almost a thousand aircraft. A simple calculation shows that only on the Eastern front the allies of the Hitler axis, and it would be more correct to call them so, had 166 divisions, numbering 4 million 307 thousand people with 42601 artillery units of various systems, as well as 4171 tanks and assault guns and 4846 aircraft.

So: 2 million 812 thousand from the Wehrmacht and 4 million 307 thousand total population, given the strength of the allies. One and a half times more. The picture is changing dramatically. Don’t you?

And than had on the Western border of the USSR to June 22, 1941?

PSYCHOHISTORICAL WAR OF THE WEST AGAINST RUSSIA

Yes, the armed forces of the Soviet Union by the summer of 1941, when the inevitability of war became apparent, were the largest army in the world. Actually hidden mobilization was carried out. By the beginning of the war, the Soviet armed forces numbered 5 million 774 thousand soldiers. Specifically in the land forces there were 303 divisions, 16 airborne and 3 infantry brigades. Troops had 117581 artillery system 25784 24488 tanks and aircraft.

It seems that the superiority there? However, all of the above-mentioned forces of Germany and its allies were deployed in the immediate 100 kilometer zone along the Soviet borders. While in the Western districts of the red army had a group of 3 million people, 57 thousand guns and mortars and 14 thousand tanks, serviceable of which was only 11 thousand, as well as about 9 thousand aircraft, of which only 7,5 thousand were serviceable.

And in the immediate vicinity of the border of the red army had more or less combat-ready state no more than 40% of this number.

From the above, if you are not tired of the numbers, it is clear that the USSR did not fight with one Germany. In the same way as in 1812 not with one France. That is about any “filled up with meat” out of the question.

And so it lasted almost the entire war, until the second half of 1944, when the allies of the Third Reich fell like a house of cards.

Add here in addition to the direct allies of the foreign parts of the Wehrmacht, the so-called” national SS division”, a total of 22 volunteer divisions. They served in the war 522 thousand volunteers from other countries, including 185 thousand Volksdeutsche, that is, “foreign Germans”. The total number of foreign volunteers was 57% (!) the number of “Waffen-SS”. List them. If it tires you, just estimate the number of lines and geography. The whole of Europe is represented, except perhaps the principalities of Luxembourg and Monaco, and that is not a fact.

Albania: 21st mountain division SS “Skanderbeg” (1st Albanian);

Belgium: 27th volunteer Grenadier division SS “Langemark” (1st Flemish), 28th volunteer tank-Grenadier division SS “Wallonia” (1st Walloon), Flemish Legion SS;

Bulgaria: Bulgarian SS anti-tank brigade (1st Bulgarian);

United Kingdom: Arab Legion “Free Arabia”, British volunteer corps, Indian volunteer Legion SS ” Free India»;

Hungary: 17th SS corps, 25th SS Grenadier division “Hunyadi” (1st Hungarian), 26th SS Grenadier division (2nd Hungarian), 33rd SS cavalry division (3rd Hungarian);

Denmark: the 11th volunteer Panzer Grenadier division of the SS “Nordland”, 34th volunteer Grenadier division “landstorm Nederland” (2nd Dutch), the Free corps of the SS “Danmark” (1st Danish), Volunteer corps of the SS “Salburg”;

Italy: 29th Waffen Grenadier division of the SS “Italia” (1st Italian);

The Netherlands: 11th volunteer Panzer Grenadier division of the SS “Nordland”, the 23 I volunteer motorized division of the SS “Nederland” (1st Dutch), 34th volunteer Grenadier division “landstorm Nederland” (2nd Dutch), the Flemish SS Legion;

Norway: the Norwegian Legion of the SS Norwegian ski battalion of Rangers SS Norwegian Legion, the 11th volunteer Panzer Grenadier division of the SS “Nordland»;

Poland: Gural SS volunteer Legion;

Romania: 103-Panzer-regiment of the SS (1st Romanian), Grenadier regiment of the SS (2nd Romanian);

Serbia: the Serbian volunteer corps SS;

Latvia: the Latvian Legionnaires, Latvian SS volunteer Legion, the 6th SS corps, 15th Waffen Grenadier division of the SS (1st Latvian), 19th Waffen Grenadier division of the SS (2nd Latvian);

Estonia: 20th Grenadier division of the SS (1st Estonian);

Finland: Finnish volunteers of SS Finnish volunteer battalion of the Waffen SS, the 11th volunteer Panzer Grenadier division of the SS “Nordland»;

France: the French Legionnaires SS, 28-I volunteer tank Grenadier division of the SS “Wallonia” (1st Walloon), the 33rd SS Grenadier division “Charlemagne” (1st French), Legion “Abbott Perrot” (recruited from the Breton nationalists);

Croatia: 9-th mountain corps of the SS, the 13th mountain division SS “Khanjar” (1st Croatian). 23rd mountain division SS “Kama” (2nd Croatian);

Czechoslovakia: Gural volunteer Legion SS;

Galicia: 14th Waffen Grenadier division of the SS Galicia (1st Ukrainian).

Separately:

Scandinavian 5th Panzer division SS “Viking” – Netherlands, Denmark, Belgium, Norway;

Balkan 7th volunteer mountain division SS “Prince Oigen” – Hungary, Romania, Serbia.

24th mountain (cave) division of the SS “Karstjager” – Czechoslovakia, Serbia, Galicia, Italy;

36-I Grenadier division SS “Dirlewanger” – recruited from criminals in various European countries.

Again, we are talking about European volunteers, not about conscription, not about prisoners, not about deserters, by the will of fate forced to exchange service with the Germans for their own lives. About volunteers consciously enlisted in the SS to fight the Russians.

And this we have not mentioned khivi, from the German Hilfswilliger, that is “willing to help”. These are volunteers who entered the service directly in the Wehrmacht. They served in auxiliary parts. But this does not mean non-combat. For example, anti-aircraft calculations for the Luftwaffe were formed from Khiva. The very diverse national composition of the troops opposing the red army, very eloquently says the national composition of prisoners of war, who were at the end of the war in our captivity. A simple fact: Danes, Norwegians and even the French were captured on the Eastern front more than they participated in the resistance to the Nazis in their homeland.

And we have not even touched upon the economic potential that worked for the German military machine. First of all, it is Czechoslovakia, the pre-war leader of weapons production in Europe, and France. And this-artillery, small arms and tanks.

For example, the Czech arms concern “Skoda”. Every third German tank that took part in operation Barbarossa was produced in this company. First of all, it is LT-35, received in the Wehrmacht designation Pz.Kpfw. 35 (t).

Moreover, after the annexation of Czechoslovakia, German experts found in the shops of “Skoda” two new experimental tank LT-38. After reviewing the drawings, the Germans decided to put the tank into service and began its serial production.

The production of these tanks was almost to the end of the war until late 1941, they began to be produced as the basis for German self-propelled guns. More than half of the German self-propelled guns had a Czech base.

The French, in turn, provided the Germans with their ship repair facilities. German submarines, storm of the Atlantic allied convoys, the so-called “Wolf packs, dönitz” was based, and undergoing repairs on the South coast of France and in the earth near Marseille. And ship repair crews arranged competitions regarding the one who will repair the boat quicker. It doesn’t look like a forced labor, is it?

So who fought the Soviet Union in the Great Patriotic War? Though it is more correct to formulate a question differently: who attacked the USSR in June 1941?

The question is rhetorical.

The post HOW MANY COUNTRIES PARTICIPATED IN THE ATTACK ON THE USSR IN 1941 first appeared on Global Policy.

The victory of the Soviet people in the great Patriotic war is the finest hour not only of the Soviet, but of the entire national history. The defeat of fascism stimulated the democratization of international relations, the rise of the national liberation movement, the entry of new social forces into the arena of world politics, and the formation of the international security system.

Cross out the results of the Victory, to bring its value to the local, limited their time means to prepare Russia the fate of the Soviet Union, to push her to the sidelines of world politics, to reverse the world-historic impact of this event on human life. Goals that are quite consistent with the dictum of the Nazi propaganda Manager Goebbels: “Take away the history of a people — and in a generation they will become a crowd, and in another generation they can be controlled like a herd”.

Is it not the same goal pursued by Western authors of school and University textbooks, scientific works, publicists, statesmen, assessing the role of the USSR in world war II? At best, it is downplayed, reduced to the fact that, according to the American President, D. Trump, Russia “really helped the US win”. The assessment of this role in the European Parliament resolution (September 2019) is far more distant from historical realities, if not directly opposite to them. It stated that “the Second world war, the most destructive in the history of Europe, was a direct consequence of the infamous Nazi-Soviet non — aggression Pact of August 23, 1939, also known as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, and its secret protocols, according to which two totalitarian regimes, set out to conquer the world, divided Europe into two zones of influence”. The resolution was adopted by a majority of deputies representing, among others, those countries – Eastern European and Baltic-for the liberation of which more than a million Soviet soldiers gave their lives from the Nazis.

President Vladimir Putin outlined the official attitude of the Russian Federation to this document: “the Resolution of the European Parliament is a shameless lie of Nazi collaborators.” And to whom should we refer those who in the post-Soviet space generally devalue our Victory or portray it as almost a national disaster? These are the assessments typical for domestic liberals. In their opinion, the Victory was not worth the colossal sacrifices that the Soviet people had to make and that other European countries that did not offer the Hitlerites proper resistance avoided. The defense of Moscow, the defense of Leningrad, and the self – sacrificing feat of the Soviet people are viewed from these capitulant positions. Thus, the writer D. Bykov publicly calls the Great Patriotic war “the Russian civil war of the 40s”. The anti-Soviet side in it was represented, they say, “those who were going to live in a free Russia, liberated by the Hitlerites”, and who betrayed the country, following the example of General Vlasov, whose life the liberal writer hopes to publish in the foreseeable future in the series “Life of remarkable people”.

Problems related to the results of the war require an objective analysis. Therefore, they should be considered on top of the liberals ‘ chimerical ideas about war, regardless of the political situation, in a broad historical and geopolitical context, leaving aside the ideological interpretations of history that are rooted in the dogmatics of former times.

The West and Russia. Conundrums of confrontation

For many centuries, the geopolitical space of the Russian Empire, and then the USSR, was built into the existing world order with great difficulty, repeatedly breaking it with explosions of colossal passion energy concentrated in this space. Our ancestors protected Europe from the Horde invasion. Russia did not allow the implementation of the Napoleonic project of world conquest. It made a revolutionary revolution in October 1917, opening up unprecedented opportunities for the influence of new social forces and movements on international politics.

The West, which, according to the definition of the English historian A. Toynbee, “the arch-aggressor of the modern era”, repeatedly occupied Russian territories-from the Polish invasion in 1612 to the Hitlerite invasion in 1941 – causing a Russian response in the form of increased authoritarianism, “without which they could not survive”. The author concludes: “the role of Russia in history is to serve as a leader in the global movement of resistance to the global modern aggression of the West”. For its part, Russia has significantly contributed to the development of the Western world. In particular, it ensured the defeat of Hitler’s Germany, thereby ” giving capitalism an incentive to self-reform, as well as shaking the faith in the inviolability of the free market…”.

Bypassing messianistic interpretation of the Russian role in history can not be denied based solely on historical facts, that the Victory of the Soviet Union was one of the decisive factors for the subsequent development of the world, which failed to achieve Nazi Germany who made their own project of reorganization of the world order. The experience of the Nazi occupation of Europe, a significant part of the USSR, and Hitler’s plans to enslave and exterminate entire peoples are even now frightening. What kind of world would we be in for this project? And is a fundamentally different project now promised to us by the liberals obsessed with Russophobia – both Western and domestic?

But only recently-after the 90’s, for some “saints”, for the people of the damned-it seemed that the very possibility of such a thing was forever in the past. What is it? Apparently, the reasons for the unprecedented rampant Russophobia, such acute and total hostility to Russia are much deeper than social, ideological, and geopolitical contradictions. They are irrational, rooted in the darkness of the subconscious of Western society, and have been condensed for centuries into a stable psychopathic syndrome.

Relations between the West and Russia know different States

The war gave way to détente and even unions. But the confrontation-overt or latent-never left them. The West did not allow Russia to relax for long

PSYCHOHISTORICAL WAR OF THE WEST AGAINST RUSSIA

In spite of the humiliating peace of Tilsit (1807) and the assurances of Napoleon’s heart to Alexander I, France a few years later invaded the territory of its ally and captured Moscow, to which Russia responded with the Patriotic war of 1812, which ended the French hegemony in Europe. The Congress of Vienna was followed by the Crimean war; the creation of the Entente was followed by the first world war, in which the allies involved Russia against its national interests and which for it ended in the catastrophes of revolution and civil war. Behind the German-Soviet non – aggression Pact-Hitler’s aggression, behind the Gorbachev-Yeltsin unilateral concessions to the United States and NATO – the collapse of the Soviet Union and the transformation of Russia into a “third world”country.

Aren’t these lessons enough? The West does not consider international law. For him, only the right of force matters. The Western mentality instinctively rejects a huge, incomprehensible country. For him, the real, living Russia, whatever it may be – tsarist, Soviet, or liberal-democratic, is not acceptable. For him, only a spiritually and politically mortified Russia, permanently erased from history, is good.

According to the European, the naturalist, historian, and philosopher N. Danilevsky noted in the middle of the NINETEENTH century, all original Russian is worthy of contempt and extermination, which “constitutes the most sacred duty and true task of civilization”. Sharing this belief, domestic fans of Western values believe that the West, Europe are the pole of progress, continuous movement forward, and the East, Asia- ” the pole of stagnation and stagnation, so hateful to modern man.” These, according to Danilevsky, are “historical and geographical axioms that no one doubts – and every Russian Orthodox follower of modern science shudders at the thought of being ranked in the sphere of stagnation and stagnation”.

Speaking about the “immeasurable gap” between the Russian and Western worlds, O. Spengler wrote at the beginning of the twentieth century: “The real Russian is as alien to us inwardly as a Roman of the age of the tsars and a Chinese of the time long before Confucius, if they suddenly appeared among us. He himself was always aware of this, drawing a dividing line between “mother Russia” and “Europe”.  Of course, I did. “No China, no Japan” said F. Dostoevsky, – can not be covered with such a secret for European inquisitiveness as Russia, before, at the present moment, and even, perhaps, for a very long time in the future… “[8. P. 12]. The great writer stared into the water. Many decades later, W. Churchill was puzzled: “Russia is a riddle wrapped in a mystery and placed inside a puzzle.”

Is it a question of riddles? Solving puzzles is quite an innocent activity. It is another matter when it is linked to international politics. In this case, the paradigm of “friend or foe” gives rise to double standards in international relations. “Our own” are evaluated by measures of good, honesty, mutual trust, “others” – by measures of evil, hostility and hatred that allow deception, treachery, any crime. All this is initially assessed as a benefit, a manifestation of Patriotic valor. This approach was demonstrated by German Nazism, which replaced morality with the ideology of chauvinism, anti-Semitism, and racism. Speaking at a meeting of SS gruppenfuhrers in Posen in October 1943, Himmler, who was in charge of all the Reich’s punitive services, taught: “Only one principle must absolutely exist for a member of the SS: we must be honest, decent, loyal to members of our own race and to no one else”.

Russian Russian expansionism, its centuries-old opposition to Russia, was stimulated not by the desire to learn the secrets of the soul and behavior of Russians, but by the desire to humiliate, subdue and Rob the Russian people. This, in fact, is the mystery of their confrontations. History has repeatedly proved: Woe to those who try to solve it by encroaching on the dignity, freedom and independence of the people of Russia. The same Churchill warned: “The Russians may seem narrow-minded, arrogant, or even stupid, but we can only pray to those who stand in their way”.

Drang nach Osten continues

The October revolution hardened the attitude of the West to Russia. Its extreme expression was Hitlerism, whose ideology and internal policy were formed within the framework of the ancient pagan paradigm “land and blood”, and whose foreign policy was based on the postmodern doctrine of the conquest of world domination. Reviving the medieval Teutonic tradition of” Onslaught on the East “(Drang nach Osten), Hitler set the task of expanding the” living space “of the Reich, which, in his words,”could only be solved at the expense of Russia”.

FROM WHOM HITLER STUDIED. HOW WESTERN “DEMOCRACY” GAVE BIRTH TO NAZISM

In the voluminous opus “Mein Kampf” he wrote: “In this case, we had to gird our loins and move along the same road that the knights of our orders once walked. The German sword should have conquered the land to the German plough and thus provided the daily bread of the German nation».

Shortly before the invasion of the USSR, the Fuhrer had told the Wehrmacht army commanders: “the Russian territory is fraught with immeasurable riches. Germany should establish economic and political domination over it, but not Annex it to itself. This creates all the opportunities in the future to fight with the continents, and then no one will be able to defeat Germany”. The solution to the “Russian question” was concretized as an alternative: “the destruction of the Russian people or the numbing of that part of it that has obvious signs of the Nordic race”.

Having conquered France and other industrialized countries in Europe in an unusually short time, Hitler believed that the economically backward Eastern edge of the continent would become even easier prey for the Nazi conquerors. After signing the armistice agreement with France, on June 25, 1940, Hitler said: “Now we have shown what we are capable of… The military campaign against Russia will be just a game on a box of sand”.

In 1940, Hitler’s strategists began to develop a project of military attack on the USSR, named after one of the German kings of the XII century. and the Holy Roman Emperor “Plan Barbarossa”. It and special additions to it provided for the lightning capture of Soviet territory (in 9-17 weeks) to the Rostov-Gorky-Arkhangelsk line with access to the Urals and the subsequent introduction of the most severe occupation regime on it: destruction of Soviet authorities; physical extermination and eviction of the local population and their replacement by German colonists; looting of the Soviet economy. The Fuhrer called the attack a “great campaign” that should not be stopped by ” any considerations of a moral or ethical nature.”

As much as I hate to admit it, the” Barbarossa Plan ” was largely implemented. The Soviet people and their army were not psychologically prepared for Hitler’s “blitzkrieg”. All the years before the war, propaganda instilled in our fathers and grandfathers the idea that any attack on the USSR would be immediately and crushing for the enemy repulsed – “with little blood, an instant blow”, and the war would move to the territory of the aggressor and with the support of the local proletariat would end in an early victory. Practice has shown the illusory nature of this idea, as well as the utopian nature of the “Barbarossa Plan”. Although during the first weeks of the war the Nazis managed to capture vast areas of the European part of the USSR, the Nazi plan failed. The blitzkrieg lasted for many years of bloody battles with millions of victims. Hitler’s adventure collapsed, ending with The act of unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany, which was signed by field Marshal Keitel.

The Price of our common Victory is high

The war interrupted the modernization of the country, the process of formation of a new type of civilization. The known statistics are far from adequate to the material losses of the USSR. But the dry numbers are also terrifying. The established damage to the national economy amounted to 30% of the national wealth, and in the areas that were occupied, about two-thirds. During the war, 1,710 cities and towns were completely or partially destroyed and burned, 70,000 villages and villages, over 6 million buildings, 25 million people were made homeless, almost 32,000 industrial enterprises and 36,000 communications enterprises were destroyed and looted, and more than 100,000 were destroyed. collective farms, state farms and MTS, more than 4 thousand railway stations, 40 thousand health institutions and 126 thousand schools, educational institutions, museums, libraries and theaters. Post-war reparations only partially compensated for these losses.

Numbers by numbers. And who – even with the accuracy of a million-will say how many of our compatriots from the multinational USSR really died in this damned war? And another sacramental question: to what extent are the other countries of the Western world involved in the war? Very high, if not decisive.

HOW MANY COUNTRIES PARTICIPATED IN THE ATTACK ON THE USSR IN 1941

Of course, it is impossible not to recognize the significant role in the fight against the Nazi occupiers of American supplies of military equipment, medicines, food and other materials under lend-lease. But extensive archives of reliable documents, numerous memoirs, and authoritative research by domestic and foreign scientists clearly show another thing: without the multilateral support of the liberal-democratic West, the Nazis could not have started a world war and occupied almost the entire Western part of the European continent. It was the ruling circles of these countries that allowed the rise to power of fascist and authoritarian regimes in Italy, Germany, Spain and a number of other countries. It was they who encouraged Nazi expansionism with the Munich deal with Hitler. The same circles, rejecting Moscow’s proposals to organize an international front to fight Hitler’s aggression, forced Stalin to conclude a non-aggression Pact with Germany.

At the time, Churchill was surprised not by the Soviet victory, but by the fact that German troops were able to reach the Volga. It would have been really surprising if the Wehrmacht had acted alone. But almost all Western countries were behind it. Military formations took direct part in military operations against the red army Italy and,Hungary and Finland and Slovaks and Croatia and Spain (“Blue division”), Legionnaires of France and other countries. The entire economy of occupied Europe worked for armament, food and other equipment of the Wehrmacht. Officially neutral Sweden provided its Railways for the relocation of heavy weapons and military units in Germany. About 40 % of German armament was made from Swedish iron.

The us position formulated by the Senator, later President Truman, on the day after the German attack on the USSR is well known: Russian Russians should be helped if the Germans are going to win, and if the Russians are going to take over, we should help the Germans — and let them kill each other as much as possible!”.

On the eve of World War II, American corporations made a significant contribution to the development of the German military industry, in particular, Standard oil — 120 million, General motors-35 million, ITT investments amounted to 30 million, and Ford-17.5 million dollars. Ford was one of the largest manufacturers of trucks for the Wehrmacht, and General motors was one of the largest manufacturers of bombers and jet boosters for Luftwaffe fighters. One of the main organizers of the war economy of Nazi Germany, Hjalmar Schacht, President of the Reichsbank, Minister of economy, during the Nuremberg trial, in an interview with an American lawyer, said that these and other American companies throughout the war collaborated with German military corporations, and “if you want to charge the Industrialists who helped rearm Germany, you must charge yourself.” According to his testimony, “even the Coca-Cola company has established the production of the Fanta drink in Germany”!

We won. The whole world then recognized that the decisive role in the defeat of fascism belongs to the Soviet Union. Churchill, who called “to stifle Bolshevism in its cradle”, said: “No government could have resisted such terrible and cruel wounds inflicted by Hitler on Russia. But the Soviets not only survived and recovered from these wounds, but also dealt the German army a blow of such power as no other army in the world could have inflicted on it”.

The victory of the Soviet Union radically changed the world order, which for centuries was based on hostility and violence, turning the vector of its development to peaceful cooperation of States and peoples. Drang nach Osten, however, did not end in may 1945. “Plan Barbarossa” in a new format and under other names remained in service with the West.

Already in March 1946, the same Churchill opened the fronts of the “cold war” with his speech in Fulton, stating that the Communist threat was hanging over Europe: “the iron curtain was lowered Across the entire continent.”Beyond this line are the capitals of the ancient States of Central and Eastern Europe… All of them are objects not only of Soviet influence, but also of growing control by Moscow… Communist parties, which were small in number in all these Eastern European States… they try to achieve totalitarian control in everything”.

A few days later, on March 14, 1946, in an interview with Pravda newspaper, Stalin replied: “Mr. Churchill and his friends in England and the United States present a kind of ultimatum to non-English-speaking Nations: accept our domination voluntarily, and then everything will be all right – otherwise war is inevitable. But Nations shed blood during five years of brutal war for the freedom and independence of their countries, not to replace the rule of the Hitlers with the rule of the Churchills.”

The war called “cold” lasted for decades-until the end of the 80’s. It deformed the world order established by the Yalta, Potsdam, then Helsinki and other international agreements on “peaceful coexistence” and detente. How did it end? The collapse of the Soviet Union, the world socialist system, and as a result – a global geopolitical catastrophe. The threat of war – now thermonuclear Armageddon-is again looming over the human race.

A new era has opened before the peoples, when, according to the famous German historian and publicist M. Sturmer, modern technologies are fundamentally changing the theory and practice of peaceful coexistence. A “President Donald trump blithely and thoughtlessly rants about nuclear weapons” and does not attach importance to arms control, thus destroying the diplomacy of the last superpower. This is an era when “the bipolar power system of the cold war is outdated, and multipolarity does not guarantee any security.” And so on: “when time literally splits at the seams, when cyber warfare has no beginning or end, then attack and defense become indistinguishable from each other. When a ray weapon reduces the alarm time to zero, then missile defense becomes a factor of strategic ambiguity from a strategic fantasy”.

The world has become more dangerous than it was in the years before the Great Patriotic War or during the cold war. Now every careless, adventurous movement in the foreign policy of world powers is fraught with risk nuclear disaster. In fact, these movements are the new Eastern policy of the West: the expansion of NATO at the expense of Eastern European and Baltic States, the construction of military bases near Russian borders, refusal to negotiate nuclear disarmament, attempts to involve Russia in a new arms race, etc.

Drang nach Osten continues, of course, in a modified form

Its leadership center moved from Berlin to Washington. It is in the United States that projects of aggression against Russia are being planned – the new Barbarossa plans. Thus, the Harvard project, developed by United States in the 70s of the last century, provided for the collapse of the USSR, the dismantling of the world socialist system, and the “liberalization” of the Warsaw Pact countries. In General, it was implemented by the beginning of the XXI century. In its development, another Houston project was put forward, which provided for the expulsion of Russia as a world power from the international arena, its collapse and the attitude to its regions as separate independent States.

The program “Eastern partnership”, adopted at the Prague summit of the European Union in may 2009. It is based on the need to establish special, independent relations between the EU and Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan on the basis of common interests and unity of values. Its implementation means subordination to the interests of the West of a significant part of the post-Soviet space and its opposition to Russia , in other words, “Ukrainization” of these countries on the model of Russophobic policy nationalist ruling elites Kiev’s.

The Eastern policy of the Western European States has become just one of the local branches of Washington’s global strategy, which, according to the economist M. Delyagin, did not allow the United Europe “to become an independent geopolitical entity, closed it in its own regional locality, thereby causing its decay.” And the US-managed block NATO uses Eastern European countries to incite hostility to Russia. This, the analyst concludes, deprives Eastern Europe of strategic prospects and turns these abandoned limitrophs into a promising space for various geopolitical games and confrontations, but doomed to degradation.

The entire liberal army

Perhaps the most radical supporters of the revision of not only the results, but also the causes of the Great Patriotic War were liberals of all stripes in the post-Soviet space.

Following Western historical interpretations, they demonize the entire Soviet history, leading it into the channel of their phantasmagoria. So, Deputy. the Chairman of the Parnassus party, who considers himself a “historian”, A. Zubov assures that after the October revolution, for the first time in history, a strong terrorist expansionist regime was created in the country, which not only destroyed one hundred million people in Russia and other countries and deprived up to two billion people of their property, but also caused the rise to power in the 1920s and 1950s. various totalitarian / authoritarian regimes — from the fascist ones in Italy and Germany to the BA’athist ones in the Arab East-and also contributed to the outbreak of the Second world war.

The numbers Called are fictitious, the estimates are chimerical. The attempt to identify the Soviet and Nazi regimes as equally totalitarian is also completely untenable, which has long been a popular method of anti – Soviet propaganda, which then flowed into a fierce Rosso-and Russophobic campaign. Hitler’s and Stalin’s regimes are fundamentally different in their social nature, ideological and political content, and methods of implementation. In order to make sure of this without moving away from the topic, it is enough to delve into the real circumstances of the war and compare the situation of total terror on the territory of the USSR occupied by the Nazis with the situation of improving national life in the zone of Soviet occupation in post-war Germany.

The ideology and politics of Nazism were based on aggressive chauvinism. In contrast, Soviet policy was based on democratic ideas and principles of international relations. Of course, the USSR, first of all, defended its own interests, hoping to ensure its security and prevent German revenge. Stalin put forward the concept of creating a single, democratic, neutral state in place of the defeated Germany: “the Hitlers come and go, but the German people remain”. The Soviet allies in the anti-Hitler coalition rejected this proposal, intending to end Germany as such by dividing it into small state entities, depriving the Germans of national identity through ideological and psychological violence, and reducing the German population through mass forced sterilization.

In the end, the victorious powers came to a compromise, dividing Germany into zones of occupation; the repressive projects of the Soviet allies were replaced by denazification programs. The Western countries, despite the attempts of the USSR to build their relations with them on the basis of the principles of equality and peaceful cooperation, continued their traditional “Eastern policy” with the aim of dismembering Russia and ending it as a world power. “They need a Russia dismembered, naively “freedom-loving” consenting to dismemberment and imagining that its good is in disintegration, – the philosopher I. V. visionary noted in 1950. Ilyin. – … They think that Russia, split into many small States … will stop hanging as an eternal threat over its “defenseless” European and Asian neighbors”.

Did the seer expect that after half a century there would be forces in the country significant enough to turn its development on this path? In the period of Gorbachev’s perestroika and in the following years, the turn was made by liberal reformers, according to another philosopher, A. Zinoviev, “who introduced themselves into the Communist ideology and the system of state management in order to discredit them in the eyes of society.

Liberal reforms resulted in the revival of an authoritarian form of government

The responsibility for this is borne by the liberal reformers themselves, because they tried to rebuild Russia according to liberal recipes made in American universities that are alien to its traditions.

Back in 1918, N. Berdyaev called “the word” liberalism “damaged”, which has long lost “all charm, although it comes from the beautiful word “freedom”. A century later, A. Zinoviev sharpened this idea, defining the essence of liberalism as “personal egoism”, in the implementation of which” freedom “is achieved by the” strongest”, and simply – the meanest, turns out to be a complete lack of freedom for other people, normal, honest, and therefore defenseless. Is it not for these reasons that President Vladimir Putin has withdrawn from the liberal idea, which, in his words, “just completely outlived its usefulness”?

Rejecting, of course, all these assessments, liberal reformers see the objective reasons for their failures in the peculiarities of the history and geography of Russia, the mentality of its population. What exactly are their arguments? For many hundreds of years, the country has known no other form of government than autocratic, the habit of which has grown into the consciousness and psychology of Russians, turned into an idiosyncratic attitude that suppresses the national sprouts of democracy and rejects any of its inoculations from outside.

THE SIXTH COLUMN OF PUTIN’S RUSSIA

“The country is not captured by Putin, the country is captured by an absolutely gray amorphous mass of people,” the economist V. Inozemtsev at the annual Congress of representatives of the radical opposition in 2018 in Vilnius. Therefore, ideologists who share such views have been promoting the idea of subordination of Russia to external rule since the Civil War, which, in their opinion, is only able to root democracy in the country.

This idea was tested by the Fuhrer in the occupied territory of the USSR. But unsuccessfully, although, according to A. Zubov, who has already been quoted, “a huge number of people, no matter how scary it sounds, preferred Hitler to Stalin”. It is hardly necessary to refute this arbitrary assessment, which contradicts countless historical facts. Its subtext is easy to read: if one villain is preferable to another, even greater, then how not to prefer the kind, democratic uncle Sam and his Russian fans to any political figure whom the liberals will call “the successor of Stalin”. The point is not in the assessment itself, but in its motivations, which come from liberal accusations of the Putin regime’s restalinization and evasion of neoliberal reforms under the leadership of leaders acting in accordance with the interests of the West. If such leaders were found during perestroika and post-Soviet transformations, their successor rejected the role assigned to him, which caused a response in the form of a course towards the “anti-Putin revolution”.

The current regime In Russia, despite significant flaws, prevented the collapse of the country, brought the post-Soviet chaos to a certain order, and limited external influence on the country’s internal and foreign policy.

The President who succeeded Yeltsin inherited a country ravaged by liberal “reforms”, with a half – dead industry and an inefficient army-in a state comparable to the post-war devastation. Then, in the most difficult conditions, with the fierce resistance of Western opponents, the Soviet Union was able to restore much of the economy in just a few years-about the time that the liberals were able to break it up. The form of external governance, even if indirect, imposed in the 90’s through an alien model of development, was unacceptable for the country.

How realistic are the renewed hopes of liberals that any of these forms can overcome the resistance of the historical traditions of Russia, which is so vast and so diverse in natural conditions, national-ethnic and religious composition of the population? Is it reformable in principle, – asks a Professor at the City University of new York, A. Yanov. Today, according to him, “Russia, which did not take place” in the course of post-Soviet reforms, looks like an “impostor”. After the Bolotnaya revolution, ” rally activity has exhausted itself.” The Professor reproaches the liberal opposition for not acting “with a slogan that can interest all the various regions of Russia” by limiting its activities to Moscow.

The idea of radicalization of regional protests has long been outlined in the projects of liberals. A certain “political expert” on the Internet expresses it like this: “large fires start with a small fire. In the same way, an uprising against Putin’s rule can begin locally in one peripheral region… and then abruptly spread to the whole of Russia.”

All such scenarios assume external support for protest movements similar to that provided by the West Kiev Maidan, “color revolutions” in the Arab and other countries. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the main source of the revolution’s exports moved from Moscow to Washington, and Russia became one of the first victims of this export in the 1990s. It is quite logical Therefore Kasparov, when he openly declared at one of the congresses of his associates in Vilnius that the liberals “will be happy for any defeat of Russia, any failure or tragedy, based on the principle, “the worse for you, the better for us”. The real “blue dream” is not just a defeat, but a “geopolitical defeat”.

The ideological origins of this position go back to the doctrine of the world liberal revolution, which was theoretically justified by the American philosopher F. Fukuyama in his book”End of story and last person“.

He interpreted the end of the cold war as the end of the ideological and political history of mankind in the course of the universalization of Western liberal democracy and the establishment of a new world order based on it, which leaves humanity no alternative but neoliberalism. Using this ideological background, neoliberals try to portray the Victory of the Soviet people in the great Patriotic war as a minor event in world history, which is long overdue to be archived.

Any attempts of this kind are unscientific and anti-historical. In the past, they ideologically stimulated the “cold war”, and now, as its actual continuation, the Russophobic campaign unleashed by the West, “in all the various spheres of which, let us recall Danilevsky, the same spirit of hostility prevails, taking, depending on the circumstances, the form of distrust, gloating, hatred or contempt”.

Is it correct today to link the immediate results of the war with what happened decades later in a completely different world situation? It is hardly necessary to prove that without the Victory of the Soviet people, the modern world would have been different – it is possible that it would have been as it appeared to the Nazi ideologists.

Of course, over the past decades, the world has undergone tremendous changes, including such unexpected ones as the collapse of the Soviet Union and the world system of socialism, which destroyed the post-war world order and once again brought humanity to the brink of a nuclear missile disaster. All the more so is the historical role of the Victory not only as an epochal symbol of the country’s defense power and the strength of the spirit of its people, but also as a real factor in the trend of world development that is aimed at strengthening global peace and international security.

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