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Honestly...why are you ignoring that Putin did more for the official acknowledgement of Katyn than any other before?

Is there some kind of demonization going on? I can emphazise with Russians in this case I think....when all your tries to come to term with your crimes and acknowledging them and apologizing for them are faced with a wall of refusal, being turned down...you will just stop trying one day, knowing it futile, letting resentments grow again.

This is not in Polands interest I think!

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Not more than others I would say...and hadn't it been Poles who once conquered Moscow or invaded with Napoleons troops?

Would modern Poles like to be treated as hostile conquerer and invaders by modern Russians?


Well, if I remember it correctly it was Putin who was the first official Russian ever bowing before the polish victims of Katyn.

Did that escape somehow your attention? *seriously puzzled*

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Well, I think it was a great step what happened recently in the Katyn affair (Putin admitting that it had been Russians, acknowledging and regretting openly and officially)...demanding more and more and still blaming and hating them is a sure way to make the Russians regret what they admitted already. You cannot go from 0 to 100...such a process needs time.

If you want to stop any beginning reconciliation...go on Olga, you are on the right path!

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"principled"???

Stop demanding more from the Russians than you do from others...they have their own problems and surely some things are seen differently over there...heaping scorn and contempt at them is not helping!

Putin has an astounishing number of voters and supporters, so what he says and does seems to be seen as good and positive with the majority of Russians, we have to accept that.

Germany did put up with years of rule of the polish "terrible twins", it was bad for our mutual relationship but we endured, after all it was the decision of the Poles.

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Russia isn't North Korea...differentiation is needed here too.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_of_Russia


There are goodies and baddies, conservative, hard core stalinists, communists, liberal, progressive...whatever you want.

And they have regular elections...hardly a dictatorship.

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He wasn't an innocent lamb either!
He tried to play games and lost...


Nothing beats a generous one-sentence judgement of millions of people, doesn' it....


It says alot about the open discussion about this for many people uncomfortable, difficult topic...the outcome of that is a good sign and should be seen as such even by the most determined russophobes!

Acknowledging such signs and developments isn't going to kill you, you know?
Or else progressive Russians might come to think: "Why struggling so hard to come to terms with our past if they keep on hating us?"

In Germany such a thing would had been forbidden by law without any open discussion whatsoever. That is worse in my opinion!

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That's what I would ask you Jed....are such massacres by the Soviet Army known in Russia today? Are they talked about? Or is it only the german crimes which are known....

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Yes, our fault that they found the mass grave that late....sorry, so sorry!

There are still more mass graves to unearth....it will follow us for a long time I fear.
What do you advise Seanie....you find a grave with murdered people and just let it go?
Would you do the same if it were scottish women and children?

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So...you think it would be better to let it rest? No investigation? Not finding out what had happened to these civilians? Who did it what?

Would you see it the same if it were russian civilians murdered by the SS?


Would you say the same to Poles who so long fighted that Russia acknowledges the crime of Katyn? All these NKVD murderers are dead...should they stop caring?

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I don't think there is an army which was as much investigated as the german.
You are free to investigate all the crimes, you did already.


How about doing that yourself?


Because it wasn't possible?
How could the Germans and the Poles demand a trial and punishment for the murderers in the Soviet army after the war? Katyn needed 70 years.....


I don't understand you....
You would want to go to war to defend some war criminal who murdered women and children?
You think because you won the war there is no need to go after your war criminals?

Boy...you are further away from any true reconciliation than I thought! In case you don't know, waiting till the problems and questions are dying away won't work. Your skelets in the closets are only going away if they are out in the open. Be it in 50 or 100 years.

PS: Look in a mirror when you next time want to heap your anger at some little baltic parade...they honor their veterans as you do.

They care about the crimes they possible did as much as you do!

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Is there someone in Russia who would be interested to find out about the murderers and would he be successful taking them to trial?

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Even if some of them are guilty? One example:
uk.reuters.com/article/idUKLE459966

What if one of those veterans took part in this? Are you absolving him too?

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It's like with Germans and Austrians...;)

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I never heard of that but I would distrust any outcome that high...it doesn't sound democratic.


War time propaganda..isn't it lovely. But once the West accepted that they needed Stalin, what else should they have told their soldiers? It was a crazy time...

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I don't think banning symbols and certain topics is a good thing either.
But the allies started it during the occupation and later there was not much will/interest to go through the moves to "re-allow" it again.

I don't believe there exist a group which really could become dangerous, with Swastikas or without.
Not many people left who believe Hitler was a good thing for Germany in the end.
Without him we would had very probably reached our current status much earlier and more peacefully.


Well, GB and France started it with declaring war on Germany. YOU started the war Seanie! So...there...

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Good luck...:)

(It's quite nice and refreshing to talk to some real Russians instead of getting all the info solely from the media - the image one gets can become skewed easily)

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If history books for the young ones are changed and rewritten to paint a white washed, sanitized picture, then yes.

Would you accept if Germans would start differentiate the Nazi history and point out that most people liked actually living in the Nazi era and that Hitler had so much support till to the end and why? Officials praising Hitler in the media???

If Swastikas would be allowed etc.?

I could see Germany's neighbours getting nervous...so Russia must accept that their neighbours watch modern Stalin-praise equally suspicious.

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He was very sick at '45 already...he would had died soon and another one (more sane) would had taken over.

I don't think this "all Slavs would be killed" scenario would had come through...

There were to much initial support and collaboration only Hitlers madness failed to utilize but the commanders on the front had no problems to work with anti-soviet/anti-stalinist fighters, Slavs or not!

When you look at german propaganda of that time you will always read only about the fight against Bolshevism, not so much against an slavic "Untermensch"...

Victory or Bolshevism

Europes victory - your prosperity

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Of course...;)

But then I would not have liked to live as entrepeneur, academic or well off peasant under Stalin, it would have been very probably a miserable and short life.


Honestly I don't think so....it's a big "what if" and the Nazis used Slavs as helpers and willing collaborateurs too.


Agreed!

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I thought they met in Poland...

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Well, I personally don't think Hitler was worse than Stalin....he didn't prey on his own people at least and Stalin killed many more people!

But then...it's a matter of perception....

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I apologize!
But there is a certain amount of puzzlement in Germany, especially as in recent times (as the media reported) a kind of white washing of Stalin and his era in the history books and national discourse seems to take place.

I especially became puzzled as in the build up to the coming May party there were shown and interviewed people who had no problems to praise and to adore Stalin and his deeds, many of them old veterans. Excuse me for getting ideas...

(And you need more than just a handful of NKVD's to kill and to deport MILLONS!)

We are talking here a regime which killed MILLIONS of your own people Sasha.


Were they?

They wanted to remove Stalin and his regime, didn't they....

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Many of those fighted with the Wehrmacht later to have a go at their red oppressors, didn't they...

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Liberation_Army

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Was there resistance? Who could have done the "removing"?

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Don't misunderstand me Sasha...it's not about me, my Opa or Germany.
We came clear with our past.

It's the russian way of thinking what puzzles me...you are the most opressed, murdered, abused people in Europe and instead of fighting this you still revere and honor your opressors!

We will see that in May again.

Many of those veterans were also part in killing Russians (I mean it wasn't the Marsians which killed and deported so many millions of your own), I'm sure of it....but you cheer them like...well....brain amputated, stockholm syndrom suffering, idiots, sorry to say that!

Stalin and his helpers killed much more of your own than the Germans ever could...

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At least he didn't concentrate on killing his own people..

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Well, you are right...as long as your people don't start yourself nobody can help you...
You have to live with it, not us! After all they oppressed and killed their own people more than any other...*shrugs*

PS: You would probably call the victims of Stalin's russian "Katyn" losers too... en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Purge

Losers, yes?

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My opinion?

That isn't a matter of opinion...aren't you yourself not interested in finding out and punishing war criminals?

But then...most of your people were also murdered by your own people, not the Nazis, it must be hard for a Russian to accept that and ignoring that past and denying that must be much easier.

You are good at that!

How many of those still marching stalinist veterans had been in the murdereous NKVD? The plague of your own people for much longer than the the war and the Nazis existed!

You think you won? For Germany it was over '45, you got 50 more years of oppression, secret police and Gulags...

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How do you know? Where there any trials? Ever?


How do you know?

Were war criminals, murderer and rapists ever punished?

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I wonder how many of the old veterans marching in the victory parade every 9th May are war criminals, maybe even were there in Katyn or raping their way till Berlin...