Soviet Crimes

The distortionist, antisemitic, racist and ultranationalist foundations of the current Double Genocide movement, and the Prague Declaration (and its accompanying legislative initiatives) must not obscure legitimate initiatives to educate new generations about the crimes of the Soviet regime, Stalinist tyranny, and the dangers of communism. Without the equals sign and the effort to trivialize the Holocaust and defame its victims!

In fact, the process was admirably underway when it was in effect hijacked by the Double Genocidists, and their red-brown commissions.

For example, the Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly passed important and honorable anti-communist resolutions in 1996 (Resolution 1096) and a decade later in 2006 (Resolution 1481). It is this spirit, and train of ensuing legislation, that needs to be pursued.

The campaign against the Prague Declaration, and more generally against the Double Genocide movement and Holocaust Obfuscation, does not imply, and has never implied, lack of support for efforts to expose and document communist crimes, and the need to commemorate the victims.

As Yehuda Bauer pointed out in 2010, the Jewish minorities in Soviet states suffered disproportionately from Soviet misrule, but never should that suffering be misrepresented as ‘genocide’. And never should the word genocide be inflated, misdefined and abused (see Donskis 2009; Katz 2009). And never should the sufferings of the East European peoples under communism be misused as part of the new Far Right’s agenda of antisemitism, racism and Holocaust Obfuscation.

After centuries of domination by large neighboring powers, and particularly after a half century of Soviet misrule, the smaller democracies near Russia’s borders have every right to be concerned for their future security. This website believes it is imperative that NATO and the Western powers guarantee the security of democratic states in the region in perpetuity. Moreover, respect for democracy and civil society entails the absolute insistence on freedom of debate, and the absolute enshrinement of human rights for all minorities. When a small and weak minority loses the right to adhere to its own historical narrative, and massive government funds are misused for historical distortion founded in ultranationalism with antisemitic and neo-fascist overtones, it is the sacred duty of every true friend of these nations to speak up loudly and clearly; indeed, to hold all democracies to the same standards of openness to criticism and diversity of views.

Moreover, the Baltics could barely have worse enemies than those who would squander their state resources and prestige on campaigns of defamation against Holocaust Survivors who resisted; on bogus redefinitions of ‘genocide’; campaigns to persuade the European Parliament to accept ‘Double Genocide’; glorification of Nazi collaborators and Holocaust perpetrators; ruses to abuse ‘Judaic Studies’ and ‘Yiddish’ as decoys for tolerated public antisemitism and the foregoing activities.

A nation can have no better security against future threats than honorable democratic government and a truly open society; one that commands the loyalty of its citizens and residents of all backgrounds and persuasions, one that commands the loyalty of its direct and indirect diasporas internationally.

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