Ian Tranor (Guardian Utd): Russian victory festivities open old wounds

[Jack Rabbit]

From the Guardian Unlimited (UK)
Dated Friday April 29

Russian victory festivities open old wounds in Europe
60th anniversary of Nazis' defeat is hit by boycotts and bitterness
By Ian Traynor in Warsaw

As President Vladimir Putin gears up for the biggest spectacular of his five-year rule, Moscow and its former satellites in eastern Europe are mired in rancour and recrimination about the chapter of history they are about to commemorate.

Most central and east European leaders are due to join President George Bush, Tony Blair, the German chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, and more than 50 heads of state and government in Moscow next month when Mr Putin will preside over lavish ceremonies to mark Russia's finest hour - the defeat of Nazi Germany 60 years ago.

The east Europeans, however, are heading to Moscow in anxiety and even antipathy. After all, Stalin's "liberation" of the space between Russia and Germany was a conquest that brutalised as well, entrenching the 45-year cold war division of Europe.

Poland, which was invaded and partitioned by both the Third Reich and the Russian army, and which saw its military and intellectual elite murdered by Stalin's henchmen, is deeply ambivalent about taking part in the Red Square parades. The Baltic republics, invaded first by Stalin, then by Hitler, and annexed by the Soviet Union at the war's end, are also divided, with two of the three presidents boycotting the ceremonies.

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