Visa Ukrainas förödelse för ryssarna, så som tyskarna tvingades se Hitlers offer efter kriget

Gåva från Gabriela Melinescu 1993

Tänker i dag att jag vill visa några viktiga passager i Mikhail Shishkins essä publicerad i The Guardian:

Two attempts to introduce a democratic social order in Russia have already failed. The first Russian democracy, of 1917, lasted only a few months. The second, in the 1990s, lasted a few years with great difficulty. Every time my country tries to build a democratic society by establishing elections, a parliament and a republic, it finds itself in a totalitarian empire.

 

Do a dictatorship and a dictator give birth to a slave population or does a slave population give birth to a dictatorship and a dictator? The chicken and the egg. How can this vicious circle be broken? How can a new Russia begin?

 

Hitler’s Germany found its way out of the vicious circle of dictatorship. Germans learned a lot about dealing with the past and coming to terms with guilt, and were able to build a democratically oriented society. However, the rebirth of their nation was predicated on total, crushing military defeat. Russia needs this zero hour, too. A new democratic start in Russia is impossible without paying a price and acknowledging national guilt.

 

There was no de-Stalinisation in Russia and there were no Nuremberg trials for the Communist party. Now Russia’s fate depends on de-Putinisation. Just as the “ignorant” German population was shown concentration camps in 1945, so “ignorant” Russians must be shown destroyed Ukrainian cities and the corpses of children. We Russians must openly and courageously acknowledge our guilt and ask for forgiveness.