Address by Dmitry Polyanskiy, First Deputy Permanent Representative of Russia to the UN, to the Schiller Institute Conference dedicated to the 75th anniversary of Victory Day
Dear colleagues,
Dear participants of the Schiller Institute Conference dedicated to the Great Victory in World War 2,
Ladies and gentlemen,
It is a great honor for me to address your event which happens on a very sacred day for us. It happens on the day of Victory over fascism to which my country (back then it was the Soviet Union) made the most valuable contribution. This day is enshrined in the memory of our people, because everybody in my country has relatives who either perished in that terrible war or participated and were maimed or worked in the rear economy of our country helping boost the military production and change the course of the war.
As you know, we were not provoking this war, we were not expecting it. This happened as a big problem for my country and the whole of the mankind. 27 million of my compatriots perished, mostly – civil population. Immense atrocities were committed. Of course, one needs to remember the Holocaust. These things should never happen again. We all understand this.
Unfortunately, once the 90s came, there started to emerge very worrying trends. There are countries that try to rewrite the history of World War 2. Sometimes they try to change places of the victors and those who were criminals during this war. In Russia and in some of our neighboring states we do our best not to allow such interpretation of history which turns the whole course of World War 2 upside down. We are very much worried by these trends in some our neighboring countries, where Nazi collaborators are respected as heroes, whereas monuments to the real heroes and liberators are either demolished or misplaced while neither addressing us nor speaking to their relatives. We do not think it is normal. One should avoid such actions which are not tolerable in our world.
We need to respect the memory of those who fell victim to that war. We need to be very accurate in describing the events of that war. That is why the conferences like yours are very important. They mobilize the opinion, raise the awareness of specialists and experts on the situation around the history of World War 2. They help people better understand the sentiments and the moods in different countries of the world, including my country. I wish all of you success in this endeavor. You can always count on Russia in defending the heritage of WW2, honoring the victors, providing accountability for the perpetrators of terrible crimes committed during this war.
Thank you.
