DISINFO: Little has changed since Nazi Europe
SUMMARY
This kind of people, like the former Polish ambassador to Nazi Germany, are now demolishing statues of Red Army soldiers and officers who liberated the countries of Europe and European peoples from Nazism. Those are their followers. In this sense, unfortunately, little has changed, and Russia must bear this in mind when strengthening its armed forces.
RESPONSE
A recurring pro-Kremlin narrative about the omnipresence of Nazis in Europe. The Nazi ideology and the EU are based on opposite values and principles.
Russian historical revisionism often targets Poland claiming that it is thanks to Russia that Poland exists as a country today and that Nazi Germany considered Poland its best ally.
According to Polish historians and the views of the predominant part of Polish society, in 1944-1945 the USSR occupied Poland, establishing the undemocratic and repressive Communist Poland. Poland was kept under the Soviet sphere of influence until 1989.
As for the demolition of monuments in Europe, in the Czech Republic, in September 2019, for instance, district assembly in Prague voted to remove a statue of a Soviet World War 2 marshal, Ivan Konev, and replace it with a more general memorial, because of Konev’s later endeavours, which included a leading role in crushing the 1956 Hungarian uprising as well as building the Berlin Wall in 1961. The Czech Foreign Ministry even insisted on respecting the "Treaty of Friendly Relations and Cooperation, ... , and stressed that the issue of the statue of Marshal Konev in Prague 6 is an internal affair of the Czech Republic."
In Bulgaria, a Soviet Army monument in Sofia was defaced several times for Bulgaria’s support of Soviet troops which crushed Czechoslovakia’s Prague Spring uprising against its Communist rulers. Bulgaria, once Moscow’s most obedient satellite, took part in the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia that smashed the Prague Spring movement on August 20, 1968. Poland and Hungary also took part.