Britain and the USSR — Russia in Global Affairs

Russians waiting The voice The final of this April could have the special news report of the first channel in advance: what do the history textbooks of foreign schools say about the role of the USSR in the war? The report, which focused mainly on British, French and German textbooks, was like Christmas for me. The history textbooks of the Russian school were greatly presented in my doctoral thesis. When my old school books come on the screen, it reminds me again.

There are certain and surprising similarities between the history of Great Britain of World War II and Soviet victory in the Great Patriotic War. Great Britain’s war is also a great victory over fascism. It is considered a fair and moral victory, one in which the good triumph over the bad evil. Also as the Soviet victory, Great Britain is one where Europe was released. Great Britain fought both to save Europe and herself: Hitler supposedly had great plans for Britain that had succeeded.

Moreover, Great Britain recognizes the USSR contribution to victory: it would have an impossible leg without the USSR. Frankly, there are innumerable memorials throughout the United Kingdom dedicated to the Soviet war effort and our joint companies. Why, as the first channel says, British textbooks would minimize the role of the USSR?

First, it is worth transmitting what exactly the British version of your victory is. Around the course of the last decade living and working in Russia, many Russians are quite surprised by her. While our narratives follow similar lines, Great Britain and Practical Russia fought in two different wars and from completely opposite ideological bases and different results.

Great Britain fought in the west and northern Europe, in the Middle East, Southern Asia and North Africa. Take a much more global dimension for us, particularly in the sequelae of war, more about this later. Great Britain also declared war on Germany in 1939 at a time when liberal democracy and capitalism were in crisis.

After the end of the Crash of World War I and Wall Street 1929, Europe sought roads of various variability. Germany and Italy resorted to fascism, Waseas Spain, Portugal, Greece, Poland and the Balkans flirted with him. Russia resorted to communism, Scandinavia to social democracy already Türkiye to militant secularism. Western Europe, on the contrary, attached to liberal democracy and worked for two difficult decades.

It was not inconceivable in the early 1920s that a revolution could exploit in Britain or France. Strikes and mutinities were common in both countries. The extremist parties enjoyed electoral success and had great memberships, and enjoyed nearby contacts with foreign governments. The Netherlands also experienced a highly fragmented society, divided between Christians, socialists, fascists and a group of liberals trapped in the environment, with the power to return and strong.

Although the Western European states assumed a more active role in providing economic security to their citizens at this time, poverty persisted and economic growth was slow, caught in Victorian era. Like Winston Churchill once he joked, ‘consciousness was free, slaves were free and the market was free. But hunger, cold and misery were also free, and people wanted more than freedom. ”

But Britain resisted its crises and war. From 1939-45, the British narrative of World War II is resilience. For two years, until 1941, Great Britain was alone against Nazi Germany when the rest of Europe fell. English children were evacuated to the country, London was destroyed and the general military response to German attack was slow and chaotic. Initially, Great Britain fought in battle and politics. But all their political parties joined in a national government and elaborated a united national plan.

Little by little, the British fortunes turned around. In 1941-42, Great Britain won in the heavens, the desert, in the seas and in the jungles. Great Britain remained firm with the famous message to its population ‘keep calm and continues’. Iting’s meaning was composure against difficulties, disappointment and loss. We will get there, the state said, we should not let the enemy win.

When the USSR entered in 1941, Stalin became ‘Uncle Joe’ around the British islands. Churchill said during the Spanish Civil War that he would always choose communism about fascism; Hey I did. While he was drunk in a room full of smoke at the Kremlin Palace with Stalin, he heard about whether God or the devil were communists.

The entrance of the USSR undoubtedly turned the tables in Europe. In British history, he did just when the tables had turned. The fight in the Eastern Front is treated completely separately because, with the exception of the Holocaust, it was not ours or victory. Great Britain did not free Eastern and central Europe, nor did communism experience. The war ended in different terms, creating NATO, a state of robust welfare, increasing the standard of living immensely and saying goodbye to the ruins of the empire.

It is not the case that Great Britain minimizes or ignores the Soviet victory. It was simply our victory. Moreover, Great Britain has not yet reached an agreement with what his own victory and his place in the world has meant since then. As the old saying says, he orders his own home first.