Russia Faces Up Top Her Past: Boris Berezovsky Writes

BORIS Berezovsky, the London-living, exiled, anti-Putin businessman, is writing about Russia in the Telegraph (billionaires…come over here…take our writers’ jobs):

Last week saw the commemoration of Victory Day in Russia, which remembers the defeat of Nazi Germany in the Second World War. Last month came the upsetting removal of a Soviet war memorial, known as The Bronze Soldier, from the centre of the Estonian capital, Tallinn, to a Russian military cemetery on its outskirts.

These events forced me to revisit aspects of the Soviet Union’s shameful and violent communist past, which now need to be addressed by present-day Russia in order to preserve relations between my motherland and post-communist Eastern Europe.

There are several unquestionable truths that were passed on to the majority of Soviet citizens from their parents. Some were destroyed by the reality of life, but one remained intact and holy: that Soviet soldiers liberated the world from the Nazi plague. That is my belief as well. But on the other hand. . .

The fundamental cause of this conflict lies in the main unsolved issue of modern Russia: the denial by the Kremlin, and by President Vladimir Putin, of the Soviet regime’s criminal nature.

Anorak

Posted: 16th, May 2007 | In: Twitterings Comment | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed: RSS 2.0 | TrackBack | Permalink