A Latvian state commission investigating the consequences of the totalitarian rule estimated “direct demographic losses to be 10 million man-years”. According to the Latvian estimates this country “lost a national income, which one reference man may generate approximately during ten million years. In particular, due to deportations of the 40s the country lost 742 thousand man-years, during Chernobyl accident management – about 29 thousand man-years, and during the war in Afghanistan – 5.2 thousand man-years”. “The estimators” were not embarrassed even with their own reference to the fact that “the data of a period from 1940 to 1959 were fragmentary and ill-founded because the Soviet regime carefully concealed its crimes”. The “ill-founded” statistics for 20 of 50 years of the Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic was compensated by the presumption of our guilt perhaps for the lack of super-power status of today’s Latvia.
Besides “the millions of man-years”, they also promised to estimate “demographic and economic losses due to too large and too fast immigration that affected the dwelling sphere and other infrastructure; long–term impact on reproduction and age composition of the population, plus payment of pensions after restoration of independence”. The logic sounds strange enough - Latvia suffered from the totalitarian oppression so much that the people from every corner of the Soviet Union were happy to reside there. Therefore development of “the dwelling sphere and other infrastructure” by immigrants negatively affected the situation in today’s Latvia. And of course if the damage caused by the accident in the Ukrainian nuclear power plant had been eliminated without the Latvian “29 thousand man-years”, the absence of the Latvian patch on the reactor would have surely accelerated early liberation of the Amber Land and other East European states from the totalitarian regime. The Latvian authorities promised to offer the technique of their estimates to every country that suffered from Moscow.
The Lithuanian authorities seem failed to perceive the aforesaid technique. Therefore they avoided any sophisticated calculations and just estimated their impairment to be equal to 23 billion Euros. It is 57 billion less than it was estimated in the 8-year-old law titled “On Compensation of Damage Inflicted by the Soviet Occupation”. Therefore today the Lithuanians expect to receive everything down to the last cent because Vilnius has even so already reduced the “occupational debt” of Moscow by two thirds. So, the Parliament obliged the Government to initiate the respective talks with Russia.
While the Estonians select an estimation technique to receive their compensation, and the Poles weigh what might be a result, the European Parliament approved a resolution consisting of two items. Under the first one, the Holodomor was recognized a humanity crime, i.e. also a crime against the Ukrainian people. Under the second one this decision was advised to Ukraine, the UN, OSCE and Council of Europe. Did this resolution become a political gift to Yuschenko who declared 2008 the Year of Remembrance for Holodomor Victims? It is up to him. A bill on criminal liability for negation of the Holodomor as a form of genocide has been already prepared. Yet if you read the text of the Resolution attentively, it says nothing about exclusive Ukrainian victims. Last year UNESCO also refused to regard the Holodomor as a form of genocide.
The Holodomor is a mass famine in the territory of the USSR in 1932-33. The famine spread to Ukraine, North Caucasus, South Urals, Lower and Middle Volga Region, Central European Part of Russia, Kazakhstan and Western Siberia. The number of human victims may be estimated only approximately. According to the Russian State Duma, in the territory of the USSR “about 7 million people died due to the famine and diseases associated with the famine in the early 30s. The famine was caused by repressive measures during grain acquisitions aggravated by crop failure in 1932”.
The political gambling on deportations and Holodomor is as blasphemous as senseless. All claims of material compensation laid to Moscow for the tragedies of 1917-91 are legally invalid. Firstly, the alleged similarity of the Communist Soviet Union to Nazi Germany imposed by somebody on the public opinion cannot be a ground for any claims to Moscow. Germany has paid contributions as a country defeated in World War II. Its ruling elite and fascist ideology were sentenced and condemned by the Nuremberg Tribunal meanwhile neither relatives nor associates of Hitler paid a pfennig to anybody. If somebody wants to judge the Soviet regime or Communism, first of all, he is free to make a respective statement on behalf of himself or a group of people at the Kremlin Wall. Besides, it would be necessary to outlaw at least Communist China. As for Russia it is a successor of the USSR statehood but not the ruling regime.
Secondly, if anybody proves the contrary of the statement, ”the evil-doer” and “victims” will have to return to their initial positions. That is, they have to return to 1917. Will the Baltic countries and Ukraine agree to find themselves within the Russian Empire? And is it an absurd in itself? The same relates to the occupation. Dismantling of the policy pursued in the Soviet period at least would raise a question on legality of territorial acquisitions by the Baltic nations and Ukrainians. These acquisitions have been received from the same “criminal regime”, but none of the thee aforesaid states is ready to renounce them.
Thirdly, application of law to “selected” events of the history threatens with legal consequences to the very seekers of compensations from Moscow. For example, the share of the Latvians in the population of Latvia in 1987 was 52 per cent while their percentage in the Communist Party bodies and state authorities in this republic was 80 per cent. If these authorities remained occupational, why did they make a decision to secede from the Soviet Union in 1991? And if they made this decision as collaborationists, to what degree is it legal?
Fourthly, if the descendants of “the totalitarian regime victims” remain persistent, Moscow will have to expand their list by Russian compatriots. A counter-suit may be brought not against deceased Communist party officials but against their descendents in the states claiming their exclusive victim status. During “the occupation” in the XX century “Moscow was governed” for 58 years (1924-82) by Georgians and Ukrainians. The same relates to the Latvians. The Latvian infantry divisions not only guarded the leader of the world proletariat (Lenin) but killed thousands of White Russians during the Civil War and later.
Fifthly, the selective interpretation of the succession may make today’s Moscow also emphasize the factor of its St.-Petersburg and later “Old-Moscow” history. If the Moscow Czardom is a successor Kiev Rus, it means that Ukrainians occupied Russia… And what about the debt of the Polish and Lithuanian invaders to us? Moreover somebody in Warsaw is convinced that the last legal ruler of Moscow was Polish King Vladislav. So, you are welcome to collect all debts from the descendants of King Yagailo! What claims may be laid to Moscow, which rulers were “impostors” for 400 years?
Sixthly, Russia also may calculate its “man-years” lost in two world wars. O’K, let historians interpret judicially ambiguous acquisition of independence by the Baltic nations in 1918-1920 sponsored by Germany, which was guilty for unleashing World War I and defeated by “European democracies” at that time. But we cannot forget that more than 400,000 Ukrainians, 104,000 Latvians, 37,000 Lithuanians and 10,000 Estonians fought in Nazi-sponsored units. Have they already compensated “direct demographic losses” to the successor of the USSR? And if we calculate down to the last nail everything that has been left by “the successor” to “the oppressed”, the Euro-assets will be hardly enough to repay…
Even political dirtiness cannot deny a wordly wisdom: “A fool looks for friends overseas, and enemies – next door”.
