Soviet troops and the Czech "liberation"

11. 5. 2010 / Fabiano Golgo

What amazes me, though, is the kind of argument used to ask the reporters from the public television to express awe and to celebrate the Soviet soldiers who died to "save" Czechs. The problem is that reality is not so rosy and fairy-taleish. The raw truth is that those soldiers who came "free" the Czech lands were not here because of any kind of personal heroism, but because they were sent here, there was no choice or feelings towards this or any other nation (and the rapes of thousands of Czech women, like, for example, of then teenager, later actress Květa Fialová serve as a good reason to not celebrate those soldiers as heroes).

Stalin used his people to defend his own land and, seeing how the Allied Forces would need man power and would not win the war without his troops, the Soviet leader blackmailed the U.S. to let the communist powers take over, among others, the Czech lands. So stop being dreamy nostalgics for something that never happened. The Soviet troops came to liberate Czechs as part of a plan accorded between Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill, not because they wanted to save this nation. There was nothing else other than Realpolitik behind it all. Stalin only secured his share of the deal. He got the Baltic states, Poland, Czech and Slovak lands, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, etc. There was no messianic or heroic motive behind it.

Rather the contrary, how many Czechs died because the American troops were kept from advancing, having to wait for the Soviets to come do their part of the staged plan of liberation?

To ask readers to put aside the rapes and other abuses caused by the Soviet troops to many -- and later to the whole country for 4 decades -- is short-sighted. And, from the point of view of those who had to endure the Soviet abuses, it is lack of respect to them.

Vytisknout