May 9 marks 80 years since Victory in Europe Day 🇷🇺🎉—the crushing of fascism in 1945. For Russians, this day remains sacred, honoring immense sacrifice and triumph. Yet in the West, commemorations have faded, and efforts to downplay the Soviet Union’s decisive role continue. Why is history being rewritten? 🧐
Join CrossTalk host Peter Lavelle with Vladimir Golstein, James Jatras, and Andrii Telizhenko as they examine memory, propaganda, and historical truth. 🕊️📺
#VictoryDay #May9 #WWII #SovietVictory #CrossTalk #RT #HistoricalTruth #Russia #VEEightyYears #DefeatOfNazism #FascismDefeated #GreatPatrioticWar #NeverForget #HistoryMatters #WesternNarrative #Geopolitics #RussiaRemembers #WorldWar2 #VladimirGolstein #JamesJatras #AndriiTelizhenko
Join CrossTalk host Peter Lavelle with Vladimir Golstein, James Jatras, and Andrii Telizhenko as they examine memory, propaganda, and historical truth. 🕊️📺
#VictoryDay #May9 #WWII #SovietVictory #CrossTalk #RT #HistoricalTruth #Russia #VEEightyYears #DefeatOfNazism #FascismDefeated #GreatPatrioticWar #NeverForget #HistoryMatters #WesternNarrative #Geopolitics #RussiaRemembers #WorldWar2 #VladimirGolstein #JamesJatras #AndriiTelizhenko
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NewsTranscript
00:00Hello and welcome to Crosstalk, where all things are considered.
00:24I'm Peter Lavelle.
00:25May 9th is one of the most important dates on the calendar for Russians.
00:30It was on this day in 1945 fascism in Europe was crushed.
00:34Celebrating the end of this war is no longer a high priority in the West.
00:38In fact, there has been a long ongoing attempt to understate the role the Soviet Union played in defeating Nazi Germany.
00:55Crosstalking Victory Day, I'm joined by my guest, Vladimir Goldstein in Providence.
00:58He is the chair of the Department of Slavic Studies at Brown University.
01:02In Virginia, we have James Shatris.
01:03He is a former U.S. diplomat and a former advisor to U.S. Senate Republican leadership.
01:08And in Basel, we have Andrei Teloshenko.
01:10He is a former Ukrainian diplomat.
01:13All right, gentlemen, Crosstalk rules in effect.
01:14That means you can jump anytime you want, and I always appreciate it.
01:16Vladimir, let me go to you first because, you know, you were born in the Soviet Union.
01:21You immigrated to the United States.
01:22But the calendar is the same in both countries, essentially.
01:25In the West, they celebrate the end of the war on May 8th.
01:28They celebrate it on the 9th here in Russia just because of the signing of it.
01:33It ended up being the next day for the Russians.
01:35So there was no other reason than that.
01:38But before the recording, I told you how the city is all dressed up and there's a lot of anticipation.
01:46There's going to be parades.
01:47There's going to be all kinds of things for young people and children.
01:50I mean, it's really, truly spectacular what you see, and it's repeated all across the country.
01:56I well imagine, my friend, where you live, that's not the case.
02:00It's absolutely not.
02:02And I, you know, by good sort of Soviet Russian tradition, like to get together with my friends on the 9th
02:09and recollect all our relatives who suffered.
02:14And when I invite my friends, non-Russians, they say, why?
02:19What's the big deal?
02:20Well, what is it?
02:22I said, well, victory day.
02:23What victory day?
02:24Day of all whom?
02:25So basically, even educated people whom I kind of, you know, associate with, for them, it's not a big deal.
02:33And from what I understand, it was becoming less and less of a big deal with time.
02:38That, you know, right after this generation which survived the war,
02:42they remembered both hardship and unbelievable Soviet-Russian contribution.
02:49But as time went on, the whole thing was kind of replaced by Hollywoodization of history.
02:55And basically, there was one big event in 1943 when Americans invaded Normandy, and that was about it.
03:04So that's kind of the reality, that myth and Hollywood slowly replaces it,
03:10and concrete memory and concrete celebration, concrete commemoration, it's kind of disappears.
03:16Yeah, well, you know, Jim, obviously, we've had the Hollywoodization of the conflict,
03:22saving Private Ryan and things like that, which is all right.
03:26Okay, that's fine.
03:28But, I mean, it's, Vladimir's right, but it's worse,
03:32because there's an intentional downplaying of the Soviet contribution.
03:36I mean, the President of the United States just said a few days ago
03:39it was the United States that primarily won the First and Second World War.
03:43Well, you know, that's very Trumpian in his mind.
03:46It's not the first time he gets history wrong.
03:48As a matter of fact, he gets it wrong almost all the time.
03:52And that's very painful for where I live,
03:54because there is no family in this country, in the Russian Federation,
03:59that doesn't have a relative that passed, died, or was in captivity during that conflict.
04:06It is a very, very important, unifying, cultural, societal issue.
04:11But it is being dismissed in the West.
04:14They just don't want to admit that the Soviet Union played a positive role,
04:18because they equate the Soviet Union with Russia.
04:21And, obviously, we have the context of the Ukraine conflict today.
04:24Go ahead, Jim.
04:27Yeah, Peter, I think you're right.
04:29It is deliberate.
04:30I mean, I can't help but think back in the old days in the Soviet Union,
04:32when a political figure was disgraced, they would airbrush him out of the pictures or out of the movies.
04:37They said a Soviet historian was someone who could accurately predict the past.
04:42That's sort of where we are now, where the political needs of the present mean revising history to make it fit.
04:49And I think that's what our political leaders do, is that, you know, because in the post-Cold War,
04:54now the post-Cold War era, we have to justify this American hegemony.
05:01That means we did everything that was ever good in history.
05:04You mentioned not only World War II, but World War I.
05:06Frankly, our entry into that war probably prolonged that war,
05:09and it prevented the negotiated peace that might have ended it earlier and saved millions of lives.
05:16Well, World War II, we've got to revise that one, too, and even revise the history of the Cold War
05:20and how the Cold War ended, too, coming from the Western leaders to the Soviet and then later the Russian leadership,
05:26which have helped bring us to the conflict we have today.
05:29You know, it's really interesting because what we do is we just have rewriting of history over and over again.
05:35There's so many rewrites right now, it's hard to keep track of them.
05:38Andrei, you're a Ukrainian, and only recently, up until recently, Ukraine celebrated very much like their Russians,
05:46colleagues, their Kazakh colleagues, et cetera, in the former Soviet Union.
05:53It was a, the entire former Soviet Union has the ability or the interest in doing it, they will do it.
06:01But, I mean, as a Ukrainian, how do you feel about it?
06:03Because Ukraine was part of the great victory in 1945 as well.
06:08Yes, and I want to congratulate everybody on this victory day, because this is a great victory for not just Soviet Union,
06:16not just Russia and Ukraine, but this is a victory for the whole free world,
06:21which the Soviet Army and the Russian Army brought by cleaning out the cleansing of fascism and Nazism in Europe.
06:28So congratulations to everybody.
06:29My two great-grandfathers fought one on the Ukrainian Front, first Ukrainian Front, and one on the second Ukrainian Front.
06:35One got to Prague and got hit with an artillery shell there, but he's still alive, but he still went through this war and he told me about this.
06:43So this is a great day for everybody who does celebrate the good against evil in this world.
06:50And the destruction of this celebration by the West today, the political destruction, trying to build an enemy in this, trying to rewrite history in this,
07:00is a total disgrace for me as a Ukrainian.
07:03And for me, the Ukrainians are total disgrace, but today is the key regime, which is basically undermining the support of the Nazism and facilitating the support of Nazism in Ukraine,
07:15with Bandera, with all the Nazi heroes and heroifying them with the naming of the streets and banning the celebration of the Victory Day in the main 9th.
07:25It's just a disgrace, and I don't want my country to be this way, and that's why they don't want to support this regime in Ukraine today.
07:34And I understood that this is the wrong way to go in history, the wrong path they're leading my country to, because they're destroying our history,
07:42the history where everybody was brought together as a victory.
07:47And that's why the West wants to do this.
07:50They want to undermine and rewrite that our Ukrainians were part of the victory.
07:55Yes.
07:56Because if we take away this victory, it's a symbolism inside us.
08:00They're going to basically destroy us as a people.
08:02That's what they're doing.
08:03That's what they did with destroying Ukraine.
08:05They destroyed Ukraine as a people who were taking away the victory they gained by losing millions of lives in the Second World War,
08:13or the Vedika, how they call it in our country.
08:17Yeah, and Vladimir, also, is something I'm sure you probably noticed, is that even when I lived back in the United States in the late 1990s,
08:25the New York Review, a book, started this debate, a completely ridiculous one, but they did, nonetheless,
08:31that both the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany are responsible for the Second World War in Europe.
08:36And that mantra is only continued to this day.
08:40I mean, and this is making it into the halls of academia, that there is equal culpability.
08:46Vladimir, go ahead, Vladimir.
08:47Of course, this is a false history.
08:49Go ahead.
08:50Yeah, it's in connection to what we've already discussed.
08:54Once the United States decided to assert its hegemony in ideological and all other spheres,
09:01so they are victors and they are the good guys.
09:04And who are the bad guys?
09:05All the rest.
09:06So, you know, Germany is bad.
09:08Russia is bad.
09:09Stalin is bad.
09:10Hitler is bad.
09:11So then it sort of was like a matter of technique and a certain, you know, kind of unscrupulous historians
09:17who began to push this kind of narrative that the whole war was precipitated by Hitler, you know, Stalin or Ribbentrop,
09:25a Molotov, you know, pact and so on and so forth.
09:29So ultimately what lies behind it is a very kind of unpleasant project, which is not new for the West,
09:35is of demonization of Russia, refusal to understand the country, its concerns, its history.
09:44So it's sort of rather than kind of viewing long 20th century as Russia going through revolutions,
09:51Russians wanted to find their way, Russians confronting this juggernaut of Nazi Germany,
09:58Nazi Germany trying to kind of catch up with England and France and America and pushing for living room, as they said.
10:06They were moving to Russia to grab Russian resources, turn Russian people in the slave.
10:13So to recognize it, to acknowledge it, to recognize that Russia is a, was an ally of U.S.
10:21and was kind of a legitimate, you know, kind of ally, legitimate partner of the whole thing.
10:26Nobody wants to do that.
10:27Only America matters.
10:28And consequently, Russia began to be pushed first into kind of, you know, the craziest communist country,
10:35then sort of almost like equivalent of Hitler.
10:37And this is kind of very unscrupulous.
10:39And that's kind of view started with some kind of maniacs in academia.
10:45But now it's probably politicians embrace it and school textbooks embrace it.
10:50And that's what school children learn.
10:53Yeah.
10:53But, Jim, but if denying Russia's role in the defeat of fascism in Europe undermines or actually gives props to the losing side.
11:04I mean, because it's assuming that what Russia did was wrong, which was, which is absurd, because it was, as Vladimir pointed out, it was a collective thing.
11:15They were allies.
11:15They were allies in the Soviet Union.
11:17So they're undermining the true ugliness of fascism in Europe.
11:23Well, I think the Western allies, even then, were somewhat reluctant allies of the Soviet Union.
11:30As Vladimir pointed out, you know, we've seen this, you know, this drive to the east from the west on many, many occasions long before the Soviet Union came into existence.
11:39And really now continuing after the Soviet Union ceased to exist because of the reasons he suggests that the west wants one way or the other, by hook or by crook, to seize those resources.
11:49Hey, for that matter, what's different about that and what Trump is touting is a big mineral deal.
11:55We're going to get our mitts on whatever resources happen to lie in Ukraine or whatever part of Ukraine remains under KBG.
12:01I agree.
12:02And then we're going to continue with this line of thought.
12:04Gentlemen, I have to jump in here.
12:05We're going to go to a short break.
12:06And after that short break, we'll continue our discussion on victory in Europe 80 years on.
12:10Stay with RT.
12:16Welcome back to Cronstock, where all things are considered.
12:18And I'm Peter Lavelle, to remind you, we're discussing Victory Day.
12:29Okay, let's go back to Andre.
12:30Andre, Jim brought up a really, really interesting point in the first part of the program, and I'd like to expand upon it.
12:37Unfortunately, as it's already been mentioned, and we have this Hollywoodization of the Second World War, unfortunately, Nazis are made kind of cool, which I find very quite odious.
12:47But, you know, people like the uniforms and the regalia and stuff like that.
12:52But historically speaking, there is a lack of understanding in how Russia seizes it.
12:59And Jim brought it up.
13:00I mean, we had Napoleon and his coalition of countries invaded Russia.
13:07We had Hitler and his coalition.
13:10And now we have a Western coalition that is actually larger than what Nazi Germany had, because it didn't have the United States involved in it.
13:19So we have, so from the Russian perspective, we have centuries of the West invading Russia.
13:25And no wonder when the last time it was attempted, it was absolutely crushed in the streets of Berlin, that it be remembered.
13:34But there is no Western perspective of how Russia sees the threats coming from the West to this day.
13:41Andrei.
13:42Yeah, today we see how the continuation, again, to destroy, try to destroy Russia, take its resources, is continuing from the West.
13:52And it's happened throughout hundreds of years prior to this.
13:56And it's not stopping.
13:57And today the West has joined with the United States.
14:00The United States, why has it joined?
14:01Because after the World War II, what it got, what got the former Banderas, Banderaits, the former Nazi-assessed officers to work for the CIA, to work for NATO.
14:13They were the ones who, the U.S. brought them and gave them amnesty to come and to join their governments.
14:20And the diaspora, the so-called Ukrainian diaspora, which was formed after World War II, was formed mostly out of the Banderaits and collaborators of the Nazis in Germany.
14:30And that's why this situation has had to happen from the West today again.
14:34And it never stopped after World War II continuation of the Cold War.
14:39And how do we see it today?
14:41In Ukraine especially, it was brought a lot before the special operations started by Russia and Ukraine.
14:47The banning of the May 9th, the banning of the Soviet films, the banning of the Soviet films about World War II.
14:54Everybody grew up in those movies.
14:55They have nothing against the United States or anybody else there.
14:58Yes, and promoting, promoting Nazism as something cool and better.
15:03And we have people on the ground and older people even talking how it was even better under Nazi Germany than in the Soviet times
15:10because they saw how much propaganda was pulled into their heads from the TV in Kiev.
15:14And this is what the reality is on the ground.
15:16The promotion and pushing into the Nazism, into countries like Ukraine today, anti-Russia, has formed the history that we did not do the job right then.
15:29Nazism was a total destroyer at that time.
15:32Well, Andre, I can tell you there are a lot of people around me that say the job wasn't finished off.
15:38It needs to be finished off.
15:39That's what I'm talking about, yes.
15:41That's the anger that so many people have.
15:43You know, Vladimir, maybe I'm too sentimental.
15:46I was trained as a historian.
15:48I mean, this was a tremendous, momentous event, signing the Nazis, signing their surrender.
15:57And Eisenhower was very, very assured the Russians that there would be a joint signing because of the contribution that the Soviets had contributed to the war.
16:09I mean, this would be a moment for everybody to say, hey, let's step back.
16:12Let's not be consumed by Ukraine, by tariffs and all this.
16:16This is a moment we can sit down and have a quiet and learning moment here.
16:20And the Russians would very much welcome that.
16:22But, no, you have leaders in the European Union that are being blackmailed and threatened if they come and celebrate in Moscow.
16:31I mean, what kind of message does that send about defeating fascism?
16:36The whole history of this, you know, kind of conflict is, you know, worth revisiting.
16:42We remember that you mentioned Napoleon invasion.
16:45After, you know, Napoleon invasion, both, you know, Napoleon was fought on one side by Russia, on the other side of Great Britain.
16:54And right as these two victorious countries emerged, Britain got very, very nervous about Russia.
17:00Russia is victorious.
17:01It might move in Europe.
17:03It might mess up our plans of dominating Europe and Asia and Africa and so on.
17:08So, Britain became, instead of, after being an ally, becomes a rival.
17:13The same thing happened after the Second World War.
17:16Russia became a rival.
17:17United States got unbelievably nervous.
17:19They began to organize this NATO organization with Europe, which purpose was, you know, as we know, to keep Russia out and Germany down.
17:29And that was, you know, again, attempt of this Anglo-Saxon wall, unfortunately.
17:35And, you know, I'm not happy to bring up this concept, but I think it is this, you know, British constantly try to interfere, to separate Russia from Europe and from Germany in particular.
17:47And so, these two countries, which are basically geographically very close, they could benefit from kind of working together.
17:55And they were actually recently, as very recently, they began to work together with all these good gas deals.
18:02You know, Germany turned into this really sort of, you know, industrial center of Europe.
18:06And that's, you know, then Ukraine comes along very, very handily.
18:10And, again, this NATO, British, and American strategist uses Ukraine as a wedge to separate Russia from Europe.
18:17And they continue to do this, and they will continue to milk it.
18:20That's, you know, I hope that people in Europe realize that, that they are being played, again, against their geographical, historical, cultural, mutual history.
18:31There is a wedge to keep Russia out, Germany down, and Anglo-Saxon wall in domination.
18:38Yeah, but, Jim, that's why we don't have security in Europe, because Russia is not an integral part of it.
18:43And that is the solution to Europe's security problems.
18:47That is the solution to the Ukraine conflict, is the indivisibility of security for all.
18:52And that is something Western powers will not agree to.
18:55They will not accept that Russia is a legitimate equal power.
18:59That's the problem.
18:59Jim.
19:00That is the problem.
19:02And as Vladimir points out, the British have always been at the heart of this.
19:06I mean, let's not forget the Crimean War episode as well.
19:09And, unfortunately, the United States has stepped into those shoes.
19:13I think early on in the Trump administration, people were hopeful that the United States can finally come around to be friends or at least have a correct relationship with Russia.
19:22And I think that's increasingly unlikely, I'm sad to say.
19:26I mean, I think the big fear, and again, I hate to put it this way, the English-Saxon world, is that there would be a rapprochement between Russia and Germany, and Germany, of course, in that sense, being the core of Western Europe.
19:37And that terrifies the people who have this philosophic view of the world, that the sea power, the American or British sea power, can dominate the world.
19:46Well, then let's remember, Russia geographically is in a much weaker position than it was during the Napoleonic invasion of the Russian Empire or Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union, in that it's Western frontiers than they were at that time.
19:57And that what we saw with the breakup of the Soviet Union was kind of like a super-brestly tusk in terms of pushing Russia back from a defensible position.
20:04That's why people like Brzezinski says, we need Ukraine, because if we get Ukraine, then Russia is no longer an empire, it's really no longer a defensible state.
20:12And that's why we got to this war now.
20:14Yeah, I mean, Andre, I mean, you know, I hear all the, you know, I watch podcasts, I do a lot of reading, you know, and the topic of European security is often mentioned,
20:26very academic sometimes, but, you know, what I found really distressing is that, yeah, I think everybody should have security here.
20:35Russia, for many, European security will be sustained without Russia, but without that, without security for all, Ukraine ends up being the continuous victim here.
20:50And they don't care about Ukraine.
20:51They want to inflict a defeat on Russia.
20:54They don't care about Ukraine or its people.
20:57Of course.
20:58They never cared about Ukraine.
21:00They never cared.
21:01They used Ukraine in the situation.
21:03And the Ukrainian government regime, which sold out throughout the years of 30 years of independence, was selling out step by step after the first Maidan revolution in 2004.
21:13And then rapidly after 2014, the coup, they were selling out to the West of the United States because that's where most of their money is.
21:21And that's where they wanted to be citizens of.
21:24And a lot of government officials of Ukraine are citizens of the United States.
21:27And we can see where their sons and daughters are during this war, living in Washington and Miami and et cetera.
21:32So this is the process of this war.
21:35The collaborators, the government of Ukraine itself doesn't care about its own people.
21:39So when Zelensky or his government is negotiating so-called peace, they're negotiating not peace or anything else.
21:46They're negotiating for themselves personal gains in this conflict.
21:50They don't care also about the people.
21:52So don't the masters in Europe and the globalists in the United States.
21:57They don't care about it.
21:58And I can add to the security in Europe.
22:01Why the Soviet Union did fall apart?
22:03Because Russia, the Soviet Union, was the first step for security in Europe process of leaving eastern Germany.
22:11The 300,000, 400,000 troops that left eastern Germany were the first step for getting peace and security guarantees for everybody.
22:18The United States did not go forward or made or did not go forward with those security steps and guarantees for Europe.
22:25They stayed and their bases are still today are in Europe.
22:27So who is the who's the one who is threatening Europe today?
22:32Russia, which left and basically brought down the Berlin Wall or the United States and the West will still have their army bases in Europe today.
22:40You know, Vladimir, to finish up here, the dissing, the parade that will be on Red Square, what Western leaders and pundits, they don't want to see world leaders standing next to Vladimir Putin because that means that their myth that Russia is isolated is false.
23:02Vladimir.
23:02Yeah, that's that's a message they want to convey.
23:05Everybody who challenges our kind of control of Germany and the unipolar wall is a pariah, is a despot, is some kind of autocrat, which is, you know, simplification of history.
23:18And, you know, again, attempt to totally kind of demonize Russia and not to take it seriously, not to take its concerns seriously.
23:27What is interesting, when Europe is worried about themselves, they right away go to Baltic states, to Poland, ask these people about their fears of Russia.
23:37And they then act that, oh, yeah, we take it seriously.
23:41But do they go to Russia and ask Russian people how they experienced invasions and Western attacks and Western, you know, Western bombing?
23:52That should be considered, too.
23:53Russian concerns should be taken seriously.
23:56But, you know, to take it seriously requires real overhaul of the whole kind of geopolitical approach to history.
24:04And we're not seeing Western leaders as being ready for that.
24:08You know, it used to be.
24:09On that very positive note, because we very rarely end this program on a positive note, I want to wish all of you a victory day 80 years on over the destruction of fascism in Europe.
24:22Gentlemen, thank you very much.
24:23I want to thank my guests in Providence, Bezel and in Virginia.
24:27And, of course, I want to thank our viewers for watching us here at RT.
24:30See you next time.
24:31Remember, crosstalk rules.
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