Washington Should Cure Anti-Russia Hysteria With Memory of WWII, Analyst Says

Political historian Stephen F. Cohen has said he finds it absurd that while Russia celebrates 72 years since the Soviet victory over fascism, Russophobes in the US establishment continue to fuel conflict and fantasize about the Kremlin’s malicious plans of conquest over the West.

On May 9, Russia held major commemorative events and marches to celebrate one of its most important national holidays, the anniversary of the victory in the Great Patriotic War, as it is known in Russia.

Cohen, contributing editor to the Nation, noted in his recent piece that Americans tend to believe that “we defeated Nazi Germany,” as President Obama put it on the 70th anniversary of the end of the war, although it wasn't until 1944, when the tide of war had already changed in favor of the Soviet Union, that Allied forces finally landed at Normandy.

“In truth, America won the war in the Pacific, against Japan, but the Soviet Union fought and destroyed Hitler’s war machine on the ‘Eastern Front’ almost alone from 1941 to 1944, from Moscow, Kursk, and Stalingrad, and eventually to Berlin in 1945,” Cohen wrote.

The West did play a certain role in the Soviet victory over the Nazis, but that contribution has been largely overstated by Western historians and unfairly promoted in Hollywood movies.

Soviet soldiers fought about 80 percent of the Nazi army. More than 27 million Soviet citizens died, 60 to 70 percent of them ethnic Russians. Almost every family lost someone on the battlefield.

“This is an enduring part of Russia’s ‘holiday with tears.’ This is in large measure why so many Russians … have watched with alarm NATO creep from Germany to their country’s borders since the late 1990s; why they resent and fear Washington political claims on the former Soviet republics of Ukraine and Georgia; and why they say of NATO’s ongoing buildup in the Baltic states and Poland that ‘never has so much Western military power been amassed on our borders since the Nazi invasion in June 1941,’” the article reads.

Meanwhile, Cohen pointed out, Washington was losing mind over the May 9 firing of FBI chief James Comey amid an active investigation into Russia's alleged meddling in the US elections and Trump campaign collusion with Moscow. Trump was immediately accused of removing Comey in a cover-up of the "truth" about his alleged Russia links. 

Since Trump won last year’s presidential elections, the media in the US in the West more broadly has been dominated by Cold War-style conspiracy theories, claims that Moscow "hacked American democracy" and warnings of Russia’s imminent invasion of Europe.

To date, not a single shred of evidence has been presented to support any of the accusations, and Russian officials have dubbed the claims absurd.

“The consequences seem not to matter to the leadership of the Democratic Party or to the bipartisan Cold War coalition in Washington. They clearly prefer pursuing still-baseless allegations against Trump to diminishing today’s actual dangers of war with Russia,” Cohen wrote.

“On May 8-9, they should instead have gone to Moscow to commemorate the historic victory.“