2007-08-17

The Economist on "eSStonia"

The Economist has a great overview of the ridiculous nature of the recent anti-Estonian propaganda. It even mentions the good ol' Godwin's Law.

Much of the anti-Estonian Nazi smear employed by Russian media, and sometimes even Russian politicians, centers around what Stalinist historians considered Estonia's allegiance to Nazi Germany. A very important point from the article:
What really annoys the Kremlin crowd is that Estonians (like many others in eastern Europe) regarded the arrival of the Red Army in 1944-45 not as a liberation, but as the exchange of one ghastly occupation for another. That flatly contradicts the Kremlin’s revived Stalinist version of history, which puts Soviet wartime heroism and sacrifice at centre-stage, while assiduously obscuring all the historical context. Given how the Soviet Union treated Estonia in 1939-41, it is hardly surprising that those who fought the occupiers when they returned are regarded as heroes. But they were not Nazis, nor are those who admire them now.


A relevant statistic comparing the occupations, out of the Estonian Occupations' Research Commission's report is that of human losses directly attributable to the occupations. In 1940–1941, the Year of Red Plague, 43,900 such irrecoverable losses happened. The following three Years of Brown Plague — the Nazi occupation —, 1941–1944, inflicted only 32,740 such losses. Both numbers include conscripted soldiers that died in battles of the drafting sides, but it is rather interesting that the largest numbers of Estonians drafted into Red Army back then died not in battles but in Gulag's "work camps".

Then again, these are only facts. And when a propagandist lets a fact come in way of a good story, sacrificing the truthiness, he's being a bad propagandist.

Update: the text is also available at Edward Lucas' blog: eSStonia.

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