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Since February this year, over 6000 foreign
listeners of the VOICE OF RUSSIA and its web-site visitors have taken part
in our Radio Forum to mark the 55 Anniversary of the victory in the Second
World War. Messages marked "for Radio Forum" were coming in every
day – and are still arriving – by e-mail and regular post, by fax and phone
as well as recorded on cassette tapes. Most praise THE VOICE OF RUSSIA
for running a highly informative documentary series on World War II ("Russia
in the Second World War", the series' name).
We regularly sample incoming messages on
the topic for inclusion in our main daily informative program in 32 languages
on Saturday.
On its colourful website (at www.vor.ru),
THE VOICE OF RUSSIA maintains an open line (Russian and English) for visitors
to read all Anniversary material including messages to the Forum. Visitor
Cathy Case, in the United States, writes it reads like a powerful novel
set in the wartime.
There have been contributions in 29 languages
to the Anniversary Forum. People in 65 countries have so far taken part,
with particularly heavy traffic reaching us from Mongolia, the US, Great
Britain, Germany, Italy, Spain, France, Poland, Bulgaria, Algeria, Egypt,
China, Japan, Vietnam, Argentina, Brazil and Cuba. Republics of the former
USSR (including Russia), too, account for considerable percentages of the
total message haul. Taken together, the messages form an encyclopedic library
of memoirs, biographies, historical analyses and forecast attempts.
The contributors include old soldiers,
civilian eye-witnesses of wartime events and young people whose experience
of the great war is confined to viewing films and listening to granddads.
Many contributors say they would like to
discuss the war with some of our journalists. They also speak about their
opposition to ill-intentioned designs to distort the truth about the war.
All are convinced it was the war effort by the Soviet Union that decided
the struggle in favour of the Allied Powers.
A listener to our programs in Spanish says
the Soviet Soldier, who seized Berlin and crushed Nazism in its seat, is
his choice for The Man of the 20th Century. The Allied Victory, he believes,
is the most important event of that period. And the Allies would have never
won the great war without the Soviet Army on their side.
Mr. Wincenty Skarulis in Poland says the
Allies owe their triumph over Nazism to the Soviet Army, which bore the
brunt of the struggle. He testifies to this in his capacity as war veteran.
Mr. Agide Melloni in Italy says accounts
of recent history are full of contradictions. But history, he admits, would
have come to an end without the victorious Soviet wartime push.
The retired US naval officer John Craft
says he knows the war better than most of his fellow Americans and can
arguably insist it was the Soviet Union who decided the outcome.
Many of the contributions are heart-rending
chapters of family histories.
Ivan Trograncic in Yugoslavia says Soviet
soldiers rescued him as a baby from a Nazi slave labour camp in what is
now the Czech Republic. He had been born in the camp to parents from the
village of Antunovac in Yugoslavia. The Nazis deported the villagers in
1944 using freight carriages for transportation. Many of the uprooted
people died during their month-long rail journey to the labour camp.
Mrs. Elfride Siewerssen in Germany says
many people in her country nursed a grudge against Hitler's war. She also
regrets the death of millions of young Soviet soldiers on the battlefront.
Mrs. Siewerssen remembers how Soviet Army medics saved the life of her
baby daughter in the lean months following the end of the war. Now she
has grandchildren and her greatest desire is peace everywhere on Earth.
Concerns for the future figure equally
high in messages from many other elderly contributors. Mr. Peter Morgan,
in Great Britain, is rueful over young people shrugging off faded black-and-white
photos of men in baggy archaic uniforms. The West, he says, tends to discard
the past as junk leading to dangerous forgetfulness of the lessons of
history.
Much to his satisfaction perhaps, we can
report a message from 16 concerned teenagers in Italy, who say politicians
must never, never forget the tragic lessons of the past. We have a class
photo of them at the Santa Justina High School. According to a letter enclosed,
they took keen interest in our series "Russia in the Second World
War" and started to browse books on the period.
The main lesson from the war, most contributors
agree, is that diplomacy and compromise are key. Many speak about a possible
third great war as a result of growing terrorism, unbridled separatism
and dangerous attempts at global domination, mostly by the United States.
THE VOICE OF RUSSIA hereby extends thanks
to all contributors to the forum for appraising the role of the Soviet
people in the war and pushing the envelope of conventional concepts of
war and peace. Every contributor will receive a Diploma.
Stay tuned !
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