On October 6, Maribor (Slovenia) hosted the International Scientific Conference "Victims of War and Lasting Legacy of Tragic Stories".
Reports were presented by:
- historian and member of the National Assembly (Ljubljana, Slovenia) Dr. Martin Premk,
- Professor of the Department of History, World Studies, Candidate of Criminal Law of the Marshall School of the University of Northern Vermont (Lyndon, USA) Dr. Alexander Strokanov,
- Head of the Military Museum of the Slovenian Army Lieutenant Colonel Zvezdan Markovic,
- researcher at the Victory Museum (Moscow, Russia), member of the Eurasian Peoples' Assembly, vice-president of the Eurasian Academy of Television and Radio Lyudmila Bakeeva (Moscow, Russia).
The conference was moderated by Researcher at MIC Maribor Daniel Sitter.
From the organizers
World War II represents the collapse of civilization. In the grip of violence and circumstance, the most severe consequences of military conflicts are experienced by the civilian population. It is the moral duty of all of us today to recognize and highlight military violence and hate speech as a way to prevent the emergence of fictional paradigms that promote hate speech, ideological discrimination and violence.
The Eurasian Peoples' Assembly implements joint projects with leading Russian and world historical, public, search organizations. IRC "Maribor" and the Eurasian Peoples' Assembly have signed a cooperation agreement and work together to preserve historical memory. Several conferences have been held, at the end of 2022 the international online exhibition “Remember. Stalag 18D” will take place.
We publish the text of Lyudmila Bakeeva's speech on the report written by the President of the National Business Partnership "Alliance Media" Igor Gorodnichiy and the Deputy Secretary General of the Eurasian Peoples' Assembly Valery Ruzin, at the conference "Victims of Wars and the Enduring Legacy of Tragic Stories":
Restoration and preservation of the memory of the victims of the Second World War
Thank you for the opportunity to speak at an international conference. This is important in our time that tests us for fidelity to historical truth.
World War II was the bloodiest war in history. It brought an incalculable number of victims and suffering to the peoples.
The Soviet Union suffered huge losses: up to 27 million people, both military (about 7 million) and civilians. Why did so many innocent people die? Russian historian Yegor Yakovlev in his book “War of annihilation. The Third Reich and the Genocide of the Soviet People” (year of the second edition – 2022), on the basis of materials he found in foreign archives, proved the existence at the top of Nazi Germany even before the start of the Great Patriotic War of a plan to exterminate up to 30 million people of the European part of the Soviet Union.
The author proves that the genocide of the Soviet people was planned during the Great Patriotic War. Using a large number of sources, memoirs, translated documents, he shows how this plan was implemented through a system of artificial famine in Soviet cities, part of which was the blockade of Leningrad, the Holocaust, the extermination of Soviet prisoners of war, the burning of villages, the lack of medical care in the occupied territories, etc.
The Nazis implemented the philosophy of racial superiority in relation to the Slavs and other peoples of the Soviet Union as an inferior race, as "subhuman" ("untermensch"). All these barbaric measures of the Nazis led to incredible losses of the civilian population - women, children, the elderly.
The book partly answers the question of how Hitler was able to turn the people of Germany into fascists, and shows that the youth driven away from the territory of the Soviet Union was given into slavery to German entrepreneurs. The other side of this problem lies in the cult of those heroes who become models for the youth and the entire population of the country. When people who commit or have committed crimes against humanity that do not have a statute of limitations become official heroes of the state, this inevitably leads to the dominance of the ideology and practice of Nazism and new, equally terrible crimes.
We fully support the efforts and work of the Maribor International Research Center to preserve the historical memory of the victims of World War II.
How does the Eurasian Peoples' Assembly restore and preserve historical memory?
We fix the biographies of the fighters against Nazism, the territories in which they fought, we collect information from search groups and military archives.
For example, we restore the history and payroll of more than 13 thousand people of the 8th Guards Panfilov Rifle Division, originally formed mainly from residents of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, which began its way from the defense of Moscow, in the most difficult time of the Great Patriotic War, and went through the entire war. We also restore the history of about 10,000 people of the 16th Lithuanian Rifle Division, which heroically defended the Oryol region as well, and the history of the garrison of the Brest Fortress, many of its defenders died or were captured at the very beginning of the war.
We are interested and ready to take part in the formation of a single information space of historical memory, including within the multilingual Media Platform "Network of History" being created by the Eurasian Peoples' Assembly.
The Eurasian Peoples' Assembly is actively working to create associations of descendants of military units, formations, organizations and regions. We also collect information about the places of mass death and burial of Soviet soldiers both on the territory of the former Soviet Union and on the territories of other countries.
It is important for us to communicate with the organizations of the European Union, including the Maribor Center and the system of museums of the former Stalag camps, their archives may contain unknown pages of history.
We invite all colleagues to participate in the formation of a common information space of historical memory based on the placement and publication of information on the “Network of History” Media Platform. Its resources and capabilities will be widely available to all Internet users. We are counting on broad information for everyone who wants to get acquainted with the history, as well as on the response and feedback from relatives, families and descendants of the participants in those terrible events.