Between Giants (64 page)

The way that Germany has faced up to its past, particularly with regard to the Holocaust, is in many respects a remarkable achievement. Whilst the accounts of war veterans might shy away from the subject, other German writers have tackled the subject with, sometimes, painful honesty. Earlier accounts perhaps tended to be a little two-dimensional, with many of the German perpetrators portrayed as evil sadists; whilst such individuals undoubtedly existed, they were greatly outnumbered by those who appear to have treated their role in the machinery of the Holocaust in the same way that soldiers regarded their role in the fighting in the front line. In the last two decades, German writers have written some of the most detailed and comprehensive accounts of the crimes committed by the Wehrmacht and SS in the east. This is in stark contrast to the continuing silence of Russian-language writers about atrocities committed by the Red Army and the NKVD.

The nations that have struggled most with their accounts of the war years are, inevitably, the Baltic States themselves. On the one hand, the people of the Baltic States are proud of their resilience and their ability to survive so many occupations and the terrible loss of life that their nations suffered. On the other hand, they have a deeply ambivalent attitude to the events of the Second World War. Forced through circumstances to provide aid for Nazi Germany, they continue to struggle to reconcile their attitude to those they regard as nationalist patriots, with the unwelcome fact that they found themselves fighting for a regime that is generally reviled. Their historiography is further disadvantaged by the fact that, even if they try to address the crimes committed upon their people by the Germans and the Soviets in an even-handed way, they still struggle with the role that their own citizens played in those crimes. Many, though by no means all, of those who fought against Soviet occupation after the war were also extensively involved in fighting on the side of the Germans during the war, and some of those who are regarded as heroes are also implicated in some of the mass killings that occurred during the German occupation. Since 1990, many Latvians have celebrated 16 March as Latvian Legion Day, to commemorate the service of Latvians who fought against the Soviet Union. The date was chosen because it was the first occasion that the two Latvian divisions fought alongside each other against the Red Army, but the fact that the two divisions were part of the SS, and included in their ranks many men who had been part of the police battalions that helped carry out the Baltic Holocaust, has made this commemoration a controversial event. In 1998, the day was given official recognition, triggering protests from Russia, and the Latvian government withdrew the day’s official status in 2000. For several years, the day became a flashpoint for trouble between right-wing and left-wing groups in Latvia, though it should be pointed out that the official organisations representing Latvian veterans have repeatedly distanced themselves from the more extremist bodies that have attempted to exploit the day. After serious trouble in 2005, the Latvian authorities attempted to fence off the Freedom Monument, the focal point of the clashes. This in turn attracted great criticism, highlighting the difficulties faced by Latvia and its neighbours in attempting to deal with their collective past.

The different interpretations of history in the nations involved have caused resentment and difficulties between them. The history of the Freedom Monument in Riga highlights many of these difficulties. The monument was first raised in 1935 to commemorate those who fell in the Latvian war of independence, and after the end of the Second World War, the Soviet authorities proposed the restoration of a statue of Peter the Great, which had been taken down to make room for the monument. It seems that the monument survived partly through a desire to avoid unnecessary provocation of Latvians, and partly because Vera Mukhina, a celebrated Soviet sculptor who was born in Riga, successfully argued that the monument had considerable artistic merits. Instead, attempts were made to reinterpret the nature of the monument; it is topped by a copper statue holding aloft three stars, originally intended to symbolise the three constitutional districts of Latvia (Kurzeme, Latgale and Vidzeme), but the Soviet authorities proclaimed that the statue and the stars represented Mother Russia, holding aloft the stars of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. By the late 1980s, official accounts accepted that the monument commemorated the liberation of Latvia from rule by the Czars and Baltic German barons, but failed to mention that most of the Latvian war of independence had been against the Red Army and its communist Latvian Rifle formations.

Many Russian writers, including those who have been active after the fall of the Soviet Union, have criticised what they see as Baltic ‘ideology’ or ‘dogma’, for example in connection with the Soviet deportations during 1941 and after the war.
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Starting from the point of view that the Soviet occupation of the Baltic States was a legal event, Russian historians often regard the actions of the Soviet regime in safeguarding its rule as entirely legitimate. The deportations are seen as being no different in principle to the internment of civilians from Axis nations in Britain and the United States during the war.
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Similarly, the widespread point of view throughout the Baltic States that those who fought against the Soviets, both during and after the war, were patriotic freedom fighters, is criticised as overlooking the crimes that some of those involved committed during the war, particularly when serving in auxiliary police units prior to the creation of Estonian and Latvian divisions.
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It is felt in Russia that the growth in articles and publications about the ‘Forest Brothers’ began in the 1980s in Lithuania, largely due to the influence of Lithuanians living in the west, and then spread to Latvia and Estonia in the following years. Many of those fighting against Soviet authorities, it is suggested, were not doing so solely – or even primarily – for patriotic reasons. Some were deserters or were involved in plain criminal activities, but are now grouped together with other ‘partisans’ to give, from the Russian point of view, a misleading idea of the scale of the partisan movement.
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Another example of the tensions brought about by different interpretations of history is the case of Vassili Makarovich Kononov, who was a member of the pro-Soviet partisans operating in Latvia as part of the 1st Latvian Partisan Battalion; he was parachuted into Latvia in June 1943 as an explosives expert. In February 1944, a dozen partisans sought shelter in the village of Mazie Bati, and were allowed to stay in a barn. Early the following morning, German troops entered the village and set the barn ablaze, and any who attempted to escape were gunned down. Amongst the dead were the leader of the partisan group, Major Chugunov, his wife, and their child. Kononov was not present at the time, but after his battalion had held a field tribunal, without any of the villagers present at the proceedings, he was ordered to enter the village and seize nine villagers who were accused of collaborating with the Germans.
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Kononov and several other partisans entered Mazie Bati dressed in Wehrmacht uniforms and killed the nine villagers, including three women, one of whom was pregnant. Kononov was charged with murder in 1998, and the following year, he was convicted and sentenced to six years’ imprisonment.

In 2000, while he was appealing against his conviction, Vladimir Putin, President of the Russian Federation, offered Kononov Russian citizenship, which he accepted; shortly afterwards, the Latvian Criminal Affairs Division overturned his conviction, after Kononov’s lawyers successfully argued that it was not clear whether the partisans were operating in occupied territory, and that the combatant status of both his partisans and the villagers – many of whom had been armed by the Germans – was also uncertain; consequently, the rules that applied to the conduct of soldiers and civilians in warfare could not be interpreted with any degree of confidence. The prosecution chose to continue proceedings against Kononov, pressing charges relating only to the killing of the three women, and in 2004, Kononov was once more imprisoned.

Four years later, the European Court of Human Rights ruled on Kononov’s conviction. The court found that Kononov had only acted against the villagers after finding weapons provided by the Germans in their houses, and that it was not possible to argue unequivocally that the victims of Kononov’s operation were civilians. When it came to the deaths of the three women, the court concluded that there were two possible explanations. The first was that the women had kept watch over Major Chugunov’s group while the six male villagers travelled to a neighbouring village to alert the Germans, and had thus in effect become part of the anti-partisan and pro-German group; the second was that they were killed because Kononov’s men exceeded their orders. In this latter case, it was argued, no evidence had been presented that Kononov had either directly taken part in their killings, or that he had ordered anyone else to kill them. As any prosecution under Latvian law as it existed in 1944 would have had to take place within ten years, Kononov could not be convicted by a prosecution in 1998. If the conviction was under the terms of the Latvian law relating to murder that was passed in 1961, the court ruled that the conviction was in contravention of Article Seven of the European Convention of Human Rights, which prohibits the retrospective criminalisation of activities.
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The Latvian government appealed against this judgement, and in 2010, a final judgement was issued. It was concluded that regardless of their status, the villagers of Mazie Bati could not legally be murdered or ill-treated under existing laws in 1944. The use of Wehrmacht uniforms by Kononov and his group was ruled to be in breach of Article 23b of the Hague Convention, which states that it is forbidden ‘To kill or wound treacherously individuals belonging to the hostile nation or army’.
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The limitation under Latvian law that prosecution should have taken place within ten years was felt to be irrelevant, in that Kononov was deemed to have broken international laws, not Latvian laws, and as these international laws had been in force at the time of the killings, Article Seven had not been breached.
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Kononov died in 2011, aged 88, a controversial figure to the end, still attempting to overturn the ruling of the European Court. Throughout his legal process, the Russian Federation had provided legal, financial and moral support for his position. After his death, President Dmitri Medvedev of the Russian Federation declared: ‘Vassili Kononov selflessly fought the Nazi invaders throughout the years of the Great Patriotic War. He remained loyal to the common bonds forged in battle and defended the truth about the events of those years throughout his entire life.’
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Many people in the Baltic States, particularly the significant non-Baltic populations that were left in the three countries as a result of Soviet post-war population movements, are uncomfortable with the denigration of the Red Army, which sacrificed so much to expel the Germans from the Baltic States. The large numbers of Russians in Estonia and Latvia, forming 26 per cent and 20 per cent of their respective populations, have had a particularly difficult time adapting to the new status of the three countries. Recently, the Russian population of Latvia tried unsuccessfully to have Russian recognised as an official language in the country.

Despite these ambivalent attitudes to the past, it seems that, for the moment at least, the three Baltic States are firmly embedded in the Western World. Recent economic events have shown that this is not always a blessing. Nevertheless, people living in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania today can share a future with prospects of far greater liberty and safety from persecution than almost any preceding generation. For this future, the price that they pay – wrestling with a controversial and difficult past – is perhaps a small one.

In an area where borders have moved frequently, and even within each state there have been markedly different ethnicities, place names can be very confusing.

Wherever possible, the policy in this book has been to use current place names in preference to names that might have been used in the past. The exceptions to this rule have been where some locations have had names that were in almost universal use at the time. For example, the city currently known as St Petersburg was known as Petrograd at the end of the First World War, and Leningrad during the Second World War; given the resonance of the latter name, it would have been inappropriate to use the current name in preference.