I have not read Jacques Pauwels's "The Myth of the Good War", but I have read Charles Andrews "It Was a Good War - But Whose Good War". It was important that the Axis was defeated in World War II, but not just the Western allies, but the Soviet government was imperialist. Russia no longer had a revolutionary, communist regime, but a state-capitalist order had been established. And with state-capitalism, imperialism returned.
Charles Andrews writes: "From the middle 1930's the Soviet Union encouraged the broad alliance against fascism." There was of course the Nazi-Soviet Pact of 1939-1941. Soviet policy during this period could hardly be described as encouraging a broad alliance against fascism. Throughout the war, the Stalinist government committed typical imperialist atrocities. There was the Katyn massacre. There was the deportation of every single Chechen, including those who had fought as soldiers in the Red Army, from Chechnya, and the deportation of all the Crimean Tatars. It wasn't until several years after Stalin died that Chechens could start to return, and it was much longer before Tatars could start to return. The evil aftermath of these deportations is still with us today. Several other small nationalities suffered the same fate. There was the mass rape of German women by the Soviet army. There was the setting up of Russian domination of an entire bloc of countries in Eastern Europe. One could go on. The importance of defeating the Axis should not be forgotten. But the imperialist acts of the Stalinist as well as Western governments should not be forgotten either. -- Joseph Green > The article sneers at "Good War mythology." For a different, > anti-fascist view, see my recent brief item, > "It Was a Good War - But Whose Good War?" > at > http://mltoday.com/article/2305-it-was-a-good-war-but-whose-good-war/29 > > _______________________________________________ > pen-l mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l ----------------------------------- Joseph Green [email protected] ------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
