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Interfax
May 6 2005
Alexander Yakovlev: Counting countries' contribution to WWII victory is immoral

International Democracy Foundation President Alexander Yakovlev said he believes debates should end on whose contribution to the victory over Nazism was more important.

"I once read some American textbook about the Second World War, and it didn't even mention the Soviet Union - this is the ultimate degree of immorality. But on the other hand, when someone in my country says it is only we who won the victory, this is also immoral," Yakovlev said in an interview with Interfax.

"It is about time accept historical facts: it was the anti-Hitlerite coalition that won the victory. They would not have defeated Hitler without us and we would not have done it without them," said Yakovlev, who was earlier a member of the Soviet Communist Party's Politburo and the main ideologist of perestroika under Mikhail Gorbachev in the 1980s.

"This is correct from all points of view, including from the viewpoint of our morality and from the viewpoint of our future as one humankind," Yakovlev said.

The official figures on the number of Soviet citizens killed in World War II are too low, Yakovlev said.

"According to my calculations, the victims of the war include over 30 million Soviet people, although earlier the official figure was 20 million, and now it is something like 26 million," he said.

Yakovlev suggested that significant responsibility for this gigantic number of victims rests with Josef Stalin.

People "were also being killed because of Stalin's poor leadership, as he sent people to their deaths just in order to seize some city or another before the Americans or British," he said.

Yakovlev, who fought in WWII, also blamed Stalin for "poorly preparing the country for the war, as there was one rifle for three men, and you had to wait until one man got killed to take up this rifle." As many as 954,000 Soviet servicemen were shot by their own men for cowardice and offences during World War II, Yakovlev said.

"Of course, crimes were involved. But even crimes did not lead to executions in foreign armies," Yakovlev said. He said executions of this kind were common at the front and commanders were under pressure to perform them.

"When I arrived at the front, the battalion commissar told me that if the soldiers don't rise at the command to begin an attack, I must shoot one at random to urge the others," said Yakovlev.