WHAT THREAT DID THE NAZIS POSE TO EASTERN EUROPE?

MOSCOW. (Professor Vyacheslav Dashichev, Doctor of History, for RIA Novosti) - The Lithuanian and Estonian presidents have refused to come to Moscow on May 9 to pay tribute to the millions who lost their lives fighting the Nazi tyranny on the basis that Stalin imposed Soviet domination over the Baltic states after the war.

Latvia's president, Vaira Vike-Freiberga, echoes them, although she will be in the Russian capital to attend the VE Day events. Poland's leaders hold similar views.

The menace the Nazis posed to these countries should not be forgotten. The Ost plan, one of the most terrible and bloody documents of the 20th century, which was drafted by Himmler's SS and Alfred Rosenberg's ministry for the occupied east, illustrates it. The plan proposed the deportation of 40 to 50 million people from the west of Russia, Poland (85% of the population), western Ukraine (65% of the population), Belarus (75%) and considerable numbers of Latvians, Lithuanians and Estonians to Western Siberia, the North Caucasus, South America and Africa within 30 years. The minutes of a meeting in Nazi General Headquarters on May 15, 1942 includes Hitler's instructions to his subordinates. "The chief outlined the prospect of populating the eastern territories with approximately a hundred million Germans. He thinks Germans must move on and on to the east, million by million. Hitler expects that in no later than ten years' time he will be presented with a report on the colonization of occupied eastern regions, which will already be part of Germany, by at least twenty million Germans." The governor general of Poland had the following view on his mission. "Now the political role of the Polish is over. They will be nothing but a work force... We shall ensure that the very concept of Poland is erased. Never again will Rzecz Pospolita or any other Polish state be revived." In essence, the same fate awaited the Baltic countries. The Russians were faced with a more terrible menace, as Hitler planned to kill about 30 million people during the war against the Soviet Union.

These factors are largely ignored when it comes to accusing the USSR and Stalinism of occupying the Baltic countries. And the attempts to blame Russia and its incumbent government for Stalin's crimes, totalitarian regime and messianic policy to expand communist rule are completely unfounded.