The end of World War II in Europe had a fundamental impact on the structure of the postwar world. On the one hand, it meant peace sought by millions of people, but on the other hand, as a result of the Yalta agreements, it entailed a great redivision of Europe, with tragic consequences for Central and Eastern Europe. Another confrontation succeeded it: the Cold War, which ended only half a century later. The fall of the Communist system created a powerful positive energy among the peoples of Central and Eastern Europe, who began to regain independence of their countries and build a new political system on a democratic basis. In these countries, the time came for rethinking of recent history, focused both on the European pattern of reconciliation and on the region’s wartime and postwar experience.

Western Europe, in the process of its unification, has built its identity on the memory of World War II and the Holocaust, on the reckoning with Nazism, but first of all, on the belief that only restoration of basic values – respect for human life, democracy, human rights, tolerance and solidarity – can put an end to wars, at least in its territory. By contrast, in the countries of the socialist camp, the memory of war was strictly regulated and subordinated to ideological purposes: the creation of the Victory myth and the Cold War confrontation, once former allies became irreconcilable enemies. The myth of the “Great Patriotic War” supplanted the Soviet Union’s foundational tale of the “Great Socialist Revolution” and, in turn, became its new object of worship. This myth assumed no place for democratic values, for reconciliation, for any alternative, non-heroic narrative. The truth about the war casualties, as well as about Stalin’s alliance with the Third Reich in 1939–1941, and the Soviet complicity and responsibility for the outbreak of World War II, was forbidden. Nor there was any place for the true word on Moscow’s occupation of territories of several Central European countries. After all, the myth was silent about Soviet war crimes and crimes against humanity, including the deportation of Crimean Tatars and other wartime and postwar deportations, which remain an unhealed wound for many people in Ukraine and beyond.

Following the collapse of Communism and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, only a number of Central and Eastern European countries made their own first attempts at reckoning with the totalitarian past and rethinking the communist-imposed image of World War II. It is significant that only in these countries can we notice fairly sustainable democratic change.

Seventy-five years after the end of World War II, we are witnesses to Russia’s unilateral efforts to bring back the outworn Soviet myth and to instill its vision in the entire world. Russian leaders have started rewriting history not only to restore the old myth; they also seek to legitimize their contemporary imperial aspirations. The experience of the latest Russian-Ukrainian war, the armed stage of which started in 2014, proved that the manipulation of history for Putin is the first stage of a hybrid war. Today its target is the whole Central Eastern European region.