Disputes and discussions around the event that happened 69 years ago (the beginning of the Great Patriotic War) not only do not subside, but flare up with renewed vigor. Propaganda myths that were supposed to convince the citizens of Russia that the Stalinist USSR was no better than Hitler's Germany, that the war began for us with the shameful retreat of the Soviet army, etc. etc. ran into fierce rejection of some of the Russian people. It turned out that not everyone is ready to humbly accept the colonial version of our history. Even after watching Nikita Mikhalkov's “film masterpiece”.
One of these people turned out to be the famous journalist Maxim Shevchenko, who expressed his attitude to the attempt to slander the feat of our fathers and grandfathers:
“June 22, 1941 is the most terrible and terrible day in the history of my people. This is the day on which Germany and its allies - Romania, Finland, Hungary, Slovakia, Croatia, Italy - attacked my homeland, the Soviet Union.
The attack killed eighteen million civilians and eight million military personnel, of which about four and a half million were killed in prisoner of war concentration camps.
All the talk that in 1941 the Red Army was cowardly, as Yulia Latynina says, who is only a creature, after her statement on May 8 about the fact that the Russian people turned into cowards on June 22, cannot be called.
In her opinion, the soldiers who died near Smolensk in July, holding back the German shock groups, turned into cowards. The population of Leningrad has turned into cowards. The fighters who died on the Luga line, preventing the Germans from reaching Kaliningrad, “turned into cowards”. The soldiers who fought in the Ukraine, retreated to Kiev and then were surrounded near Kiev, “turned into cowards”. The fighters who knocked Kleist's army out of Rostov in December 1941 turned into cowards. “The defenders of Odessa and Sevastopol have turned into cowards,” says Ms. Latynina. The sailors who defended Tallinn “turned into cowards”. “He turned into a coward” … he is, however, not Russian, he is Estonian, - Arnold Meri, who received seven wounds in battles on the Luga border and was awarded the Gold Star of the Hero of the Soviet Union for this. The pilots who fought superior in experience and equipment with German pilots "turned into cowards" - died, but fought.
This is how they see our history. This is how they see the history of the war.
I'll tell you that On June 22, the Soviet people turned into demigods, if you will. Who eventually managed to find a superhuman will in themselves, although they all prophesied death for them, and to defeat the most powerful group in the history of mankind that ever went to the East, all of Europe … because this is not Nazi Germany, but all of Europe: France was an ally of Germany, an ally of Germany was Spain, which sent volunteers to Russia, volunteers were sent to fight here Norway, Denmark, Sweden … Sweden was a neutral country, and Swedish volunteers participated in SS divisions … There was no such piece of land … except for the Serbs … Only the Serbs did not fight against the Russians. Even Poles served in the German army: sixty-six thousand Poles who served in the German army were in POW camps in 1946 …
Only Serbs and Yugoslavian communists, Tito was a communist, and Greeks, by the way, too - these are two nations: Serbs and Greeks, who unconditionally fought with the Germans. Our brothers Serbs and our brothers Greeks lost a huge number of people in this war against Nazism … We remember who were the real allies who shed their blood on the battlefield in the most difficult - 1941 and 1942 … All the rest were against us. But our ancestors won.
And therefore, today, when we create works, we talk about them, I would like to avoid vulgarity and unnecessary metaphor.
From this point of view, unfortunately, I was very upset by the film by Nikita Sergeevich Mikhalkov. They expected something completely different from Mikhalkov. The truth about the war was expected from him. And, unfortunately, he created a film that is filled with metaphors - as he sees them.
… Yulia Latynina said on "Echo of Moscow" that on June 22, 1941, the entire Russian people turned into cowards, she raved about some kind of KV, which were fired at point-blank range by 150-mm German howitzers … she had never seen howitzers in her life, and does not know that they do not shoot at close range … Surrendering to the Germans, according to Latynina, the Russian people voted against Stalin. Hence the conclusion that when the forty thousandth British group in Crete surrendered to the five thousandth German landing force, the British voted against Churchill, apparently. This disgusting statement, a bandit, disgusting, Judaic statement by Latynina, just a jackal, she is like a hyena … it is strangely correlated with the metaphors that Mikhalkov also presented in this film.
But if you don't want to discuss Latynina at all, it is pointless: she is an enemy of Russia and an enemy of everything that is connected with Russia and its history. Mikhalkov, I do not think so. This is some kind of big mistake of the master, a big mistake. There can be no irony associated with 1941. There can be no stupid soldiers who dig trenches in an open field, equip breastworks with bed nets, crawl shoulder to shoulder, squeezing into the trenches, as if it were an 1812 trench, put guns in the same trenches, and not artillery positions and the Germans appear from behind, from the rear … and they are marching in formation … tanks … well, this is insanity! I’m just very bitter, this film made me very upset.”.
