After watching the Russian film "Leningrad" last night, my thoughts were drawn to a whole kaleidoscope of recent historical events. The postscript of the film itself states that the siege of Leningrad caused the deaths of 1.5 million people.
This led me first to revisit my long-held view that Russia had never received an adequate expression of gratitude from the western allies for its defining role in defeating Hitler. I know that this has come to pass firstly due to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and then to post-war subjugation of eastern Europe and the subsequent Cold War. As a child of that war myself, I became aware of the atrocities perpetrated by Stalin, not least in the Ukraine. We were subsequently to learn from Kruschev's speech and works like The Gulag Archipeligo how much more horrific, perhaps more even than Hitler's, were the crimes of the Russian Communist Party.
If you let your mind wander back over these events, you can't then help but drift off to think about the crimes of Chairman Mao, the extent of which we will probably never know, or those of the lesser barbarians of the second half of the 20th century.
Or if you wanted to wallow even further in the miseries of man's inhumanity to man, which I didn't last night, but feel obliged to touch on now, one could travel through an absolute maze of history: what about the Thirty Years War, the total casualties of which I recall some historian recount not that long ago; or the untold slaughter of Genghis Kahn and his successors - nobody will ever know the extent of that.
There is just so much of it isn't there. There's not enough compassion to go around or sufficient self-flagellation by those of that inclination to wash away the sins of a miniscule amount of it.
But what we can say, I think without dispute, is that it is not at the feet of the common man that all this 'orrible 'istory should be laid. There are still many prepared to believe that a majority of Germans knew and bear the guilt of the Nazi atrocities, on the battlefield and in the hidden-away camps. Why didn't you speak up, they might say to their grandparents. Easy to say, much harder to contemplate doing.
The vast majority of Russians or Chinese, even those who were nominally members of the communist party, had little knowledge and even less approval for what may have been done "for the party and the country". That's not to say all these people are intrinsically good people. They just didn't have control of what was done.
Because, whether we like it or not, a large proportion of every population are not intrinsically good, in my opinion. They bear grudges, they are infected with envy and jealousy, they are greedy and covet what other people have. It is as well to recognise the inbuilt system failures of the human machine for then you can hopefully accept, without being subject to damaging, revengeful thoughts, the deeds arising from the human condition.
I like to remember, because it is a source of hope when the spirit is low, the speech made by our former Prime Minister, the RT Hon Robert Hawke, on one of those occasions of overwhelming despondency:
SPEECH BY THE PRIME MINISTER
MEMORIAL CEREMONY FOR THOSE KILLED IN CHINA
CANBERRA 9 JUNE 1989
For more than a month now, the eyes of the world have been
on China.
We witnessed a massive rallying of people in Beijing and
Shanghai and heard the powerful expression of their will in
the cause of democratic reform.
We were inspired by the idealism and courage of youth the
peaceful determination of students to create a better
future, and the support that rallied around their cause from
throughout Chinese society.
our spirits were buoyed by the optimism of their vision and,
no matter how far we were from the events in Tian'anmen
Square, our hearts were with them.
Then last weekend, our optimism was shattered as we watched
in horror the unyielding forces of repression brutally
killing the vision of youth.
Unarmed young men and women were sprayed with bullets and
crushed by tanks. Innocent people were shot and beaten in
the streets and in their homes.
Incredibly despite the horror and the risks, we have
witnessed acts of indescribable bravery on our television
screens:
A lone man standing in front of a row of tanks, the
strength of his will stalling the might of armour as it
rolled down a Beijing street.
Young people confronting lines of armed troops, not in
anger, but in disbelief that an army could unleash force
on its own people with such cruelty.
Thousands have been killed and injured, victims of a
leadership that seems determined to hang on to the reins of
power at any cost, at awful human cost.
We meet here to mourn this tragedy and to share the grief of
those who have lost members of their families, their loved
ones and their friends, and to express our profound symathy
to the Chinese-Australian community that has expressed ts
outrage at the massacre in Beijing.
We meet here to show our support for the Chinese people and
to reaffirm our commitment to the ideals of democracy and
freedom of expression that they have so eloquently espoused.
And we meet here reflecting on the very future of China,
which in recent years had built up so much goodwill in the
international community of nations, which had already come
to play such a welcome and constructive role in our region,
and which promised to do so much more.
It is my sincere hope and, indeed, my resolute conviction,
that the values and aspirations of those who have been so
brutally repressed over the past week will eventually
triumph, that the death and suffering will not have been in
vain$ that the path of reform and mode rnisation will be
renewed.
We all pray that moderation will eventually prevail, so that
a new and better China can rise from this carnage, a China
that befits the courage and determination of its people.
I call on the Chinese Government to withdraw its troops from
deployment against unarmed civilians, and to respect the
will of its people.
To crush the spirit and body of youth is to crush the very
future of China itself.
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