‘Dialogue Works’ edition of 30 January: Collective Amnesia in the West

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Some subscribers to my website occasionally write in to say they are so pleased to find that a day after I post each video interview here I also put up a written transcript, because they prefer to read the argumentation rather than to watch the original audio visual version.  Others say the opposite.

What you will find in the lengthy conversation today with host Nima Alkhorshid is my oral presentation of the material in my last two essays. The first dealt with the commemorations in Auschwitz and Petersburg last Friday pertaining to the liberation of prisoners at the infamous Nazi death camp by Red Army forces 80 years ago and the breaking of the Leningrad Blockade 81 years ago.  The second dealt with the upcoming celebration in Russia of the Yalta Conference between Churchill, Stalin and Roosevelt that established the spheres of influence and control in Europe by the respective Allies at the war’s end and also the areas to be taken over by the USSR in the Far East in compensation for its joining the war against Imperial Japan.

The time on air also gave me the opportunity to talk about what skeletons the Russians have been removing from their closets (archives) to air on television as relations with all of Europe have gone from bad to worse in the course of the Special Military Operation.

Translation below into German (Andreas Mylaeus)

„Dialogue Works“-Ausgabe vom 30. Januar: Kollektive Amnesie im Westen

Einige Abonnenten meiner Website schreiben mir gelegentlich, dass sie sehr erfreut sind, dass ich einen Tag nach der Veröffentlichung jedes Videointerviews hier auch eine schriftliche Abschrift veröffentliche, da sie es vorziehen, die Argumentation zu lesen, anstatt sich die ursprüngliche audiovisuelle Version anzusehen. Andere sagen das Gegenteil.

Was Sie in dem heutigen langen Gespräch mit Gastgeber Nima Alkhorshid finden werden, ist meine mündliche Präsentation des Materials aus meinen letzten beiden Essays. Der erste befasste sich mit den Gedenkfeiern in Auschwitz und Petersburg am vergangenen Freitag anlässlich der Befreiung der Gefangenen im berüchtigten Todeslager der Nazis durch die Rote Armee vor 80 Jahren und der Beendigung der Leningrader Blockade vor 81 Jahren. Das zweite Thema war die bevorstehende Feier in Russland anlässlich der Konferenz von Jalta zwischen Churchill, Stalin und Roosevelt, auf der die Einfluss- und Kontrollbereiche in Europa durch die jeweiligen Alliierten bei Kriegsende festgelegt wurden, sowie die Gebiete im Fernen Osten, die von der UdSSR als Ausgleich für ihren Kriegseintritt gegen das kaiserliche Japan übernommen werden sollten.

Die Sendezeit gab mir auch die Gelegenheit, darüber zu sprechen, welche Leichen die Russen aus ihren Archiven geholt haben, um sie im Fernsehen zu präsentieren, da sich die Beziehungen zu ganz Europa im Verlauf der militärischen Spezialoperation immer weiter verschlechtert haben.

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Published by gilbertdoctorow

Gilbert Doctorow's latest book, "War Diaries. The Russia-Ukraine War, 2022-2023" is a unique contribution to literature on the war thanks to the author's reports on the Russian home front written during his periodic visits to St Petersburg at a time when Russia no longer issued visas and nearly all Western journalists had left the country. Doctorow's two-volume "Memoirs of a Russianist" published in 2020 also constitutes a category of its own, consisting largely of diary entries rather than reminiscences written decades later.. Volume 2 focuses on the community of 50,000 expatriate managers working and living in Moscow during the 1990s, about which none of his peers has yet to write. Gilbert Doctorow is a professional Russia watcher and actor in Russian affairs going back to 1965. He is a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College (1967), a past Fulbright scholar, and holder of a Ph.D. with honors in history from Columbia University (1975). After completing his studies, Mr. Doctorow pursued a business career focused on the USSR and Eastern Europe. For twenty-five years he worked for US and European multinationals in marketing and general management with regional responsibility. From 1998-2002, Doctorow served as the Chairman of the Russian Booker Literary Prize in Moscow. During the 2010-2011 academic year, he was a Visiting scholar of the Harriman Institute, Columbia University. Mr. Doctorow is a long-time resident of Brussels.

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