I see no reason why I should ever take any lecture on morality from Tory MP Bernard Jenkin, a man ordered to repay back £63,250 of expenses claimed for renting a second home from his sister in law. But today on BBC Radio 4 he was lecturing us all about how Russia has no right to celebrate Victory Day today 9th May.
This was partly about recent events in Ukraine, a nation that to this day continues to name streets and to erect statues to chaps who fought not against the Germans but with the Germans in World War Two. Jenkin’s real objection was that until 1941 Britain stood alone as the Soviets had a peace treaty with Germany and carved up Poland.
Defenders of Russia might say that just as Britain bought time to re-arm in 1938 under a bus at Munich, the Soviets did the same with the Polish carve up a year later. But that is really not the point. 27 million Russians died in the War. Victory Day is about remembering those who died at the hands of the Nazis.
Russia liberated the death camps, Russia liberated Berlin, toppling the Nazi regime. Without Russia, a Germany fighting on just one front would have held out for many years more than it did. Whatever one thinks of events in Ukraine today, to deny Russia the right to remember its dead, its sacrifice and its victory is just Russiaphobic. But that is the one sort of phobia the one sort of “othering” that is considered socially acceptable today among the political and media class.
Because of it, history is rewritten and the dead are not deemed worthy of being honoured by shits like Bernard Jenkin who I am told to regard as an honourable member.