STRASBOURG - The European Parliament last week passed a resolution praising the liberation of Eastern Europe from decades of totalitarian communism. The resolution collected 463 votes in favor, with 49 against and 33 members of the European Parliament abstaining.
"For some nations the end of World War II implied a renewal of the tyranny inflicted by the Stalinist Soviet Union," the 11-point resolution said. Thus the European Parliament "welcomes the fact that the Central and East European states and peoples can now also enjoy freedom and the right to decide about their destiny after so many decades under Soviet domination or occupation or other communist dictatorships."
Tunne Kelem, an Estonian member of the European People's Party faction, which supported the resolution, said after the vote that the resolution was an important step in the truthful assessment and understanding of Europe's common history. He said that the European Union's treatment of history was not yet fully balanced and victims of communist regimes still fell into a second category.
"It is our duty and obligation to appeal to Russia to give an assessment of its recent history, to acknowledge reoccupation and illegal annexation of the Baltic countries and to apologize for the wrong done to the Eastern and Central European nations," Kelam said.
Toomas Hendrik Ilves, deputy chairman of Parliament's external affairs committee, told the Baltic News Service that a rigorous debate with various interpretations of history ensued prior to adopting the final version of the document.
He said the aim of the resolution was not a political settling of accounts but to draw attention to and acknowledge Eastern Europe's suffering under Soviet hegemony. "An understanding of what the end of World War II brought for Eastern Europe is only taking shape in Western Europe," Ilves said.
"The final results quite accurately reflect a pan-European assessment of World War II," he added.
Meanwhile, a group of communist European Parliament members called the May 12 resolution recognition of the Baltic countries' policies of the persecution of antifascists. The statement, signed by 15 communists elected to the Parliament from the Czech Republic, Greece, Portugal, Italy and France, describe the resolution as an attempt to poison the minds of younger generations.
The resolution was also attacked by Latvia's Tatyana Zhdanok, who heads the left-wing For Human Rights in a United Latvia party in the Baltic country. In an interview to the Russian Regnum news agency, she said that if the resolution was passed, the Baltic countries could become a new Balkans.
