Historical Revisionism Wiping Out Red Army's WWII Role – Italian Politician

MOSCOW, April 28 (Sputnik) — The fact that few Europeans are aware of the crucial role that the Red Army played in the fight against Nazism during World War II is the result of historical revisionism, Paolo Ferrero, the national secretary of Italy’s Communist Refoundation Party, told Sputnik on Tuesday.

According to an ICM Research poll conducted for Sputnik, only 13 percent of EU citizens think the Soviet Army played a crucial role in liberating Europe from Nazism.

“Unfortunately this is the result of decades of historical revisionism. A revisionism that in the West that has deliberately removed the great and crucial contribution of the Red Army and the Soviet people to the victory over fascism,” Ferrero said.

Ferrero added that the West wanted to remove the memory of the Soviet Union and of its achievements.

“The sacrifice of the Soviet people and the heroic resistance of Stalingrad were key factors in determining the defeat of the Nazi hordes,” Ferrero said.

WWII lasted from 1939 to 1945 and engulfed over 60 countries. Up to 70 million people are believed to have perished in the conflict. The Soviet Union, whose resistance to the Nazis reversed the course of the war, lost about 27 million people.

In 2009, during a ceremony commemorating the 65th anniversary of the allied troops landing in Normandy, US President Barack Obama highlighted the Soviet Union’s role in liberating Europe, stressing that the Soviet Union had sustained “some of the war’s heaviest casualties on the Eastern front.”