On May 21, BISR analysts Igor Valakhanovich and Valentin Starichenok took part in the International Conference "Countering External Challenges and Threats: Parliamentary Dimensions of the Union State", organized on behalf of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Union of Belarus and Russia.
After discussing the issues of preserving historical memory, the attempt to glorify Nazism and the revision of the results of the Great Patriotic War, the conference participants stated that the main directions of falsification of the history of the Great Patriotic War and the Second World War should include:
- alleging the equal responsibility of the USSR and Germany for the outbreak of the Second World War;
- downgrading the decisive role of the Soviet Union in the defeat of Nazi Germany;
- denying the Red Army's liberation mission;
- glorifying collaborationist forces from among the nationalists and justifying their activities.
The conference participants pointed out the need to pay more attention to improving the legal support for the implementation of the state historical policy to counteract the glorification of Nazism, the need to clarify the unreliability of the popularized myths about the Great Patriotic War, to actively conduct patriotic education of the younger generation and to consolidate the scientific communities of Belarus and Russia in order to form a high patriotic consciousness among the citizens of fraternal countries on the basis of the common historical values of the peoples.
