Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-04-21-Speech-1-106"
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"en.20080421.15.1-106"2
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"Mr President, we Social Democrats have been persecuted by every totalitarian and authoritarian regime of the 20th century, whether by the Nazis or by the thugs of Stalin, Franco or Mussolini – the list is long. That is why we not only have no problem with but actually welcome a reappraisal of the crimes under Stalinism. We can only applaud it.
Yet this reappraisal should follow the rules of historical methodology and not be confused with the rules governing criminal court proceedings. We must guard against confusing these matters. It is not a question of counting up the victims or of a re-run of the Nuremberg Trials; this time we are trying an ideology rather than identified criminals.
There are, however, also points at which we must quite clearly say ‘no’ and we Social Democrats have identified a few of them. We say ‘no’ to the attempt to establish a new framework for interpreting European history, which emerged from the speeches made by some Members of this House at a conference held on 22 January this year. We are deeply opposed to the view that the extermination of European Jews by the Nazis came from a conception of history that was developed by the Soviet regime. We reject that view.
We reject it all the more firmly because in 2006 we found that another colleague from the same ideological spectrum sent a roundmail to all Members of this House in which he described the two Latvian Waffen-SS divisions as part of the German forces, thereby playing down their role. We reject that interpretation too, especially in connection with the first sentence. We also reject the assertion that the West did nothing to bring about change in what was then the Soviet-ruled part of Europe.
It was the CSCE in Helsinki that first gave the civil rights movements in those countries room to breathe, with the successful and happy result we see today as we welcome representatives from those countries to our House. These are points we insist on and will continue to pursue."@en1
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