Vertige of time that does not pass… “The policy of the Kremlin has always been dominated by the fear of an anti-Soviet coalition and by the desire to prevent its formation. This fear often seems vain and artificial to us, especially today, but it is an element of the situation that must be taken into account. » Thus wrote The world May 28, 1945, less than three weeks after the end of World War II. The foreign bulletin, a traditionally unsigned article, is entitled: “What does the Kremlin want? The question, which was already tormenting people’s minds in the time of Joseph Stalin, is still valid in the time of Vladimir Putin.
The world ventures a theory: “Moscow wants both to make a new aggression against the borders of the USSR impossible and to restore the economy of a great country devastated by war and occupation. » The newspaper explains “the brutal and casual form” of Soviet policy towards its Polish neighbour, whose industrial apparatus Joseph Stalin was trying to confiscate for his own benefit (Moscow would then amputate part of Poland’s territory, eliminate the democrats and tip the whole country over into the Communist). It is a question, justifies the article, in these years when coal is everything, of replacing by the mines of Upper Silesia those of “Donbas destroyed” by war.
Where we are already talking about the geopolitical importance of Donbass… In these years of reconstruction of Europe and reconfiguration of borders and ideological blocs, the strategic interests of Joseph Stalin are embodied in this industrial lung of the USSR . And, as if history stood still, at least seen from the Kremlin, this region of Ukraine finds itself, more than three quarters of a century later, at the heart of Vladimir Putin’s news and appetites. The martyrdom of Mariupol, the images of this city leveled by Russian artillery and emptied of most of its population resonate with the abuses committed during the Second World War.
No offense to Solzhenitsyn
In an article of February 19, 1946, Jean Chardonnet evokes this destruction in the Donbass and beyond in the adjoining towns of Kharkov (Kharkiv today, in Ukrainian), Dniepropetrovsk (Dnipro) or Zaporozhye (Zaporijia). So many urban centers devastated by the fighting eighty years ago which plunge back into tragedy in 2022. So many names that again become territorial issues on a map that is trying to redraw in canon, in the 21stand century, Moscow. Jean Chardonnet said how little regard Stalin had already made of the lives of the inhabitants. “The reconstruction of mines and industrial installations seems to benefit from a clear priority over the reconstruction of the cities themselves”, he wrote.
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