Aleksandr Kuzmin committed suicide, August 23, 2021, at the age of 37. Our deepest and heartfelt sympathies to family, friends, and all impacted by his sudden and tragic loss.
We have experienced more than one suicide among friends. Globally, a million people a year die of suicide. If despair overwhelms you, please seek help. You are not alone.
Lev Golinkin expressly thanked "Defending History contributor Aleksandr Kuzmin for making him aware of monuments to Nazi collaborators in Latvia. Accordingly, we have expanded our review of Golinkin's contentions to include a review of Kuzmin's articles and contentions about the Latvian Legion/Latvian Waffen-SS.
Aleksandr Kuzmin was the executive secretary of the Latvian Human Rights Committee (FIDH) and a member of the Latvian Russian Union. He held two Masters Degrees in Law. He was noted for his victory in Petrova vs. Latvia before the European Court of Human Rights. Per defendinghistory.com
The Latvian Human Rights Committee's activities are funded by the Foundation to Support and Protect the Rights of Compatriots Living Abroad, in turn funded by the Kremlin and private donations, with an annual budget of approximately €9 million, and run by Unit 54777 of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation (GRU). Follow the money.
The Latvian Russian Union (Latvian: Latvijas Krievu savienība, LKS) is a political party in Latvia supported mainly by ethnic Russians and other Russian-speaking minorities. The co-chairpersons of the Latvian Russian Union are Miroslav Mitrofanov and Tatyana Ždanoka. Mitrofanov was an opponent of the Popular Front, while Ždanoka was one of the leaders during 1988-1989 of Interfront, a political organization opposing Latvia's independence from the USSR.
In the case of PETROVA v. LATVIA, Riga’s First Hospital, a municipal hospital, hence Latvian authorities, was sued for performing an organ transplant without prior authorization to use a deceased, Svetlana Petrova's son Oļegs, as organ donor.
Headings link to Kuzmin's articles at defendinghistory.com.
Will the EU, the OSCE and the Council of Europe Ask Latvia to Revoke the 1998 Declaration? (2016)
1998 marked the year the Latvian parliament passed a declaration recognizing the status of the Latvian Legion as having fought for the independence of Latvia.
the Latvian Legion "were Nazi collaborators, voluntary or not"
Kuzmin exercises willful ignorance of all circumstances surrounding the origin and activities of the Latvian Legion.
The declaration is also, to say the least, one-sided in citing some obscure Cold War officials claiming that “Baltic Waffen-SS Units (Baltic Legions) are to be considered as separate and distinct in purpose, ideology, activities, and qualifications for membership from the German SS”. The text omits that the Nuremberg Tribunal has only distinguished the SS riding [Cavalry] units from the whole organisation, explicitly recognized to be criminal.
The "obscure Cold War officials" who rendered their finding in 1950 after a thorough inquiry into the actions of the Latvian Legion were U.S. Displaced Persons Commission. Kuzmin cherry-picks what he likes (criminal) versus what he doesn't (not the German SS).
[Quoting from the English translation of the declaration] “Some Latvian citizens did join the Latvian Legion voluntarily; however, they did so because in 1940–1941 the USSR committed genocide in Latvia. Hundreds of people were shot without trial; tens of thousands of people were deported to distant regions of the USSR. During this time, Germany also committed war crimes and genocide in Latvia, but they had a smaller impact on Latvian citizens.”
Kuzmin indicates being disturbed that the concluding phrase suggesting Jews were not Latvian citizens.
Stalin's mass deportations impacted far more ethnic Latvians than any other group, while also deporting more Jews as a percentage of all Jews in Latvia. The Nazis Germans killed tens of thousands of ethnic Latvians while with the assistance of collaborators exterminated most of Latvia's Jewry, some 75,000 to 80,000. (Germans killed 25,000 Jews in Rumbula over the course of only two days.) Excluding Latvians who later died at the Eastern Front, the Nazi occupation did impact ethnic Latvians less than Latvia's Jewry.
It would also be a betrayal of Latvia's pre-war multi-ethnic past to in any way imply Jews were not also Latvian citizens, which is how Kuzmin interprets the wording. However, Latvians do not add "ethnic" to qualify ethnic origin: "nation" as a "people" or as a "state" are based on context. "Citizens of Latvia" and "citizens of Latvian ethnicity" are equally valid translations of the original Latvian. Unpacking the statement:
- those who voluntarily joined the Latvian Legion (or, for that matter, earlier battalions on the Eastern Front) did so in retribution for a year of murderous Soviet occupation (1940-41) which culminated in mass deporations across the Baltic states; they did not join to participate in the Holocaust;
- the Nazis (second war-time occupation of Latvia) committed war crimes and genocide (1941, Holocaust in Latvia);
- Nazi occupation was kinder to ethnic Latvians than it was to Jews — who suffered the Holocaust.
We would note Nazis and Soviets together pressed more than 200,000 Latvians into their militaries; estimates are that 100-150,000 Latvians died fighing "in" the Nazi and Soviet militaries, not "for", not "allied in common purpose." With regard to Latvia's citizenry, WWII claimed more Latvians than Jews; however, we attach no significance to such numbers. Nor do we equate dying on the Eastern Front in hopes of preserving Latvian independence (or conscripted into the "Great Patriotic War") with death in Hitler's industrialized genocide. In our experience, "whose victimhood is the greater" invariably ends in polarization and recrimination, never in dialog and reconciliation.
Latvian Court Rules Against a Protester Who Turned Out Against the Annual Waffen SS March (2017)
Kuzmin fulminates over the treatment of Eduards Gončarovs and Aleksejs Šaripovs, members of the Latvian Anti-Nazi Committee, protesters at the 2017 commemoration. Šaripovs was let off with a warning, the Gončarovs case was still pending.
However, something went differently this year. Eduards Gončarovs and Aleksejs Šaripovs, members of the Latvian Anti-Nazi Committee, had gone to the route of the march with a placard depicting civilians being killed by Nazis and their local collaborators in Latvia in 1941. It should be noted that while the Latvian Legion as a single unit was created later, it was based in part on collaborators’ units formed in 1941.
Kuzmin's statement of the creation of the Legion is false as his implication is the Legion was formed from units which collaborated in the Holocaust in 1941 — although it does not appear to matter to Kuzmin whether "collaboration" means participating in the Holocaust or simply wearing a German uniform while pursuing a parallel goal of preventing Soviet re-occupation of Latvia. The Legion was formed from combat units already at the front. Once the Holocaust had run its gruesome course in Latvia, the Nazis redeployed collaborators west and south to today's Belarus and beyond.
The crux of the matter, aside from allegedly not picketing where permitted, was the placard carried purportedly depicting the killing of Latvian Jews in 1941. The court ruled its purpose could be to incite violence and smear the reputation of the Latvian state. We would concur, given Kuzmin indicates Eduards Gončarovs and Aleksejs Šaripovs are both members of "Latvia Without Nazism", a Kremlin-funded agitator group masquerading as anti-fascists. For example, Russia provided €25,000 to fund their anti-commemoration activities in 2015.1 (See Wikipedia for more information on the parent organization, World Without Nazism.) The image and Kuzmin's caption follow:
Rather than portraying Latvian Holocaust war criminals in action, this is a tightly cropped photograph of a German Wehrmacht commando unit executing Russians in 1943, indicating the purpose of the placard and protest was propaganda, not any truth regarding the Holocaust in Latvia or the Latvian Legion.
The Council of Europe had already invited Latvian authorities to “condemn all attempts to commemorate persons who fought in the Waffen SS and collaborated with the Nazis.”
The CoE's invitation denies history. There was no controversy regarding the Latvian Legion annual commemoration for decades — until Russia began its "glorification of Nazis" campaign to generate international outrage.
Will Latvia’s New Cabinet Share European Values When it Comes to Condemnation of Fascism? (2018)
However, those are anti-Fascists nonviolently opposing of the marches, who get punished by Latvian courts and stigmatized by the Security Police as “so-called ‘anti-fascists’ [...] trying to organize provocative demonstrations”, all this in the last year alone.
Kuzmin accords legitimacy to Kremlin-funded provocateurs and propagandists who are members of Latvia Without Nazism. But to merely indict Kuzmin would fail to acknowledge the Kremlin's successes. Indeed, even then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sent a letter to parent World Without Nazism at its inaugural June 2010 conference, lauding it for its commitment battling neo-Nazism.
Latvian Defense Minister Glorifies Country’s Wartime Waffen-SS (2019)
On September 27, Latvia’s minister of defense Dr. Artis Pabriks delivered a speech in More parish commemorating the More battle of September 1944. He chose to say that “Latvian legionnaires are a pride of the Latvian nation and of the state” (Latvijas leģionāri ir latviešu tautas un valsts lepnums) and called them “heroes” (varoņi). The Waffen SS Latvian Legion was a collaborationist Nazi-organized unit, partly volunteer, partly conscripted. Its members swore an oath to Adolf Hitler.
Even those who acknowledge the possibility that the Latvian Legion served on the Eastern Front as combat units under the Wehrmacht and fought only to prevent Soviet re-occupation contend none of that matters because they "swore an oath to Hitler." That oath:
In the name of God I solemnly swear, in the fight against Bolshevism, to unconditionally follow the orders of the head of the German military force, Adolf Hitler, and as a brave soldier to be always prepared to lay down my life in execution of this oath.
If someone is forcibly conscripted, their oath is offered under duress and meaningless. If someone volunteers and swears an oath in order to obtain a rifle to fight the power that murdered and ripped friends and family away to Siberia, it is meaningless. If the oath is given at the point of a gun, it is meaningless. In none of these cases can the individual be held to their "swearing" as an expression of loyalty to Hitler, to the Nazi vision, to the murder of Jews.
There was such outrage over the actual Waffen-SS oath that the Latvians were given their own whereby Latvian units only committed to follow Wehrmacht orders fighting on the Eastern Front. There was no commitment of loyalty to Hitler the person or his cause. German officers complained that Latvians could only be counted on in defending their homeland.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center’s director of East European affairs, Dr. Efraim Zuroff commented: “Given the fact that the Legion fought for a victory of the Third Reich, the most genocidal regime in history, and that among those serving in it were active participants in the mass murder of Latvian Jewry, as well as of German and Austrian Jews deported by the Nazis to Riga, such comments are incomprehensible, let alone deeply offensive, coming from a senior minister of a country with full membership in the European Union and NATO.”
Zuroff attested on television, in 2012, that the Latvian Legion had no involvement in the Holocaust.
The malevolent falsehood, however, is Zuroff's contention the Legion fought for Nazi victory. Latvians fought in WWII just as they had fought a generation before after WWI: use the Germans to expel the Russians, then expel the Germans. This hope to repeat the past and restore independence was enshrined in Latvian Legion song. History had already demonstrated, in plain sight, what Latvians fought for: Latvia. Latvians fought "for" neither German nor Soviet victory.
All Hitler and Stalin had to do was leave the Latvians alone. Instead, when the Red Army ran up against Germans and Latvians in the Courland Pocket, instead of bypassing them on the way to Berlin, Stalin threw in division after division to their slaughter: 390,000 dead, wounded, missing; more than 2,000 tanks destroyed.
Even as they held out in Courland to the very end of the war, little did the Legionnaires know that Roosevelt had already communicated to Stalin in February 1943 that the Baltic states and Finland were his for the taking. That Baltic deal was sealed at the Tehran Conference, as recorded in Foreign Relations of the United States, The Conferences of Cairo and Teheran, 1943, pp. 594-6.
Marshal Stalin replied that now the President explained, he had understood. The President went on to say that there were a number of persons of Lithuanian, Latvian and Estonian origin, in that order, in the United States. He said that he fully realized the three Baltic Republics had in history and again more recently been part of Russia and jokingly added, that when the Soviet armies re-occupied these areas, he did not intend to go to war with the Soviet Union on this point.
In fact, Roosevelt comitted the U.S. to making no policy declarations whatsoever regarding: Rumania, Bulgaria, Bukovina, Eastern Poland, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia and Finland.
Churchill agreed to recognize the bogus elections which led to the USSR annexing the Baltic states as legitimate so Stalin's annexation of the Baltic states would not violate the Atlantic Charter — the multi-national agreement which eventually led to the founding of the United Nations on the ashes of Baltic independence.
The only wartime act by Latvia's legitimate sovereign authority in exile was to dedicate the Latvian merchant marine to the Allied cause, where it served with distinction.
Every blaming of the Latvian Legion for crimes they didn't commit, every accusation of allegiances they did not hold, reveals a truth about the Western Allies' WWII betrayal of Baltic sovereignty. But Zuroff denies the very possibility. Indeed, he has explicitly stated that the only moral path for Latvians in WWII was to welcome back Soviet subjugation with open arms. After all, as Roosevelt told Archbishop Spellman in 1943: "The European people will simply have to endure Russian domination, in the hope that in ten or twenty years they will be able to live well with the Russians."
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