The question every year is whose victory? For Eastern European countries, the decisions made at Yalta in February of 1945 were a complete sellout as they found themselves relegated to the Soviet sphere of influence. After a long, bloody war stretching over 6 years (4 in terms of American involvement), Team Roosevelt decided it was better to divide Europe than challenge Team Stalin, as he had moved his armies into Eastern Europe to "liberate" them from Nazi Germany. There might have been room for some drawback but according to Oliver Stone, Truman went out of his way to antagonize Stalin and so the Soviet Union doubled down on its territorial claims. Lost in Stone's version of events is that "Russia" had long sought a Pan-Slavic kingdom and this was a golden opportunity for the Soviet version of Russia to claim it. And, so they did.
Still some wiggle room remained. The iron curtain didn't fall on the eastern half of Europe until 1955 when the Warsaw Pact was ratified. Here again, Oliver Stone will tell you this was in response to the formation of NATO in 1949. If so, it was kind of strange that this "Treaty of Friendship" was established well into Eisenhower's first term of office. The Warsaw Pact was never more than an act to make it appear that the surviving countries of Eastern Europe had a small degree of autonomy. Such was not the case for Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Moldova, Ukraine and Belarus, which were all reoccupied by the Soviet Union after the war and made into Soviet States, directly under the control of Moscow. Throughout the Cold War, Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and Albania, were all answerable to Moscow. The only Eastern European country that maintained open ties with the West was Yugoslavia under Tito, who chose not to be part of the Warsaw Pact.
For more than 40 years these countries suffered under Soviet rule. They had to endure ever-shrinking economies to the point there was nothing left on the shelves by the 1980s as the Soviet Union began to crumble under its own weight. It's kind of odd looking back at these events, as the Soviet Union was a huge sprawling country with over 8 million square miles stretching over 11 time zones. Add in its satellite countries and Moscow controlled the largest land mass ever with a population well over 300 million. How it was unable to sustain itself economically with all the resources it had its disposal is a real mystery?
Meanwhile, Western Europe prospered. It was rough at first, taking a full ten years before these countries could pull themselves together after the war. They formed trade agreements that allowed for the free flow of goods between them, created a social security net that protected those with the lowest incomes, improved health, education and welfare, making it free for all. In many ways, it mirrored the "social revolution" taking place in the Soviet Union with the notable exception that there was no iron-handed policy. No dictates handed down from Moscow. No quotas to meet. Western European countries created a free market where anyone could profit (and also lose) with sustainable currencies. Back in the USSR, everything was rigidly controlled by a central authority.
You would think after going through this once, Russia would avoid making the same mistake again. Yet here we are 34 years after the fall of the iron curtain and Moscow is once again the same autocratic capital trying to manage its economy from the top down and suffering the same economic hardships. Despite its vast resources, the Russian GDP per capita is a woeful 14,000 USD. The only former Warsaw Pact country with a lower GDP per capita is Albania.
Yet, here was Vladimir Putin putting on the biggest show ever for Victory Day 2025. Even Donald Trump smirked, he's "too busy celebrating the Victory of World War II" than agree to a ceasefire in Ukraine. Among Putin's honored guests was Oliver Stone himself. I'm not sure what the appeal is in Russia, but Stone still crows over Putin as a great leader long after he devoted a four-part documentary to him back in 2017. His Untold History of the United States was hard enough to swallow so I made no effort to watch this bit of hagiography.
There is certainly plenty of room for criticism in American foreign policy following WWII, but Stone opted for a decidedly one-sided version of events that favored the Soviet Union. In his mind, Stalin and subsequent Soviet leaders were forced to respond to the aggressive actions by one American administration after another, as if poor Moscow just wanted to be left alone. Yet, it was the Soviet Union that actively fomented civil wars in Central and South America and tried to control the Korean peninsula and Southeast Asia resulting in proxy wars with the United States. Of course, all this was in the cause of international socialism, which many progressive leaders idolized. However, the end result of almost all these "social revolutions" was autocracy. Very few of these "liberated" countries had what we would consider a democratic form of government. However, that didn't deter Stone from preaching his message on Showtime.
While his message fell mostly on deaf ears, he still enjoys a certain amount of notoriety, enough that someone spotted him in the grandstands of Putin's Victory Day parade, grinning ear to ear. I would like to ask Ollie, whose victory is it?
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