All war’s victims should be honoured

Re: “Montreal marks Hiroshima bombing” ( Montreal Gazette, Aug. 6)

The ceremony at the Botanical Garden of Montreal, in memory of some of the victims of the Second World War, was most dignified and touching. Japan was guilty of starting what became the Asian theatre of that war, but the victims of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were mostly non- combatant civilians — children, women, and elderly people. Such is the “collateral damage” of wars — innocent victims of whichever of the warring states they belong to.

As I listened to the ringing of the peace bell, and then the allocutions against war by our Mayor and the Japanese diplomat, I realized how inappropriate it would be to accede to the project brought before the borough council of the Côte- des-Neiges– Notre-Dame- de-Grâce to raise a monument in that borough to the Soviet soldiers of the Second World War. The Soviet Red Army was an instrument of aggressive wars and not an agent of peace.

From 1939 to 1941, Stalin was an ally of Hitler, and in line with the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, the two imperialist powers began invading and dividing Europe between Nazi Germany and the U. S. S. R. First came the dismantling of the Polish state. Then Moscow seized Moldova and the Baltic States and attacked Finland. By the end of the war, the Red Army had invaded most of Eastern Europe and imposed communist rule on the new Soviet satellites.

Instead of a monument honouring the instrument of Stalin’s imperialism, an appropriate gesture would be to raise a memorial to all the victims of the Second World War. Roman Serbyn, professor of history ( retired), Université du Québec à Montréal