Our joint victory! Russian Ambassador to New Zealand Andrey Tatarinov notes Russia's leading role and enormous sacrifice in the defeat of Nazism 65 years ago.

• Position: Speech

On 9 May 2010 the 65th anniversary of the victory in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-45 was celebrated in Russia. This is the date of the end of the European phase of the Second World War--the greatest tragedy for the nations of Europe and the world, no matter on which side their countries fought. Its consequences affected every family and every human life.

The war, in which 72 countries were involved, stretched from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean and took the lives of over 55 million people, 27 million of whom were citizens of the Soviet Union. In our country, 1710 cities, over 70,000 villages and 32,000 plants and factories were destroyed. In total, almost 35 million Soviet Army men participated in the military actions during the war.

The victory in the war with Nazism was won at a very great cost. The military allies, the oppressed nations of Europe and the German anti-fascists fought shoulder to shoulder with the Red Army.

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The Second World War was truly an epoch-making event. It was not only a global struggle that surpassed in its scale all previous military conflicts in the world's history. That struggle involved not merely a clash of the different interests of countries; it was a matter not so much of competing ideologies as polar, uncompromising approaches to the very foundations of the existence of the human race. For the first time in history, the stake in that battle was the preservation of life of whole nations. Gas chambers and crematoria of Oswiecim (Auschwitz), Buchenwald, Salaspils and other concentration death camps and the Holocaust tragedy showed what fascism implied and what sort of future the so-called 'new order' was preparing for the world. Those who today in some countries question both the significance of the victory and the role of the Soviet Union in it forget that without them these countries might not even be on the map.

As for the pre-war history of the war, we should not forget the policy of appeasement towards fascist Germany, which was used by Great Britain and France with the goal of directing Nazi aggression towards the east, against the Soviet Union. The Munich agreement of 1938 became the culmination of that policy. It was the Munich agreement which caused a division among the prospective allies in the war with Nazism, causing mutual mistrust and suspicion among them, which in fact snuffed out hope for establishing a united front in the fight with fascism.

Of course, we should not ignore the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact signed in August 1939. However, in the light of the historical events of the day, the Soviet Union not only was left face to face with Germany because the Western countries rejected the proposed system...