Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov
signs the German–Soviet Treaty of Friendship
in Moscow, September 28, 1939; behind him
are Richard Schulze-Kossens (Ribbentrop’s ad-
jutant), Boris Shaposhnikov (Generalstabschef
der Roten Armee), Joachim von Ribbentrop,
Joseph Stalin, Vladimir Pavlov (Soviet trans-
lator). Alexey Shkvarzev (Soviet ambassador
in Berlin), stands next to Molotov | National
Archives & Records Administration, nara.gov,
via Wikimedia Commons
2
Two competing visions of communism
During the numerous historical debates held at the PACE and in
the EP after their respective enlargements to the East, two divergent
ways of assessing communism and its comparability with Nazism were
defended by representatives with distinct biographical characteristics
and ideological references.
The first interpretation underlined the singularity of the Holocaust
and historicised the analysis of communism. It distinguished several
phases in the history of the socialist regimes, characterised by varying
degrees of violence and different ways of enacting Marxist ideology. This
was the line of argument of a group of representatives of the Left and
the far Left from the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats
and the European United Left groups, which rejected any similarity
between fascism and Nazism on the one hand and communism on the
other. This was also the prevailing discourse in the Russian delegation
at the PACE, which defended a heroic vision of the ‘Great Patriotic
War’ and of victory over Nazism, as well as among the communist
representatives from southern European countries marked by recent
dictatorships such as Portugal and Greece.
A second vision characterised communism by what was seen as
its essence: namely, violence. It was considered an ahistorical project
of great brutality, comparable with other outbursts of mass violence,
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Observing Memories
ISSUE 3