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Victory Day in Kazakhstan is a holiday that is celebrated at the highest level, which means its great significance for Kazakhstan. Despite the fact that our country for over two decades has gone through its sovereign development, we, unlike some of the other nations of the former Soviet Union, did not think it possible to give up the memory of the war, to review its results and value.
"We have been, are and will be united with all the people in the preservation of the truth about our common victory, which got to us at the cost of untold suffering, sacrifice, and hardship," said the President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev meeting with veterans of the Great Patriotic War in 2010, the year on the eve of the 65th anniversary of the Victory.
Then the Head of State noted that it is very important to keep the historical truth of the Great Victory, because now there are so-called alternative histories of the last war, distorted facts and events that artificially soften deadly danger of fascism and its ideologues, including the modern ones.
The historical truth is that World War II was the largest and most difficult war in human history. It was attended by 61 countries with a population of 1.7 billion people, the war killed more than 50 million people. And the brunt of the war occurred in the Soviet Union. It is no accident that war was called the Great Patriotic War, the Soviet people rallied in the face of threats of enslavement and destruction. And the victory was made possible thanks to the heroism and courage of the soldiers and officers of the Soviet Army, the unparalleled feat of labor workers in the rear, the art of war of the Soviet generals. Of course, the victory of the Soviet Union in no small measure contributed to the logistical and military aid to allies, most notably the U.S. and the UK. But other countries have provided all possible assistance to the Soviet people, who were fighting with a strong and cruel enemy. Thus, the Mongolian People's Republic during the war has put in about half a million horses, including about 100000 were free of charge.
It should be noted that, even at the stage of planning the attack on the Soviet Union, the leaders of the Third Reich, as the Germans called their state at the time, were hoping to use the inter-ethnic conflicts between the peoples of the USSR. Hitler and his strategists had hoped that once the war started the people of the border regions of the USSR, in tsarist times subjected to colonial oppression, would surely stand up against the Soviet government, and it would help the Germans easily defeat the Soviet Union. However, the Nazis also believed that among so many disgruntled the Russian Soviet power, that in difficult times, it would have no popular support. In both cases the Nazi strategists were wrong, they were able to use only a certain part of the Soviet prisoners of war in special units that have not played a significant role in military operations. Special forces tried to be created from the representatives of the oppressed, in the opinion of the Nazis, the Soviet peoples. One of these units was the Turkestan Legion, which recruited, among other representatives of the Turkic peoples of the USSR, the Kazakh captives. But this does not justify the hopes of the legion of the Germans - they were not able to inspire with Legionnaires ideas to rule the world, imbued with the spirit of racism. The Turks, like the Slavs, and many other nations, were, for the classification of the Nazi anthropologists, «untermenschen» or «subhuman", which should annihilate, releasing the "living space" for the "true Aryans". It is no accident in Poland - its neighboring countries of Germany - general human losses as a percentage of the population were even higher than in the USSR and Germany. This is stated in the work of the German historian Helmut Arntsta titled "Casualties of World War II."
"In general, the amount of loss of German and Russian (in the broad sense) people is about 10% of the total population of Germany and Russia. Even greater overall losses were among: Poland - 5.9 million people and Yugoslavia - 2 million (in 1938 the populations of these countries were, respectively, 34.8 and 15 million 490 thousand people), " says the historian.
The same author notes that civilian casualties in World War II, compared with the First World War, has increased manifold. This points to particularly brutal methods of warfare, resulting in numerous casualties among civilians, as well as the consequence of policies pursued by aggressive states in the occupied territories.
It may be added that the hostilities between the Soviet Union and Germany during the Second World War were the most fierce, and their loss was much higher than, for example, the U.S. and the UK, on the one hand, Italy, Finland and Romania on another side. The reason why so high, relative to population losses that in Poland, was the fact that the neighboring Polish lands were the most attractive for settlement by the Germans. Therefore, despite the fact that Poland had not been able to provide a sufficiently strong German resistance - both open and partisan - reprisals against the Poles were not only cruel, but frankly destructive.
In the empire of the Nazis there was no, and could be no question of the equality of peoples - the idea that made the Soviet Union invincible. It is because of this idea our grandfathers and great-grandfathers fought so hard, shoulder-to-shoulder with the other peoples of the USSR, against Nazi aggression, and came to Berlin, and our countryman Rakhymzhan Koshkarbaev one of the first hoisted the red flag on the dome of the Reichstag.
The price of victory was huge: on the battlefield, in the concentration camps in the occupied territories there were killed, according to various estimates, up to 30 million Soviet people. Destroyed was the third of the national wealth of the USSR. Destroyed were 1,710 cities, more than 70,000 villages and hamlets, a lot of factories, plants, mines, many miles of railroad tracks. In agriculture there was a reduction of acreage. The proportion of the male population of the country lowered. Of men born in 1923 in the Soviet Union by the end of the war there left alive only 3 percent, which affected the demographic situation for many years.
Kazakhstan incurred large losses: to the military front went 1.3 million people, despite the fact that the entire population was only 6.2 million people. In addition, about 700,000 people were sent to the so-called "labor army" created to help the troops, mainly in construction work. As a result, the level of mobilization in Kazakhstan exceeded 24 percent, while in Germany, an aggressor country, it was 12 percent. From the front did not return more than 600 thousand of Kazakhs.
At the same time contribution of Kazakhstan to the Great Victory.was huge. During the war, the republic has become a powerful military camp and formed the best parts and connections of the Soviet Army. During the war, the territory of Kazakhstan formed and sent to the front 12 infantry divisions, 4 national cavalry divisions, seven brigades, including two national shooting teams. In addition, there were formed about 50 regiments and battalions of the different types of troops. There was formed in Kazakhstan a Division, commanded by General Panfilov at the beginning and at the end of the war by our countryman, Hero of the Soviet Union Baurjan Momyshuly, who was awarded the title of the 8th Guards. Around 500 Kazakh soldiers were awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, including two females - Alia Moldagulova and Manshuk Mametova. More than a hundred of Kazakhs became full Commanders of the Order of Glory. Twice Heroes of the Soviet Union became Talgat Bigeldinov, Sergey Lugansky, Leonid Beda, and Ivan Pavlov.
In addition, Kazakhstan during the war was the arsenal of the front. It made one-third of the necessary copper for the defense industry. Four of the five bullets fired at the enemy were cast from the Kazakh lead. Kazakhstan produced 60 percent of molybdenum, 65 percent of the metal bismuth, 79 percent of polymetallic ores of the Union. Kazakhstan supplied coal and oil for the war, and a huge amount of food. All that also was not easy, because most adult men went to war. Ensuring the front with food and raw materials laid down almost on the women, children and the elderly. During the war the famous "steppe academics" - rice farmers Ibrahim Zhakaev and Shiganak Berciev, who under normal conditions using traditional methods of agronomy, increased grain yield by several dozen times. Cattle breeders of the republic had taken hundreds of thousands of cattle from the Ukraine and the Russian Federation had been able to feed them and return to their owners without loss.
Of course, the standard of living had fallen sharply, people did not have the basic necessities. However, people found a way to help those who were in the front, people sent food and warm clothes to the front. The Defense Fund listed more than 4 million rubles.
History of the Great Patriotic War was widely publicized in the Soviet times in numerous books, films, periodicals. But after the collapse of the Soviet Union, there was a tendency showing the war, as well as the history of the USSR as a whole, in black - with a focus on the shortcomings and negative aspects. In some Russian films of recent years the Soviet soldiers are depicted as a flock of frightened people on their way to fight only for fear of being shot.
But there are true, historically accurate films showing war without embellishment, and Soviet soldiers as they really were - ordinary people who defended their homeland. This is the new Kazakh-Russian film "Қasym" ("Without the right to choose"), which tells of the heroism of the legendary Kazakh spy, the hero of the Great Patriotic War, Halyk Kakharmany Kasim Kaysenov. A graduate of the "NKVD" special forces, one of the most talented Soviet spies, saboteurs, he fulfilled the most difficult tasks of command in near rear of the enemy. His name is forever inscribed in the history of resistance to the German fascist invaders in the occupied territories.
In conclusion, there is a quotation from the speech of the President:
- I bow to you all: veterans, home front workers, members of partisan movements, as well as those who have suffered the hardships of repression and who revived the country after a terrible war. Victory in the Great Patriotic War got to us at the cost of untold suffering. We hold sacred the memory of the sacrifice.
KAZINFORM
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