Austrian President told how his parents left Russia in 1917
Austrian Federal President Alexander Van der Bellen said that his parents who lived in Russia, after the revolution in 1917, were forced to leave the country and go to Estonia.
“My parents, as young people, lived in Russia, and after the Russian revolution in 1917 they had to leave the country. Estonia gave them asylum, where they lived for about 20 years, and when (Joseph) Stalin again“ knocked ”on their door, they again had to leave the country, after which they ended up in Vienna and Tyrol, where I grew up, “Van der Bellen said at a panel discussion with an Estonian colleague in Vienna, calling the meeting with her” almost family. “
He noted that he has really close family ties with Estonia. “Until 1959, I was an Estonian citizen, which is funny in itself, because Estonia did not exist as an independent state, but the passport was recognized internationally. My father traveled a lot, he was a businessman, so there were no problems here,” the Austrian president said.
Given the white emigrant roots of his family, an interesting situation arose last year after the insistent invitation from Moscow – Austrian President received an invitation to attend the Victory Parade in Moscow. Federal President of Austria Alexander Van der Bellen received an invitation to attend the parade in honor of the 75th anniversary of Victory in Moscow on May 9, 2020, the representative of the Austrian President Reinhard Pickl-Herk told RIA Novosti.
As could be expected, President Van der Bellen was abcent in Moscow, only few state leaders were present at the military parade on June 24: Abkhazia Aslan Bzhania, Belarus Alexander Lukashenko, Republika Srpska Bosnia and Herzegovina Milorad Dodik, Kazakhstan Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, Moldova Igor Dodon, Serbia Alexander Vuchich, Tajikistan Emomali Rahmonyoev Uzbekistan , South Ossetia Anatoly Bibilov.
German historian Karl Schlögel said that he did not see “anything new” in Putin’s article, noted that the Russian president “uses the interpretation of history as an instrument of his current policy” and criticized the description of the process of joining the Baltic states to the USSR in Putin’s article – the program article of the President of the Russian Federation on World War II, in which Putin analyzes the origins of the war, harshly criticizes the Munich Agreement and the policies of the Western powers at that time and justifies the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, which has already caused criticism in Poland and the Baltic countries.
The deputy chairman of the opposition party PARNAS, orientalist, doctor of historical sciences Andrei Zubov, considered the following conclusions of Putin’s article to be incorrect. Zubov criticized the thesis that “the League of Nations, which was dominated by the victorious powers – Great Britain and France, demonstrated its ineffectiveness and simply drowned in empty talk.” At the same time, Zubov admitted that “the League of Nations was unable to prevent the aggression of either Germany, Japan, Italy or the USSR”; as well as the thesis about the incorporation of the Baltic states, which question is one of the most sensitive for the Austrian president.