This year we celebrate the 75^th anniversary of the Allied forces victory in Europe, the triumph which was possible thanks to the leading role of the USSR that paid an enormous price having suffered huge human losses and material damage. May 9^th, 1945 didn’t just mark the military defeat of Nazism and Fascism, but also its ideological defeat. These two totalitarian political ideologies are opposed to the respect for human life, full of racial hatred and promotion of military aggression.

The enormous sacrifice of the Soviet people as a whole was recognized in the first instance by all of the Allied powers. Even before the war ended His Majesty the King of the United Kingdom George VI ordered that a sword be forged in honor of the defenders of Stalingrad.

The heroic resistance of the Soviet people in the cities of Leningrad and Stalingrad, to name only two, to the offensive of Nazi Germany and its collaborators showed the fortitude of a people that never thought of giving up/ After the first quick shock it managed to reverse all the progress achieved by the enemy and launched counteroffensives that have been etched in gold in military history.

Thanks to the efforts of the Soviet soldiers, Poland — the place where the horrors of the Auschwitz concentration camp took place, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Albania, Austria and a significant part of Germany were freed from the clutches of Fascism.

It must be noted that the biggest burden fell upon the Soviet people and its army that during three years of the war were the targets of the Nazi military machine and its satellites.

That being said, when the war was over, some of the Western countries adopted a policy that tended to downplay the Soviet role in the defeat of Nazism. On the contrary, they extolled the American military actions through propaganda. To make sure that this is true you can check the Hollywood movies about the Second World War.

Nevertheless, after the war, the policy of the Western powers aimed at recruiting the former prominent Third Reich’s figures in order to use them for the benefit of their military programs was of great concern. The anti-Soviet program led to the foundation of a new military alliance, NATO, which had only one goal, namely the potential aggression against the Soviet Union. This policy of the NATO powers allowed the fascist Franco regime in Spain to continue to exist, and even more than that, they supported it and legitimized it. They did the same thing with the regime of Antonio de Salazar in Portugal.

After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, in some countries that were part of it or in those countries that had been liberated by the Red Army, not only history was twisted, but fascist movements were legitimized like those in Ukraine, Poland and some Baltic countries. These are the places where without any consideration monuments were demolished and the cemeteries where the Russian fighters' bodies rest were renamed.

These very expressions are shown in the movies and the books that distort history and, what makes it even worse, justify the Hitler’s invasion.

That fight did not end with the liberation of its own territory, but carried on until it reached Berlin.

It must be recognized that the Red Army was not the only one that fought in that war, but there were also hundreds of thousands of communist partisans in France, Italy, the Netherlands, Yugoslavia, Albania, Poland, Greece and even in Spain which at that time was under Franco’s occupation. In the Soviet Union itself the partisans became a real nightmare for the invaders.

In 2016, as the minister of Defense of Bolivia, I had the honor to visit the city of Volgograd, formerly Stalingrad, and pay my respects to the defenders of the city by depositing flowers in the Mamayev Kurgan. On that impressive hill where the monument The Motherland Calls stands one can feel in the air the spirit of those who fought not only to defend the motherland from the aggression, but also to free the humankind from the aggressor’s backward, bloodthirsty and inhumane political system.

On that occasion I also had a chance to lay flowers to the grave of Rubén Ruíz Ibarruri, a Spanish fighter and the son of communist leader Dolores Ibarruri who is also known as La Pasionaria. As many other Spaniards he gave his life fighting for the freedom of the Soviet Union.

In Latin America the epic actions of the Soviet Union strengthened the fight against fascism and imperialism and reinforced the commitment to fight for a world without war where the human rights would be respected.

In Bolivia Soviet victory inspired the creation of the workers' and peasants' organizations that would play a huge role in the 1952 National Revolution which brought to the people of Bolivia universal suffrage, agrarian reform and a never-before-seen policy of national unity.

To justify their actions, they not only denigrate the historical memory and the role of the Soviet Union in the victory in the Second World War, but also rudely justify the aggressive views of the fascist regimes that existed at that time. These views turn into xenophobic attacks, actions against migrants, antisemitic positions and hatred that is common to them all.

Today, 75 years after the end of the war, we have to remember more than ever the noble dedication of a people who, in the name of humankind, peace, respect for life and solidarity, raised the flag of workers and peasants in Berlin in the first days of May, a milestone which marked the beginning if a new era that brought détente, strengthening of positions of the Third World and the end of colonial empires in Africa, Asia, Oceania and Latin America.

On this new anniversary we pay our respects to the people that took up the challenge to confront hatred, racism, militarism with firmness and commitment. These efforts should not be forgotten and certainly should not be distorted.

Thank you. Your blood turned into the clay of a more humane world.