A coordination meeting of the parliamentary delegations of the CSTO Member States was held during the winter session of the OSCE PA in Vienna.

On the margins of the winter session of the OSCE PA in Vienna, a coordination meeting of representatives of parliamentary delegations of the Collective Security Treaty Organization Member States was held at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE PA).
Pyotr TOLSTOY, Deputy Chairman of the State Duma of the Russian Federation and head of the Russian delegation to the OSCE PA who chaired the meeting, invited the participants of the meeting to support the draft Declaration Condemning the Attempts to Revise the Outcomes of the Second World War developed by the Russian deputies at the PACE session that has already been signed by 77 deputies from 17 Member States of the Council of Europe.
The declaration will be sent to the speakers of the parliaments of the OSCE participating States and submitted to the OSCE PA for consideration. “The Nuremberg Tribunal gave a clear legal evaluation of the events of those years and passed sentences on criminals who committed atrocious crimes against humanity. Unfortunately, as time passes, the lessons of history begin not just to be forgotten, but deliberately distorted for the sake of political agenda. Destruction of the graves of the warriors who fell liberating Europe from Nazism is outrageous,” says the draft Declaration. “We consider it necessary that school and university history textbooks in all countries of the Council of Europe should include truthful information about the Second World War, taking into account the 1946 opinions of the Nuremberg Tribunal.”
“We will not tolerate attempts to rewrite history,” stressed Pyotr TOLSTOY. He suggested that the meeting participants should focus all their efforts on ensuring that the document receives maximum publicity. “We see what a response the Declaration receives, including among the deputies of Western countries, and we very much hope that by May 9 we will be able to make it a pan-European parliamentary document,” he noted.
In turn, Andrei SAVINYKH, Head of the Delegation of the Parliament of the Republic of Belarus to the OSCE PA and Chairman of the Permanent Commission of the House of Representatives of the National Assembly of the Republic of Belarus, reported on the efforts made by parliamentarians of Belarus to resist attempts to falsify the history of the Second World War. Isa OMURKULOV, deputy of the Supreme Council of the Kyrgyz Republic, expressed his support, recalling that two brothers of his grandfather died liberating Europe from Nazism.
CSTO PA Executive Secretary Sergei POSPELOV recalled the initiative of the CSTO PA Chairman Vyacheslav VOLODIN to establish the International Institute for the Protection of Historical Memory, which he proposed at the meeting with Maja GOJKOVIC, Chairwoman of the National Assembly of the Republic of Serbia. According to the CSTO PA Chairman, establishment of such an institution involving academics and experts “would allow to take steps in humanitarian and education domains to remain objective towards that time, to protect the truth and memory of the fallen.”
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