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Graves of Russian soldiers in a cemetery near Stalingrad.Frank Augstein/The Canadian Press

Letters to the Editor should be exclusive to The Globe and Mail. Include your name, address and daytime phone number. Try to keep letters to fewer than 150 words. Letters may be edited for length and clarity. To submit a letter by e-mail, click here: letters@globeandmail.com

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History’s cold light

Re Don’t Forget The Soviets’ Wartime Sacrifice (June 24): For the first two years of the Second World War, Stalin’s Soviet Union and Hitler’s Nazi Germany were staunch allies – in September, 1939, both monstrous totalitarianisms jointly invaded and dismembered Poland. My grandfather, Danylo, was one of thousands of innocent people shot by the NKVD during the Soviet occupation of Lviv in Ukraine.

Following the defeat of Nazi Germany, Stalin’s Soviet Union engaged in mass deportations of civilian populations, sent millions of innocent people to death in the notorious Gulag concentration-camp system, and imprisoned much of Europe behind the Iron Curtain for more than four decades. Today, the Russian regime that ambassador Alexander Darchiev serves wages wars of aggression against Ukraine and Georgia, tortures political prisoners, and occupies Crimea.

Lest we forget, indeed.

Orest Zakydalsky, senior policy adviser, Ukrainian Canadian Congress

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It was informative to read about the Soviet Union’s heroic fight against the might of Nazi forces around Leningrad, Moscow and especially Stalingrad. Britain was at its nadir in opposing the Nazis in 1941; when Hitler invaded the Soviet Union that June , we gained an enormously powerful ally.

I was a teenager at that time and about to join the RAF for fighter-pilot training. My generation was awed by the sacrifices of the Soviet forces. We knew nothing about the internal policies of that country, nor did we care that much. We did know of the millions upon millions of lives lost by the Soviets, and that every one of those lives was a sacrifice in our own fight against the Nazis.

If the Nazis had won the battle of Stalingrad, the world would be far different, and unimaginably more horrific than it is.

Philip Joseph, Uxbridge, Ont.

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It is only fitting that all nations honour and remember their wartime sacrifices to fight injustice, oppression and occupation. This includes Russia. However, a distinction must be made between the “Russian” and “Soviet” experience, especially with regard to Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

Russian Ambassador Alexander Darchiev states that on June 22, 1941, Hitler’s war machine, emboldened partly by “occupied states,” attacked the Soviet Union.

One year earlier, there was another occupying force in the Baltic nations. The Soviet army invaded Latvia in June, 1940, under the auspices of the secret Molotov-Ribbentrop pact signed between Germany and the Soviet Union in 1939. These two invading armies crisscrossed Latvia during the Second World War, with the Soviets cementing their final occupation in 1944. Latvia had tens of thousands of its citizens sent to Siberia, with tens of thousands more (including my parents) escaping the Soviet occupation by fleeing to the West. The Soviet occupation of Latvia from the initial invasion lasted 51 years.

In the cold light of history, no one can deny the imperial aspirations of the Nazi and Soviet armies and their leaders. The defeat of the Nazis was an accomplishment of the Allied forces, but not all Allied armies remained to occupy the territories of sovereign nations, as the Soviets did in the three Baltic nations.

Robert Klaise, Honorary consul of Latvia (Quebec)

‘These precious places’

Re As Canada’s Habitats Disappear, Conservation Needs To Start At Our Doorstep (June 22): Your story on conserving natural habitat in urban Canada was most welcome here in Saskatoon, where we are hoping to convince the province not to build a highway through the Northeast Swale, a sizable chunk of rare intact native wetland and prairie.

This swale is an ancient riverbed, 26 kilometres long, which due to its hills and rocks escaped cultivation and now provides habitat for hundreds of animal and plant species, some rare and in need of protection.

Saskatoon has half completed its plan to build suburbs on both sides of the swale, and last year built a highway through it to serve those residents.

Meanwhile, the province is well along in its plans to build a second highway a kilometre north of the first. It is a tragedy unfolding before our eyes. What our leaders need is an education in the value of biodiversity, and an understanding of the importance of these precious places.

Jan Norris, Saskatoon

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Ivan Semeniuk’s excellent article is certainly on the mark in the Collingwood area.

An example is the continued development pressure on the Provincially Significant Silver Creek Wetland, located on the shores of Georgian Bay, straddling Collingwood’s and the town of Blue Mountain’s municipal boundaries.

Lying within this rare remaining coastal wetland, which plays a critical role in bird migration and fish spawning, is a proposed and approved subdivision comprising more than 300 residential units.

The developer is requesting a development amendment which, if approved, would more than double the number of residential units and further threaten the viability of this wetland.

If the natural features of our communities are to be protected so future generations can enjoy them, municipal official plans and provincial development legislation must change to make this not just a possibility, but a reality.

George Powell, Collingwood, Ont.

Airbnb’s place, continued

Re Airbnb’s Place (letters, June 24): Missing from the recent discussion of the “Airbnb problem” has been the divergence between what people want, and what downtown hotels offer.

Recently, I had the choice of a typical downtown chain hotel at around $300 per night and an Airbnb at $80.

The excuse for the high hotel price was that conventions had made rooms scarce. For my $300, I was offered a large bed, a tiny bathroom, a medium-size TV, and a coffee maker with fixings for two cups of coffee.

On top of that, I was invited to pay inflated prices for food and drinks, and deal with relentless pressure to tip, tip, tip.

The Airbnb was a 12-minute walk from downtown, and provided a living room, kitchen, bedroom and view over the city.

The downtown chain hotels have been very successful in establishing the accepted model for room pricing and services in the hospitality sector. No wonder they are upset with the emergence of alternatives that let people opt out of that model.

Michael Poulton, Halifax

Bodies as Life’s tapestries

Re Together Forever (First Person, June 20): Linda E. Clarke’s stark portrait of her parents’ life-scarred bodies gifted to the medical school was so illuminated by her stories of the life force that drove them, it rang out to me like a paean. Every scarred organ, every bowed bone spoke to their passion to live their lives as best they could, no matter what life battered them with.

Her image of their worldworn bodies as tapestries is simply and utterly beautiful. Her sharing of their story adds to the gift that her parents bestowed.

Jill Morrison, Toronto

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