People’s Diplomacy in the Changing World

First of all, I would like to extend my congratulations to all the participants of the “Mut zur Ethik” Forum on the occasion of the 30^th anniversary of this remarkable event! Despite the Forum’s formidable age, its agenda is always most relevant, and its organizers remain the champions of humanism and advocate faith in humanity through all and any perturbations in the international arena. When my memories take me five years back to our encounter at the Forum in the city of Sirnach, what comes to my mind is not the pear bread we ate and not the trip to the mountains we took, but, first of all, the heartfelt attitude of all speakers, which was evident even while they were talking about the US’ barbaric actions in Yugoslavia – including the use of depleted uranium ammunition – and, second of all, their concern about whether the war was or was not just around the corner. Thank you for those memories!

Nothing learned from Stalingrad

I am now speaking from Volgograd, a city famous all over the world under its previous name – Stalingrad. Barely a six-year-old child, I personally witnessed the horrors that a war can bring. This year, we celebrate the 80^th anniversary of an important historic event – the end of the Battle of Stalingrad. There is not a single person on the planet who doesn’t know that the Stalingrad victory of the Soviet troops was the turning point of World War 2; that it was this very victory that made people believe that destroying Nazism and fascism was a task which could and would be achieved. It is here, from the banks of the Volga River, that the march to the victory over the “brown plague” began 80 years ago.
  It would seem that the Nuremberg Trials ended on an unequivocal note – that fascism was destroyed, that the Bible was right in claiming that “the good will always triumph above the evil”, and that the Stalingrad lesson was to be learned by all men of reason. But no!!! Even with the USSR – this constant thorn in the side of the US and the West – long gone, the majority of the European political minds are still corrupted by envy. They cannot live in peace knowing how vast and enormous Russia is – the country which the West has seen as its enemy since the beginning of times, the country which Livonian knights, and Napoleon, and Hitler – all tried to strip of its resources … and which repeatedly sent its invaders running home with a few teeth missing!
  It was best said by the Chancellor of the German Empire Otto von Bismarck: “Do not assume that, having profited from Russia’s weakness once, you will be able to collect your dividends forever. Russians always come to claim their money back. And when they come – don’t hope that those Jesuit agreements you signed earlier to justify yourself will be of any protection to you. These agreements are not worth the paper they are written on. With Russians, you either play fair, or don’t play at all.” Here, I am talking about the Minsk Agreements and the non-expansion of NATO to the East, about the resurging of fascism in the Ukraine and several European countries.
  And yet, this meaningful historic date – the anniversary of the end of the Battle of Stalingrad – is more than a reminder of war. It is a reminder of the solidarity between the nations that jointly fought against their common enemy, and of the solidarity between cities. It is because there was another outcome of the Stalingrad victory – the birth of the international twinning movement, the movement of twin-towns and sister-cities that cooperate on the basis of people’s- or citizen-diplomacy.
  The founders of this movement were the Soviet Stalingrad and the British Coventry, brought together by the tragedy of World War 2. Both cities, located on the opposite sides of Europe, were almost completely destroyed by the Nazis. And their residents – the people of Stalingrad and Coventry – supported each other through their shared tragedy and in the name of peace, and in June 1944 announced a brotherly union between their two cities, thus making the first step in the history of the international movement which grew from a single spring into a massive river comparable to the Volga, the Nile, and the Mississippi. The important thing is that the two cities’ residents did it out of their own volition, and not at the order from their government. This is what people’s diplomacy is about.

People’s diplomacy – today of all days

In our difficult times, interaction between nations – at the level of regular citizens, and not political figures – is becoming increasingly important. While American and European political leaders are promoting Russophobia, calling for the ban on the Russian culture and the eradication of our traditional values, regular European residents are coming to Russia to preserve and develop human relations, face to face with our own people.
  Over the past year and a half, as the Chair of the “Russian Peace Foundation” Volgograd branch, I have twice met with the residents of Germany – participants of the “For Peace with Russia” car races, and members of the “Berlin Friends of the Peoples of Russia” organization. They were the people of different ages, professions and walks of life. But all of them came to our country to see its true face and not the one propagandized by the Western media.
  In August 2023, when the German participants of the car race came to Volgograd, their leader Reinhold Gross justly pointed out that the main aim of such journeys is “to be a small wheel in the massive struggle for the friendship between our countries, and to push towards this goal all the other wheels inside our state machines.” Let there be many more such wheels on the way to friendship and cooperation, because we are open to communication!
  In my previous address, I mentioned a German medic Kurt Reuber, the picture of “Stalingrad Madonna” he drew and the words “Licht, Leben, Liebe” (“Light, life, love”) he wrote on it. One ray of such light, shining through the current darkness of Russophobia, a drop in the ocean, was the congress of the International Russophile Movement that took place about two months ago in Moscow and united representatives of several countries. And we, the world nations, have to finally find the ways and the means to return to the World Peace Council its lost status of the leading governing body for the international movement of peace champions.
  Peace will not come by itself; we have to fight for it!
  I am convinced that people’s diplomacy has a huge potential both for improving the global international situation as a whole, and for strengthening the friendship and mutual understanding between individual residents of different countries. A peaceful future, development and prosperity can only be achieved through everyone’s joint efforts. And this path is the only path possible in a large multipolar world. And this is what we will strive for!
  I wish the Forum good luck and hope to see you again.  •

(Translation Current Concerns)

* Yury Fyodorovich Starovatykh, born in Stalingrad in 1937, was the Lord Mayor of the city of Volgograd from 1986 to 1990. He was evacuated during the Battle of Stalingrad from August 1942 to February 1943. During his term as Lord Mayor, 40 twinning agreements were concluded, amongst others with Coventry, Chemnitz, Cologne, Toronto and Cleveland. He is recipient of the Medal of Honour “For the Consolidation of Peace and Understanding between Peoples”. He is chair of the “Russian Peace Foundation” Volgograd regional branch. Yury Starovatykh is honorary citizen of the hero-city of Volgograd and honorary citizen of Hiroshima