Alexei Zhuravlyov, the leader of the Russian party ‘Rodina’ and a member of the State Duma Committee on Defense, has placed a bill saying Russian citizens should be fully informed about foreign companies that once collaborated with Nazi Germany before the parliament.
The MP believes that a number of his compatriots will abandon these companies’ products. The deputy considers symbolic that the bill is being introduced on June, 22, the day of the beginning of the Great Patriotic War.
According to the bill, their advertising must have an indication of the companies’ relations with the Nazis. Zhuravlyov stats he is not referring to some good or product, but only to the creation of awareness among potential buyers, izvestia.ru reports.
“I must admit that the outcome of World War II is being distorted now. Some media say that in Japan many teenagers believe that it is the Soviet Union that dropped bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and it was the Americans who faithfully tried to save them. The same thing is happening in Europe. Not across entire Europe, but the trend is clear and understandable. To prevent distortions of our history, the youth should remember and know what happened in the 20th century, and that there are firms that once were active in the Third Reich, producing weapons, aircraft and toxic substances to poison our people,” he said.
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The MP also stresses that the bill should be adopted because the representatives of Western companies often … corrupt Russian officials by giving bribes to them.
Talking about threatening Russia’s national security, Zhuravlyov mentioned Siemens as an example, which has been ‘closely working with the German Federal Intelligence Service’. Ikea has been profiting from informal fees paid by local businessmen, the MP states.
Alexey Kazakov, a member of the State Duma Committee on Information Policy, Information Technology and Communications, praised Zhuravlyov’s initiative. Everyone should know the names of those who made fortune on the tragedy, Kazakov stresses.
MP Viktor Klimov, however, believes that many companies have changed owners for long ago – now they are run by others, people with a different mentality and ideas. Moreover, in his opinion, the political space and relations between the nations have also transformed, which make it impossible to focus on somebody’s doing business with Hitler’s Germany.
After Adolf Hitler came to power, a number of U.S. and European companies did keep cooperating with Nazi regime (Chase Bank – now JP Morgan Chase, Ford, Allianz, Nestle, General Electric, etc).
