An exhibition on the Soviet Union's fight against nationalist groups and Nazi collaborators during World War II will soon open in the Cultural Center of Federal Security Service (FSB), a source in the agency said on Tuesday.
"For the first time journalists will have a chance to look at declassified documents detailing the collaboration between the Ukrainian nationalist organization and the Nazis, and the punitive raids by the Baltic nationalists on settlements in territory occupied by the Nazis," the source said.
The exhibition will also include a roundtable on issues dealing with the distortion of the history of World War II and attempts to justify Nazi collaboration in the history books used in schools in some former Soviet states.
The roundtable, "The World War II collaborationists: traitors or heroes?", will be attended by FSB officials, academics and historians.
World War II continues to be a contentious issue in Russia's relations with Ukraine and the Baltic States, particularly Estonia, over their glorification of Nazi collaborators.
Former Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko, known for his promotion of Ukrainian nationalism, often at the expense of relations with Russia, awarded in late January the honorary title of national hero to Stepan Bandera, whose Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists briefly allied with Nazi Germany during the 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union.
The Soviet authorities accused Bandera, who fought both the Nazis and the Soviets in his quest for an independent Ukraine, of numerous acts of murder and terrorism and authorized his assassination by the KGB in Munich, Germany, on October 15, 1959.
MOSCOW, March 2 (RIA Novosti)
