The post-Soviet countries, including Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Russia in the Caspian region commemorate today the 77th anniversary of the victory over Nazi Germany in 1945. The occasion, marking the end of the Second World War, is observed by people in different parts of the world, including various former Soviet Union republics that witnessed some of the worst horrors of the war. The German invasion of the Soviet Union, which started on June 22, 1941, took the country’s leadership and nearly 200 million inhabitants completely by surprise. A blitzkrieg, or “lightning war” against the USSR violated the Molotov-Ribbentrop treaty signed...