A couple of years ago my dad and I travelled to Belarus and Lithuania, two countries that were both integral regions of the Soviet Union when we were born but since then had become independent republics. Despite this shared history and close proximity both countries have taken very different political paths since nationhood; Lithuania's westward gaze saw it join the European Union in 2004 whilst Belarus has looked towards Russia and even briefly flirted with the idea of a reunification between the two states. The latter also had the dubious distinction of being the only European member of Condoleezza Rice's infamous Outposts of Tyranny.
Another shared aspect of their history is that both nations endured the most traumatic of experiences during World War II; Belarus was utterly devastated as part of Germany's invasion of the USSR and a formerly independent Lithuania underwent occupation by both the Nazis and the Soviets, and was subsequently absorbed by the latter. The event has since become part of each country's national consciousness.
But these events are presented in very different ways. In Vilnius we visited the Museum of Genocide Victims, housed in the old KGB headquarters; it documents the harrowing stories of the systematic repression of Lithuanian nationals by the Soviet authorities both during and after the war when a low-level partisan conflict continued into the early 1950s. That so much of this brutality took place in the very building in which the museum stands - the tour takes in the basement cells where abuse and torture was carried out - only adds to the deeply oppressive atmosphere.
What does seem a little strange, however, is that a whole chunk of the war is left out; the period of German occupation between 1941 and 1944 barely gets a mention. And one suspects that this is for the simple reason that - initially at least - the invasion was welcomed by those who wished to end the Soviet occupation of their country. Collaboration between Lithuanians and their Nazi overlords in the extermination of the local Jewish population was also amongst the highest of any country in the course of the war. For me the absence of any such discussion of Lithuania's complicity in the holocaust immediately cast doubt on the objectivity of the museum's central message, as appalling as those events on display no doubt were.
In Minsk the war was remembered in a much different way. Here the apocalyptic nightmare that swept the country for the duration of Operation Barbarossa is immortalised in the Museum of the Great Patriotic War; prominently located in a large central square, the sign above the building reads "The Feats of Mankind Will Live On for Centuries".
Inside the doors the grim reality of the war - here it is considered to have started in 1941, not 1939 - and the herculean defence of the Soviet armies is present as a courageous if utterly awful fight to the death. Minsk, like so much of Belarus, was utterly flattened, and it's easy to see why even today the Great Patriotic War is such a defining moment in national history. During our visit a group of young soldiers were also wandering around the displays, reading about the sacrifice of their forebears.
But again there seemed to be a skewed sense of history; there was little or no mention of the own horrors visited on the populations of regions invaded by the Soviet Union in the early days of the war, or of the crackdown on the partisan separatists that had formed such a defining characteristic of wartime in neighbouring Lithuania and elsewhere. Here war was presented as a straightforward if titanic struggle of good against evil.
It was an interesting experience to travel a relatively short distance and find two entirely contrasting takes on the same devastating event, not all of it explainable by the different courses that the war took in the two territories. Subsequent political developments in Belarus and Lithuania have not only coloured the collective memory in each country but have been moulded to conform to their own historical national narrative.
It might not be much of a revelation that different sides in any given conflict will interpret the same events in different ways. But war is a complex thing and is rarely a simple dichotomy of two sides pitted against each other; the museums in Vilnius and Minsk readily demonstrate that - despite geographic proximity and a shared enemy - the presentation of history is so often a subjective matter of debate. The opinion of the storyteller is often as important as the tale itself.
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