Black Ribbon Day, which falls on 23 August, is supposedly a major event in the European calendar, officially recognised by almost every nation in Europe, as well as by the EU itself. Yet outside of a handful of countries, few people have ever heard of it. Given the political threats that Europe now faces, both internal and external, this may need to change.

The official title of Black Ribbon Day is the ‘European Day of Remembrance for Victims of Stalinism and Nazism’. It therefore commemorates not only the traumatic history that engulfed Europe during the Second World War, but also the days of terror that preceded the war, and which continued for years after it was supposed to be over.

It began as a day of protest during the Cold War. In 1986, thousands of expatriate Lithuanians, Latvians and Estonians held demonstrations in Ottawa, Toronto and other large North American cities. These people had found themselves exiled after the Second World War when the Baltic States were subsumed into the Soviet Union, and they were campaigning for their home countries to be granted independence once more. The date of 23 August was chosen because this was the day in 1939 when Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union signed their pact to carve up Eastern Europe between them.

After the protests of 1986, the idea of Black Ribbon Day spread. The following year, despite continuing repression, dissident groups behind the Iron Curtain also began to hold commemorations. This culminated in a massive demonstration in the Baltic States on 23 August 1989 – the 50th anniversary of the Nazi-Soviet Pact – when more than a million people formed a human chain from Tallinn to Riga and on to Vilnius. It was one of the defining moments of the end of Cold War.

The memory of these events continued to resonate in Poland and the Baltic States throughout the 1990s, but after the collapse of the Soviet Union they were slowly forgotten elsewhere. Things only changed after the enlargement of the European Union in 2004, when eight Eastern European nations became member states. It was only natural that this ‘New Europe’ should want some of its cultural memories and customs incorporated into the established EU framework. One of these was Black Ribbon Day. After a debate in the European Parliament in 2008, it was officially adopted as a European day of remembrance.

From the very beginning there was substantial opposition to the idea, particularly among Western historians. This was partly because Black Ribbon Day focuses on the tragedies of 1939, rather than the victories of 1945, which have always formed the core of Western narratives of the Second World War. Many Eastern European countries do not regard 1945 as a ‘victory’ at all.

It was also because it challenged the centrality of the Holocaust in Western memory culture. For all his crimes, Western historians have argued, Stalin at least helped save Europe from the greater evil of Nazism: it was Soviet troops who liberated Auschwitz in January 1945.

The idea of mentioning Stalinism and Nazism in the same breath, therefore, made many historians profoundly uncomfortable. One such was prize-winning Holocaust historian Yehuda Bauer, who made his opposition to Black Ribbon Day plain: ‘One certainly should remember the victims of the Soviet regime, and there is every justification for designating special memorials and events to do so. But to put the two regimes on the same level and commemorating the different crimes on the same occasion is totally unacceptable.’

Others had more philosophical concerns. Austrian historian Heidemarie Uhl worried that the institution of this new day might foster a culture of victimhood in Eastern Europe. Unlike Holocaust Remembrance Day, which promotes a kind of soul-searching within every European nation, Black Ribbon Day portrays evil as something that comes not from within but from without. It encouraged nations to think of themselves as martyrs, rather than to keep a watchful eye on their own potential prejudices.

These are all valid criticisms, but times change, and attitudes change with them. Today Eastern Europe is once again under attack from Russia. Black Ribbon Day is one of the cultural memories that is most under attack from Russian propaganda, and as such it demands not only attention but protection.

Twenty years ago, Putin dismissed the Nazi-Soviet Pact as something he would rather ignore, calling it a mere ‘personal matter between Stalin and Hitler’. However, since Black Ribbon Day was adopted by the EU, he and other senior Russian figures have changed tack. Now they praise the Nazi-Soviet Pact as ‘a triumph of Soviet diplomacy’, and portray the invasion of the Baltic States as a peaceful event that took place with the consent of the Baltic people.

They often claim that Russia should ‘take back’ those lands that were historically a part of the Russian empire – not only Ukraine, but also the Baltic States, Moldova and parts of Poland. In the face of such aggressive historical revisionism, Black Ribbon Day should be publicised and protected.

Then there are Europe’s internal wounds. Eastern Europeans have long complained that the West belittles their painful history. ‘No matter how much they read’, claims Laszlo Borhi, a Hungarian historian who teaches at Indiana University, ‘Western people will never understand how bad things were in the East. They have no idea.’

Black Ribbon Day is a case in point. This year the commemoration will feature heavily in the mainstream media of Poland and the Baltic countries, but it will be almost completely ignored in countries such as Britain and France. If it were recognised more widely it would serve a double purpose: to educate Westerners, and to reassure Easterners that the West is at least trying to understand.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, there is the core message of this day of remembrance: it is a reminder that hard-won political freedoms need to be protected at every level, in both halves of the continent.

In a recent poll held by Britain’s Channel 4 TV, more than half of young people aged between 13 and 27 agreed that ‘the UK would be a better place if a strong leader was in charge who does not have to bother with parliament and elections’. Polls in other European countries are just as disturbing: this year’s annual poll on ‘Young Europe’ conducted by the YouGov institute for the Tui Foundation found that only half of those polled believed that democracy was the best form of government. More than 20 per cent would favour authoritarian rule under some circumstances.

If they were more aware of the perils of such rule, perhaps young people might think twice. Black Ribbon Day, which commemorates the millions of victims who suffered under totalitarian rule, is a reminder of where such beliefs might lead.