I recently argued here that we create history according to our intentions for the future, and that in this sense it is impossible to claim that one version is better than another. One correctly written and the other rewritten. It is simply a matter of whether it fits a particular vision of the future.
We can objectively verify individual facts (such as how many soldiers died on a given day in a given territory), but we have no generally accepted yardstick for determining whether something is an improvement or a deterioration. Or whether the Red Army soldiers in May 1945 were liberators or occupiers.
Professor Keller, however, has found such an objective yardstick. He bases it on how the inhabitants of Czechoslovakia saw things in May 1945. Did they see the Red Army soldiers as liberators or occupiers? The answer is clear.
And we can pursue this question. What would the inhabitants of Czechoslovakia have thought of the Red Army soldiers in May 1945 if they had known that the Victorious February, the Gottwald years, political trials, violent collectivisation, etc. were to come? Here too we have a clear answer. In spite of all this, they would have regarded the Red Army soldiers as liberators. We can judge this from the fact that even in later decades, when some people criticised the Czechoslovak regime very harshly, no one questioned that the victory of the Red Army over the Wehrmacht was a liberation.
So, in the eyes of today’s liberal democrats, whole generations of Czechoslovaks (including anti-communists) lived in error until the current generation of liberal historians came along and revealed the true facts.