THE MOLOTOV-RIBBONTROP PACT

               BEGAN WORLD WAR

                              Never fight with Russians. On your every stratagem,

                                               they answer with unpredictable stupidity.

                                                                                   Otto von Bismarck

At the grave of Putin's parents in a cemetery in St. Petersburg, someone left a handwritten note in a school notebook that read: "Parents, pay attention to your children's history lessons and do not let them skip classes!" Russian police and the FSB quickly found the author of the letter. She was an older woman, a history teacher at a secondary school. She was arrested and sent to prison.

            Distorting history, interpreting it in a way that suits them, and imposing it on the Russian people is a centuries-old tradition of Russian leaders. This tactic has been used repeatedly, especially to justify wars and aggression that they provoke. Putin's constant lying, justification of aggression, and inventing incredible stories are not new phenomena in Russian politics.

            Five years ago, Russian President Vladimir Putin gave a speech on the anniversary of the Victory. The title of the op-ed: "75th Anniversary of the Great Victory: Shared Responsibility to History and our Future." In this op-ed, Putin sought to provide his account of the pre-war situation and the course and outcome of the war to prove his judgments [about the war].

            At the beginning of the op-ed, he explained the reason why the Nazis took power in Germany was the Treaty of Versailles. That is hardly a new point of view. Even Maynard Keynes, who was personally involved in drafting this treaty, warned at the time that the conditions imposed on Germany were too harsh, which would give rise to grievance and revenge for the Germans. But why did Putin want to emphasize this view? He seems to be warning that the West, who had defeated Germany on its terms, let alone dictated the Soviet Union on its terms, which was defeated without war, is provoking the Russians on purpose. This point of view haunts his favourite monologue about the Russian bear who unleashes its fury when it is provaked. 

            Putin's argument that the United States and Great Britain were the biggest supporters of the German Nazism is, to put it mildly, questionable. If we cherry-pick chunks and shards of evidence here and there to lay out the greater picture, we can counter-argue that the United States and Great Britain were the staunch supporters of Russian Bolshevism. It is a fact, however, that radical and far-right, ultra-nationalist movements and the aristocracy supported the German Nazism. If so, it seems to be reasonable that some Western political and industrial circles and radical, far-right, and ultra-nationalist movements are now justifying the Kremlin's designs, activities, behaviours, and aggressions. 

            Putin's conclusion that when Italy invaded Ethiopia, Japan attacked China, and Germany annexed Austria, the League of Nations failed to act is partially true. However, it is also a plain fact that the USSR was expelled from the League of Nations for invading tiny Finland and annexing part of its territory. 

            Then, there is a ridiculous narrative fiercely advocated by Putin's so-called "uncontested evidence" in recent years that Poland triggered the war. Tesin was entirely the territory of the Austro-Hungarian empires and where Czechs and Poles have always lived. When Poland and Czechoslovakia declared independence after the Treaty of Versailles, the territory was divided into two parts: the southern part went to Czechoslovakia as Těšín, and the northern part remained in Poland as Cieszin. Military actions in the border areas intensified on January 23, 1919, which quickly turned into an international issue and, at the request of the members of the Entente countries, established a demarcation zone at Kosice-Bohumin. Poland did not recognize this demarcation zone, and Hitler used this insult to his advantage. It is too high a statement to believe that the dispute between the two "small" countries caused a world war. Besides, Tesin has many disputed territories in Europe. For example, Kosice, now part of Slovakia, has been one of the most contentious territories in Central Europe since the 13th century. It sits at the crossroads of disputes between Austria-Hungary, Slovakia, Czech, Hungary and Poland. A large Jewish settlement and Germans were also part of the quarrel. The redoubt of the Hungarian nationalists stood up against Austria-Hungary existed there. Hungarians used to be the majority of the local population in Kosice. Many historians still believe that the unmarked plane that bombed Kosice on June 26, 1941, belonged to the Soviet Union. This act alone gave Horthy a casus belli for joining the war against the Soviet Union. 

            Poles went through a living hell between Germany and Russia for hundreds of years. Poles used to be the hapless victim of every single battle between the two because Russians and Germans had to go through the Polish territory. They even partitioned Poland and wiped it off the map. For more than a hundred years! So, just before World War II, Poland sought to appease its two powerful neighbours and attempted to stay neutral. The Poles indeed signed a non-aggression pact with Germany. A similar agreement was signed with the USSR in 1934 for 10 years, with the same terms as the agreement with Germany. At the time, Polish Foreign Minister Jozef Beck essentially put his bet on Germany. "If we fight the Germans, we lose our territory; if we fight the Russians, we lose our souls," he said at the time. No less critical, Poland's relations with Czechoslovakia deteriorated because of Tesin. Having annexed Czechoslovakia, Hitler played to the Poles' temptation and threw Tesin as bait, which the Poles swallowed. Is this the supposed pretext that the Poles triggered the world war? If so, was not it Stalin who happily swallowed half of Europe, a gift that Hitler gave him?

            Is it an exaggeration to say that the Munich Agreement, as Putin is saying, was a conspiracy between England, France and Germany that led to the start of World War II? Instead, this agreement is a shameful document that the Western democracies surrendered to a dictatorship. It was a naive compromise in the hope of bringing eventual peace to Europe by appeasing Hitler and letting Germany annex Sudetenland. It was not that the three powers secretly colluded and partitioned Czechoslovakia. When Hitler eventually annexed Sudetenland, he at least had to through some degree of permission from the major powers despite openly threatening them. When Putin annexed Crimea, whom did he consult beforehand? He says Crimea used to belong to the Russians. Greeks, Scythians, Romans, Byzantines, Turks, and Mongols all used to live in Crimea, too. So did they in Russia! How do we account for Putin's self-serving explanation that he annexed Crimea because of a coup d’état in Ukraine? That is probably called "nakhalstvo" in Russian. Chamberlain's boasting of the Munich Agreement by characterizing it as "peace for our time" following its signing is sheer stupidity. However, on the heels of Chamberlain, Churchill said, "If Hitler invaded Hell, I would make at least a favourable reference to the Devil in the House of Commons." I think Churchill alluded to the Devil, in this instance, Stalin. 

            Putin accused the West of demonstrating duplicity by deliberately avoiding the creation of an alliance against Hitler and argued that the USSR alone was committed to some form of alliance with the West. Voroshilov, who led the Soviet delegation in negotiations with Britain and France in Moscow, showed much more hypocrisy at the time. He was just biding time in the light of the looming Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, capitalizing on the pretext of Poles' dogged refusal to allow the Red Army to pass through their territory if they were to fight Germany. The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was conceived long before the negotiations with France and Great Britain. At the same time, having punished the Japanese in the Battles of Khalkhin Gol, the Soviet Union obtained leverage to sign a non-aggression pact with Japan. Ironically, Putin insists that Poland triggered the war because it signed a non-aggression pact with Germany. All the while, virtually all European nations, including the Soviet Union, signed such agreements with Germany at the time. No one blames the Soviet Union for signing such a pact with Germany in 1939. World War II is said to have begun on September 1, 1939, with the German invasion of Poland. A few days earlier, the war started when the two sides agreed in Moscow to divide Europe under the secret Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. But what if the old saying "In the elderberry garden, but in Kyiv, uncle" came to mind."  ("В огороде бузина, а в Киеве дядька" –it's neither here nor there; it's clotted non-sense; "you're mix ing apples and oranges")

            It is hard to deny the Poles shared Hitler's hatred against the Jews. But what about the Soviet-Ukrainians, moulded with Leninism, paid much more interest and were infatuated with the extermination of the Jews? Anti-Semitism has been deeply ingrained in the minds of some people throughout history. The historical example of Tsarist Russia, which massacred the Jews in the early twentieth century, proves that not only Germany and Poland but also Russia was a major center of anti-Semitism. 

            Putin made fun of the Polish leadership, who fled Poland to take refuge in Romania on September 17, 1939, betraying its people who heroically defended their country against the German aggressors. He is alluding to its Foreign Minister Beck, who is often accused of being the main scapegoat of the war. What would have done Beck, who had escaped the German menace and moved to Brest on the same day the Red Army was busy marching from Poland's east as previously agreed with Germany in advance? The fact is, General Sikorski fired Beck and established an anti-German exile government in London. 

            Putin continues to try to whitewash (Soviet-era account) the partitioning of Poland with Germany using the so-called "Curzon Line". There is a 1920 proposal by former British Foreign Secretary George Curzon to demarcate the Polish-Soviet border. Curzon did not initiate or support this proposal. It was an idea of Namersky, a Polish Jewish official at the British Foreign Ministry. Born and raised in an anti-Semitic background, he could not stand with the Poles. This so-called border was discussed at many international conferences, but it failed to muster support anywhere. Only the Soviets and Germans justified their aggression using the so-called Curzon border under the secret Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Later, under the Yalta Conference, the Curzon border, which had already become a fact by then, was accepted in favour of the winner, the Soviet Union. According to Putin, as soon as Germany invaded Poland, the former pressed the Soviet Union to support its war effort, but the Soviets were reluctant to support the Germans. Well, how do you explain Molotov, the Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs of the USSR, who showed grandstanding at a session of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR at the time: "Poland, a premature bastard sprang from the Treaty of Versailles, was destroyed first by a brief German strike and then by a tiny Red Army assault." According to Putin's account, the Red Army attacked Poland, fearing that if Germany had occupied entire Poland, the Germans would have been too close to Minsk. "There was no other option. Otherwise, the risk would have been multiplied for the Soviet Union," he clarified. Not even Stalin managed to come up with such a blatant excuse. On balance, Stalin's massive invasion of tiny Finland occurred because he felt the Finnish border was too close to Leningrad, which probably served as the source of Putin's jokes about Minsk. 

            Putin weakly implied that the Soviet Union somehow conveniently refused the invitation to the Soviet Union to join the Axis Powers Pact, which comprised Germany, Italy and Japan against the United States and Great Britain. However, Molotov visited Berlin in 1940 to negotiate the admission, expressing the Soviet's readiness to join. However, he was disappointed with the supposed sharing of plunder for the Soviet Union, discounting it too meagre. The four dangerous powers that violated international treaties and the status quo between the two wars were the German Nazis, Japanese militarists, Italian fascists, and the Soviet communist regime. After all, the USSR and Nazi Germany had an economic partnership based on their military long before the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. The Soviet Union was the main supplier of military raw materials to Germany, which had nothing except coal. It is not overstated that the Soviet Union greatly helped Hitler's Germany and its rise in military industrialization. In return, the Soviets were interested in sophisticated German weapons. "When we visited them, the boastful Germans were showing off their innovative techniques and weapons," reported the Soviet designers visiting Germany at the invitation of the Wehrmacht at the time. 

            Putin neatly quoted some Western, mainly English politicians', descriptions of the Soviet invasions and annexations following the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact as "justifiable self-defence measures." He used those quotations to back up his assertions, claiming he discovered new documents from the archives. Without formal government decrees, statements, or any other official document, an individual's inadvertent or advertent kind words are not binding. Putin himself relentlessly deploys this tactic to account for the current situation. For example, he repeatedly reminds the West that it promised not to expand NATO after the Cold War as this commitment was binding. However, if we verify this account, some former minister in the German Federal Government and a member of the parliament at the time made such remarks at a reception in Berlin. Who knows if he was drunk or not at the time? 

            In the fall of 1939, Putin cited Stalin's old remarks that the peoples of the three Baltic countries voluntarily joined the Soviet Union with the consent of their elected government as irrefutable evidence. According to the secret pact between Molotov and Ribbentrop, the Soviet Union swallowed Latvia and Estonia while Germany annexed Lithuania. The Soviets annexed Estonia and Latvia just within a few days. When the Germans invaded Poland, they violated the commitments in the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, which contemplated that the two powers should divide Poland into two parts along Vistula and San. In other words, the Germans annexed more territories than fixed before. Following the development, the Soviet Union and Germany revisited the agreement, handing over Lithuania to the Soviets and Germany retaining the Polish territories it had seized earlier. Immediately after this, 20,000 Red Army troops invaded Lithuania and held elections in which only the pro-Soviet "People's Workers' Coalition" participated. That is Putin's so-called "government they founded, voted to join the Soviet Union," and destroyed their very own country! When the Soviets organized such elections in the "Soviet-liberated" Eastern European countries, all the "liberated" peoples unanimously voted to establish communism in their homeland. Putin also proudly noted that Vilnius, which had earlier belonged to Poland, was returned to the Lithuanians. On the other hand, the Lithuanians lament that "while Vilnius belongs to Lithuania, Lithuania belongs to Russia." However, Putin did not mention anything in his op-ed that they suffered a bitter response from their assault on tiny Finland to establish a "Soviet Socialist Republic of Finland." 

            At the end of the op-ed, Putin expressed his gratitude to the United States, Great Britain, and France for their participation in World War II against Germany. He acknowledged that the Lend-Lease was a great help, a novel admission. The Soviets kept the fact dark from their people and often ridiculed the policy through art, literature, and film. While Putin expressed his gratitude for the policy, he also reminded that the Lend-Lease accounted for only 7% of the total arms production of the Soviet Union at the time. I take the fact at face value, considering the mass production of grenades, pistols, machine guns, rifles and artillery pieces in the USSR. However, it is hard to deny that the Lend-Lease supplied more sophisticated war materials such as automobiles, aircraft, and engines to the Soviet Union, a far technologically backward country then. Even Stalin admitted, "We would have lost this war without your technical assistance," during the Tehran Conference. Even after the war ended, Mikoyan said, “We lost everything in 1941. It’s hard to say what would have happened if it hadn’t been for the huge amount of weapons, equipment, food, clothing, and other supplies supplied through Lend-Lease.” Even Great Britain, which was fighting Germany, was second only to the United States regarding aid to the Soviets. Canada also provided significant assistance. This large loan was not repaid due to the Cold War that began after the war.

            I want to make it clear in this piece that no one is going to deny the heroic struggle of the people of the USSR against Nazism and Fascism, bearing the brunt of the battle by suffering massive losses for the sake of Victory. The Russians played a key role in defeating the common enemy at the cost of a staggering 26 million lives. No one denies this. One of the main objectives of Hitler's war was to capture the oil fields in Arabia and Baku. However, the seed of the Nazi defeat was sown when the Russians succeeded in disrupting Hitler's aim in Stalingrad. At the same time, the British and French jointly defeated Rommel's army in North Africa and thwarted Hitler's objectives. Righteous peoples of the world joined hands and succeeded in defeating the most ruthless and disgusting enemy that has ever befallen the entire human history. 

            As he is accustomed to the official Soviet propaganda, which described the "Great Patriotic War" rather than World War II, covering the period between 1941 and 1945 only, it is reasonable for Putin to be disturbed by the emergence of different accounts of the war today. After all, I think the op-ed is not about the historical truth but his "sincere remarks" for his people. 

            Especially he gets disturbed whenever the so-called "liberated" satellite peoples of the former Soviet Union now argue that they were not liberated but went from one country's oppression to another. From a historical point of view, while it is true that the Soviets liberated those peoples from the German occupation, the Soviets themselves turned out to be occupiers, too. That is self-evident from the examples of East Germany in 1953, Hungary in 1956, Czechoslovakia in 1968, and Poland in 1981. As one of the loyal allies of the Soviet Union during the communist era, the Bulgarians now say, "The Red Army did not liberate us. Suddenly, the Red Army took over us when we were perfectly fine."