Polish officers, civil servants and other "enemies of the people", arrested by the Soviet army in the "liberated" Soviet-occupied zone of eastern Poland, September 1939

By Paul Goble, New York, September 2, 2009

Efforts by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and other Russian officials and commentators to justify the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and Stalin’s ill-fated alliance with Hitler because of what British and French leaders had done in Munich highlight a dangerous trend in Russian thinking, according to a Moscow commentator.

Not only was the mendacity of the two actions fundamentally different – the British and French acted shamefully as part of an effort to maintain peace while Stalin acted shamefully to cover his seizure of the territory of neighboring countries, but the lessons the two have learned, Leonid Radzikhovsky says underscore the difference.

In an article in yesterday’s Yezhednevny Zhurnal, the Moscow commentator says that there is now question that both Western Europe and the Soviet Union “conducted themselves in a mendacious fashion in the 1930s” in their dealings with Hitler. But “there is mendacity and mendacity,” both at the time of action and in the lessons those who engage in it ultimately learn.

It is certainly true, he writes, that “Europe handed over Czechoslovakia to Hitler.” But “European politicians did not conclude secret deals and did not seize pieces of foreign territory.” And however cynical their actions, their goal was “an idiotic hope” of keeping the peace, something those who had experienced the first world war felt was essential.

In any case, Radzikhovsky suggests, “the real motives of the USSR [in concluding the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and its secret protocols] were different.” They were “the simple, classical, ‘healthy imperialist’ motives – a secret protocol and the seizure of the territories of others.”

Encouraged by their leaders, Russians still are unwilling to acknowledge that the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact opened the way to war and that it was an imperialist act not only by Berlin but by Moscow. And still worse, they have been encouraged by their leaders to view the cynical politics of force that the Europeans have rejected as still the proper order of the day.

Read the full commentary on Radzikhovsky’s article by longtime specialist on ethnic and religious questions in Eurasia, Mr. Paul Goble, at his blog Window On Euarasia, here.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 3rd, 2009 at 11:27 AM and is filed under Geopolitics, NATO, Russia, Security. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.