Posted on 08/25/2019 6:48:46 PM PDT by CondoleezzaProtege
As Europe marks 80 years of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, which carved up eastern Europe between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, Russia is trying to defend the agreement again. There is no political benefit to doing this. President Vladimir Putin needs to abandon his Stalinist inheritance of a foreign policy based solely on national interest.
If Moscow needed any reminder that many in eastern Europe still hold the treaty against it and still consider it a threat, plenty came on the anniversary. The governments of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Romania – the countries directly affected by the pact’s secret protocol – issued a joint statement saying the document “sparked World War II and doomed half of Europe to decades of misery.”
Russia is fighting back. In Moscow, the original of the treaty is now exhibited alongside documents relating to both the 1938 Munich Agreement, where British and French leaders sanctioned the Nazi annexation of the Sudetenland, and Poland’s subsequent invasion of part of Czechoslovakia.
At the opening of the exhibition earlier this week, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov spoke of Britain and France’s treachery: By cozying up to Hitler, they forced the Soviet Union to sign a deal with the Nazis to ensure its own security, he said.
In 1989, the Soviet Union, too, officially condemned the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact — but subsequent Russian communications about it, including an entire article signed by Putin himself in the Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza, have come with the caveat that lots of others were at it, too.
These excuses are a major reason other European countries don’t trust Russia: To them, Putin and his subordinates are saying that Moscow would do something like this all over again if its interests dictated it, small countries be damned.
(Excerpt) Read more at themoscowtimes.com ...
I am not trying to be pcecise on enrire dates but at some point they have controlled North Cali, Iran and Korea. My own relative was a Soviet officer in Iran and being positively Jewish had to solve numerous Muslim disputes between his mostly Sunni Muslim Soviet troops and Shia Iranian locals.
Iran, California, etc. had Russian trading posts at best - mostly temporary. They were never part of Catherine’s the great empire
That’s one of many takes on it. The Spanish has different opinion”:)
Yeah, if they ever do that then take Lenin’s mummified ass and put him ground where his stinking , murderous ideology put millions of others.
Bullshit. Utter and complete bullshit. For months before June 1941 Churchill was warning Stalin of Hitlers intentions and Stalin refused to believe him. The Russians got the Baltic States of out the pact, an invitation to invade eastern Poland , which they did and a free hand in raping Finland.
The Russians has some spats over California with Spain before US
That being said, the World would have been much better place if the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth had survived as a European power.
Stalin wasn’t going to be ready until 1943. He believed as long as he did nothing to explicitly provoke Hitler he could hold out until then.
In the meantime, he had hoped England France and Germany would bleed each other dry, thus making the whole continent easy pickings for the Red Army.
That’s why the quick fall of France, turned out to be somewhat of a “blessing in disguise”.
My opinion is that the PLC was doomed from the moment it took on the Vasa kings.
Because of the Vasa kings, they got embroiled in the Swedish throne dispute - leading to the Swedish deluge where the Swedes killed 40% of the population (more than the Nazi Germans did!)
And because of the Vasa kings they didn’t absorb Prussia when they could - because the elector was a nephew to the Vasa kings
Stalin’s problem was he was afraid to look like an agressor. He knew full well Hitler would cross him but he didn’t want any bad PR.
His purge of the military didn’t help as well. Every experienced officer was replaced with women and minorities thankful to the party for their promotion.
Loyality to the party was a determining factor and not military performance for a career at the time.
Finnish campaign was a good example on the results of the purges and ‘the new look’ of the military and initial German invasion too.
‘Do not respond to provocations’ was the marching order on June 1941 and everyone took it too serious. Political appointees commanders feared Stalin more than they feared the Germans and it brought their annihilation in the first days of war.
Exactly right. Look at modern Ukraine and you see Poland in between 17-20th centuries. Unimaginable corruption, overreaching in foreign policy and a total neglect of vital domestic affairs.
Ukraine does not resemble Poland between the 17th and 20th century.
The corruption in the lands that were “Poland” were far less than in neighbouring states.
Overreaching in foreign policy? Rather under-reaching in the case of Poland as I pointed out above.
>>The reason is that everyone saw Naziism and Communism as two sides of the same coin, which is what they WERE.
Spot on, along with the rest of your post.
There’s a 2-paragraph Hayek quote on my FR profile page that directly illustrates this. It’s the 3rd one down, two paragraphs. Humor me and read it, it really made some light bulbs go off in my head. Reading that was when I quit believing the big lie of the American Left that Hitler was “right wing”.
it is a good and accurate observation by Hayek.
Communism, naziism - both emphasising state control over everything include thoughts and live itself.
Both of them are totalitarian, militaristic, anti-life.
The Poles were stuck between two monsters.
I am reading about the Warsaw Uprising once more and it is striking that even in 1944 the Poles said “both of these are evil, we cannot ally ourselves with the Soviets - one monster - to fight another monster or we will lose our souls. Far better to fight and lose our bodies”
>>both emphasising state control over everything include thoughts and live itself.
There’s a great new (long) article by Theodore Dalrymple that discusses how this aspect of the Czars paved the way for the Marxists in Russia. Worthwhile.
How To Read A Society
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/3774745/posts
It is hard to argue yet there is still bad blood over Soviet non-intervention in 1944.
They certainly expected another outcome.
And generally speaking Polish soul is alive and well today. In many senses thanks to the fact that the Soviets prevailed over Nazi.
Good article, thank you.
The polish intellectuals of the hyper nationalist lot also think that Russia is more Mongolic than anything.
The Tsardom was a Mongolic despotism unlike Veliky Novogorod or the anarchy of Kievan Rus
communism just took over aspects of the Tsardom - the secret police, gulags etc were already in place, not as efficient, but in place.
Naziism in Germany is also a probably outcome of the Prussian work ethic, I guess
The Polish soul survived despite the Soviets, not thanks to the Soviets.
The evil that was the Soviets was no less than that of the Nazis
Now imagine the Nazi prevailed. I am not to ignore common features between the Soviets and the Nazi but to say they are totally equivalent is not correct.
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