Replies

Russia has generally sought to minimize and relativize Stalin's decision to align himself with Hitler in 1939. Russian President Vladimir Putin once condemned the pact as “immoral,” but has downplayed its significance on the few occasions he has mentioned it in recent years.

Discussion of the secret protocols — which open up the issue of the Soviet invasion and occupation of Poland, just days after Germany's invasion from the west — are a taboo topic.
Russia has largely adopted the Soviet narrative: World War II began not with the widely held start date of September 1, 1939, when Nazi forces attacked Poland, but in 1941, when Hitler unleashed his forces on the Soviet Union.

“There's not much to be gained for Moscow in talking about 1939. Any focus on the pact contradicts the myth of the ‘Great Patriotic War’, which portrays the U.S.S.R. as a victim and lets the war begin in 1941,” explained Jan Claas Behrends, a historian at the Center for Contemporary History in Potsdam, near Berlin. “If you put the spotlight on 1939 it deconstructs this essential narrative.”
Glorifying elements of the Soviet past and blurring the lines over Stalin's brutal legacy, critics say, has become a political tool for Putin, who has exploited nationalism to prop up his rule, now entering its third decade.

Efforts to whitewash Stalin's crimes have apparently also influenced Russians’ views of the dictator, who was responsible for killing millions of Soviet citizens: a recent survey showed a record number felt he played a positive role in the country's history.

https://www.rferl.org/a/molotov-ribbentrop-what-do-russians-know-of-key-wwii-pact/30123950.html