Vladimir Putin, in response to a question posed to him at a meeting with young historians last week: ...there are still arguments about the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, and the Soviet Union is blamed for dividing Poland. But what did Poland itself do, when the Germans invaded Czechoslovakia? It took part of Czechoslovakia. It did this itself. And then, in turn, the same thing happened to Poland. I do not want to blame anyone here, but serious studies should show that these were the foreign policy methods at the time. The Soviet Union signed a non-aggression agreement with Germany. They say, “Oh, how bad.” But what is so bad about it, if the Soviet Union did not want to fight? What is so bad? Moreover, even knowing about the inevitability of war, supposing that it could happen, the Soviet Union desperately needed time to modernise its army. This spontaneous response, according to Timothy Snyder, constitutes a rehabilitation of the pact on Putins part, and is indicative of how far Putins rhetoric has strayed from basic moral decency. Snyder also suggests that Putin today is acting in a way similar to Stalin in 1939, effectively working towards the overthrow of the entire European legal order. He discusses the pact in terms of the notion - contested and usually rejected by experts - that Stalins primary motivation was to foster revolutions in the West. Putins own remarks suggest that he views the pact primarily as historians typically understand it, to buy time and keep the USSR out of the war for as long as possible. Synder does not mention the fact that the USSR had been negotiating a collective security arrangement with Britain and France for months before signing the pact, but Soviet leaders were convinced that Britain was not serious about fighting Germany. Putins Russia is not exactly a benign power, but when well-respected professional historians simplify the past and misrepresent the present, it doesnt bode well for the future.
Posted on: Thu, 13 Nov 2014 14:00:40 +0000
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