Paul Goble
Staunton,
March 26 – Vladimir Putin is “not Yeltsin’s successor but Stalin’s,” and Sergey
Lavrov is the successor of Stalin’s commissar Vyacheslav Molotov, Slava
Rabinovich argues. Consequently, the world must “begin the difficult but
necessary process of excluding Russia from the UN Security Council” just as the
USSR was expelled from the League of Nations.
“The lies of Churkin and Lavrov in the UN General
Assembly and Security Council are impermissible,” the Russian businessman says.
“The lies of Putin to heads of governments are impermissible … The actions of
the Russian Federation towards its neighbors are impermissible. The annexation
of the territory of others is impermissible” (nr2.com.ua/News/world_and_russia/Slava-Rabinovich-Isklyuchit-Rossiyu-iz-OON-trudno-no-nuzhno-93115.html).
Once
again, he says, the world is confronted by “lying scoundrels and international
criminals.” How did it react 76 years ago?
By the
end of 1939, the League of Nations included 40 countries, including the USSR
which had become a member in September 1934 on the basis of a French
initiative. Prior to that time, Moscow had “actively cooperated” with the League
and its various committees and taken part in its negotiations.
But on
November 28, 1939, the USSR denounced the 1920 Tartu Peace Treaty and the 1932
Soviet-Finnish Non-Aggression Pact, and two days later, Moscow began its
invasion of Finland. Helsinki called on the League to take measures to end the
war.
On
December 4, Vyacheslav Molotov, Stalin’s commissar for foreign affairs,
responded that “the Soviet Union is not in a state of war with Finland and does
not threaten the Finnish people because it had concluded on December 2 a Treaty
on Mutual Assistance and Friendship with the government of a newly created
Finnish Democratic Republic (FDR).
According to
Molotov, the Soviet Union was simply working with the FDR to “liquidate” the
threats to peace which had been “created in Finland by its former rulers,” who
he said had lost the authority to run the country and with whom Moscow would no
longer negotiate. The USSR, he said, would from then on talk only with the FDR.
If the League of Nations took up this issue on the basis
of Helsinki’s complaints, Molotov said, the USSR would not participate in its
sessions.
But the League, under pressure from demonstrations across
Europe against Moscow’s obvious aggression and attacks on civilian targets in
Finland, decided to go ahead. On December 14, it convened the 20th
session of the Assembly of the League of Nations to consider a finding that the
USSR was guilty of aggression as defined by the League in 1933.
Twenty-eight of the 40 member states voted to approve
that finding. Nine abstained, including Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Latvia,
Estonia, Lithuania, Bulgaria, China and Switzerland). But none objected because
those opposed, including the USSR, refused to participate in the meeting.
On the basis of that vote, the Council of the League of
Nations voted to exclude the USSR, condemning “the actions of the USSR directed
against the Finnish state” and calling on the League’s member states to provide
support for Finland.
Moscow reacted by denouncing this action as having
excluded the 183 million people of the Soviet Union from international representation
and by declaring, in the same statement, that the UK and France were supporting
those who had provoked this war and that Moscow was thus now free to provide
more assistance to its allies fighting inside Finland.
As Rabinovich points out, “history is repeating itself,”
albeit so far in part, with the leaders of the member states of the League of
Nations showing more commitment to the founding principles of that organization
than have the leaders of the member states of the United Nations to its
principles now.
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