Paul
Goble
Staunton, June 2 – The publication
of the facsimile of the Russian original of the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact
now is no accident, a Russian and a Ukrainian analyst argue. Instead, it is
intended to send a message to the West that it must make concessions to the
Kremlin’s position in order to avoid a new and this time nuclear war.
While the text of the Hitler-Stalin
pact has been available from the German originals since the 1940s and the
Russian text has been transcribed and published before, the appearance of the
facsimile has attracted wide attention. (See historyfoundation.ru/2019/05/31/pakt/;
and for a discussion, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2019/06/for-first-time-moscow-publishes.html).
The biggest question on the minds of
most is why did Moscow decide to publish this now. Boris Sokolov, a Russian
commentator (graniru.org/opinion/sokolov/m.276512.html),
and Ukrainian analyst Aleksandr Kovalenko (sprotyv.info/analitica/zachem-rossiya-imenno-sejchas-rassekretila-pakt-molotova-ribbentropa) have provided some early answers.
According
to Sokolov, it might appear that the publication of this facsimile now would be
of “purely academic interest,” but “the context in which this publication has
appeared is very curious.” And it is made more so by the accompanying Russian
commentaries which suggest that the events of 1939 have “parallels with today.”
The
Grani commentator says that these
commentaries suggest that in 1939 Stalin did everything he could to achieve
collective security in Europe against Hitler but that the West let him down and
so forced him into this deal to buy time to build up the Soviet Union’s defenses
before Hitler’s inevitable attack.
That
is the position Moscow has long taken, ignoring that the deal with Hitler
allowed Stalin to occupy significant portions of Eastern Europe and that after Molotov-Ribbentrop,
Hitler not only had a free hand to attack other European countries but was
provided with massive assistance from the Soviet Union of various kinds.
“But
the most interesting thing here is something else” in the current context,
Sokolov says. Those who have published the facsimile are “in fact threatening
the Western powers with a new world war, following Putin who already had
threatened the West with a thermo-nuclear Armageddon.”
The
message to the West is straightforward, he continues. You “didn’t capitulate to
us on our conditions in 1939 and you got World War II. And now if you do not
agree to form collective security on our conditions by forgetting about the
occupation of Crimea and the Donbass, you will get a Third World War, which
will be a thermo-nuclear one.”
Kovalenko,
an analyst for the Information Resistance Group in Ukraine, argues in a similar
vein but suggests that the publication of the facsimile now is all about what
Moscow hopes to achieve in Ukraine by using its right-wing nationalist agents
in place in Europe whose visions of international relations recall those of
many in the 1930s.
Publication
of the facsimile of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and especially of its secret
protocols serves as a reminder about a world that was based on the delimitation
of spheres of influence in Europe, exactly what Stalin wanted then and exactly what
Putin wants at the present time.
According
to Kovalenko, “the declassification of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact is one of the
elements of Moscow’s operation intended to promote the federalization (dismemberment)
of Ukraine” not only by suggesting the West must accept Russian aggression in Ukraine
but by promoting the designs of Moscow-financed East European nationalists on
Ukrainian territory.
The
actions of these people, the Ukrainian analyst continues, “will distract the West
from Moscow’s actions in the east of Ukraine and give Moscow the basis to say
to the West that you see the western territories just like the eastern ones and
Crimea, which were artificially included in Soviet times with present-day
Ukraine, want to be restored to their motherlands.”
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