Paul Goble
Staunton,
September 9 – Moscow has long argued that Russia was
forced to sign the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in August 1939 because Britain and
France were not willing to join an anti-Hitler coalition. Now, it is offering
an additional explanation: it says the Kremlin feared that unless it made a
deal with Hitler, Germany and Poland would jointly attack the USSR.
That
is the substance of documents the Russian defense ministry has released online
under the title “A Fragile Peace on the Brink of War” (pakt1939.mil.ru), a collection that also includes Soviet reports about the enthusiasm of
Ukrainians and Belarusians in Poland about the chance to live in the Soviet
Union.
On
the one hand, this is nothing more than yet another attempt to muddy the waters
about Stalin’s crime in making an alliance with Hitler that opened the way to
World War II in Europe. But on the other, it reflects Moscow’s longstanding
anti-Polish attitudes and its desire to justify the revision of borders in Eastern
Europe the secret protocols of Molotov-Ribbentrop allowed.
According
to one of the documents produced, Moscow had good reason to fear a
German-Polish alliance because it would have given Berlin even more arms and
personnel to invade the Soviet Union. By reaching agreement with Hitler, Stalin
thus prevented a Polish invasion.
The
admittedly selective nature of the documents put online makes this argument
convincing only to those who are prepared to accept anything the Kremlin claims
or who are as anti-Polish as many Russian officials have often been. But this “trove” is already being exploited
to make the points want about 1939.
And
as such, it is less interesting as an historical source than as an indication
of the direction of Moscow’s propaganda line now (e.g., redstar.ru/hrupkij-mir-na-poroge-vojny/
and
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