USSR as Legal Successor to Russian Empire had Every Right to Retake Baltic States, Poland and Finland, Shishkin Say

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 9 – The true meaning and disturbing implications of Vladimir Putin’s repeated insistence on the historical continuity of the Russian state from medieval princes to tsars to commissars to himself is on view in the latest Moscow discussion about the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and its secret protocols.

            According to Igor Shishkin, “the USSR (the legal successor of the Russian Empire) had the right, and the Soviet government was obligated to restore the territorial integrity of the state, to return to itself lands seized by separatists (the Baltic states, the Finns and the Poles) and other countries (Romania)” (regnum.ru/news/polit/2907978.html). 

            Those territories along Russia’s western borders, the deputy director of the Moscow Institute for the CIS Countries, were “vitally necessary for ensuring the security of the Soviet Union. One must thus either be proud of these actions of Stalin or deny the right of Russia to exist. There is no third possibility.” 

            Last year, on the 80^th anniversary of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, which made the return of most of these territories possible, senior Russian Federation officials made it clear that they viewed the pact as “an achievement of Soviet diplomacy about which one must be proud.”  That is the correct position, Shishkin says; but in the intervening year, there has been a change.

            Instead of promoting the Pact as a glorious achievement, ever more Moscow commentators are justifying it by saying that “everyone” was reaching what agreements they could with Hitler to protect their interests and thus Stalin thus shouldn’t be criticized for doing exactly what they had done.

            And Shishkin suggests that there is “a great danger” that such “everyone did it” may inform the essay on the causes of World War II that Vladimir Putin has said he is preparing.  That would be a major mistake because there is a big difference between taking pride and saying everyone was doing the same thing.

            “To some,” he says, “these justifications may seem better than repentant speeches about ‘the amoral” and ‘criminal’ Pact. But in reality, the difference is not a principled one.”  The difference that must be insisted upon is that the Pact was a great achievement and not a shameful, even criminal deal as the West still insists.

            At the time of the signing of the Pact and until June 22, 1941, Shishkin says, “for the USSR, Hitler was the legitimate head of one of the European great powers. A potential and even probable opponent? No doubt. But potential and even probable opponents at the very same moment for our country were France and Great Britain.”

            And yes, it is true, “at the moment of the conclusion of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, Hitler had joined Austria to the reich and seized the Czech Republic (bloodlessly). But President Bush Junior unleashed war against Iraq which led to the deaths of almost a million peaceful Iraqi citizens.” That doesn’t mean he couldn’t seek arms control agreements with Moscow.

            No one in Moscow in 1939 doubted that Hitler was planning to attack Poland, and the Soviet government offered to help Poland only to be rebuffed, Shishkin continues.

            And “there is no doubt that at the moment of signing the Non-Aggression Pact … there existed in the Third Reich open discrimination backed by laws of the Jewish population which had already suffered Kristallnacht. But discrimination just as open against the Negro population was at that time in the US, and lynchings were an everyday event for democratic America.”

            One must ask “if it is amoral to conclude agreements with the anti-Semitic Hitler, why isn’t it amoral to form an alliance with the racist Roosevelt and sing agreements with him at Tehran and Yalta?” Shishkin asks rhetorically.

            What was taking place with the 1939 Pact was a delineation of the spheres of influence of two powers. “Such divisions were, are and will be. Now the West sharply speaks against the principle of ‘spheres of influence’ but only because after the collapse of the USSR, it defined as being in its sphere of influence the entire globe.”

            “But the imperialistic interests of America and its partners are not the norm of international law,” the Moscow analyst says. “The multi-polar world is being restored, and spheres of influence have become the new normal practice in the relationships of great powers, something capable of reducing the level of international tension.”

            “Therefore,” he argues, it is “stupid” to justify what Stalin did with the Pact “and even more to repent for the delineation in 1939 of spheres of influence with Germany.”

            Instead, Shishkin suggests, Russians should celebrate the Pact as a triumph, one that kept the Western powers from provoking a Soviet-German or Soviet-Japanese war earlier, that secured the return of “territories torn away after the revolution and increase strategic depth in the Western direction,” and even created the basis for the Big Three Alliance in World War II.

            Because it achieved these things, the Moscow writer says, it will always be hated “by all foreign and domestic enemies of Russia. To engage in efforts to justify it is to stand in one rank with them.”