Gorbachev Wanted to Block Denunciation of Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact's Secret Protocols, Tsipko Says New Memoir Shows

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 9 – In his recent memoirs, Igor Smirnov, who in 1985-1990 worked as an aide to Vadim Medvedev on the staff of the CPSU Central Committee, says that Mikhail Gorbachev wanted to block the denunciation of the secret protocols of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact but was blocked by Medvedev from doing so.

            As senior Russian commentator Aleksandr Tsipko, who worked with all three, writes in a new article on the way in which perestroika evolved, says the key role Medvedev played was something the latter did not stress in his own 2015 memoirs but that is now coming to light thanks to Smirnov’s (ng.ru/ideas/2026-04-09/7_9472_leader.html).

            Tsipko points out that as Smirnov now recounts, “it was not Gorbachev but rather Vadim Medvedev who initiated the condemnation by the USSR Council of Peoples’ Deputies in 1989 of the secret protocols to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact” which partitioned Eastern Europe between the two dictatorships.

            According to Tsipko, the most unexpected aspect of this for him is the fact that “Medvedev has to argue with Gorbachev for the right of the Congress of Peoples’ Deputies to condemn these secret protocols” because “Gorbachev was categorically opposed to accusing Stalin of collaborating with Hitler and did everything he could to conceal the originals of the protocols.” (On their eventual publication, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2019/06/for-first-time-moscow-publishes.html.)

            And the Russian commentator quotes Smirnov: “Valery Boldin—who at the time served as head of the General Department of the CPSU Central Committee (and later as Chief of Staff to the President of the USSR)—recalls how, at Gorbachev’s request, he effortlessly located the originals of the secret protocols within the archives of the CPSU Central Committee Politburo.”

            “Upon seeing them -- along with a map of a Poland divided into two parts, bearing Stalin’s characteristic three-letter signature, ‘I. St.’—Gorbachev remarked: ‘There is no need to show anything to anyone. I will personally inform those who need to know.’ Later, he demanded that they be destroyed; Boldin, however, refused to do so without a specific official directive.”

            According to Tsipko who is relying in this case both on Smirnov’s memoirs and his own recollections, “a similar story unfolded regarding the public disclosure of the decision made by Stalin and members of the CPSU Central Committee Politburo to organize the execution of Polish prisoner-of-war officers in Katyn.”