Re-examining the Nazi-Soviet Pact 70 Years On

David Marples

August 23 marks the 70th anniversary of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, a nonaggression treaty between the two totalitarian powers of USSR and Nazi-Germany, as well as a secret protocol that divided Eastern Europe into spheres of influence between Hitler and Stalin.

In May 2009, Russian president Dmitry Medvedev authorized a commission to investigate cases of historical revisionism of the Second World War to the detriment of Russia. The move followed the approval a year ago of new school textbooks in Russia that reassessed the role of Stalin, acknowledging that he made some errors but noting in turn his achievements and successes, particularly in the war years. Taken together they symbolize the new Russian policy of identifying contemporary Russia with the former Soviet regime.

Last month, Russia responded furiously to a proposal by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) to declare the date August 23 one of commemoration of the victims of Fascism and Communism. In Moscow’s view, it is not possible to equate the evils of Nazism with Stalin’s regime.

A recent article in Vesti Nedeli by Il’ya Kanavin (June 21) also focused on the Pact, citing historian Natalya Narochnitskaya’s view that by the terms of the Pact, the USSR was only regaining territories that were formerly part of the Russian Empire. Citing this same author, Kanavin maintains that Stalin was obliged to make a deal with Hitler for the following reasons.

First, it was essential to keep the German army as far from the Soviet border as possible as the USSR was at war with Imperial Japan in the Far East and could not be fighting on two fronts simultaneously.

Second, Germany and Poland to that point were in close collusion and could even be termed allies, based on the agreement of 1934, that contained secret clauses on mutual military aid. He emphasizes that such secret protocols were a staple of treaties in this period.

Third, with the removal of some 38,000 Soviet officers during the Purges, Stalin needed time to train new military leaders and produce more arms.

Fourth, Stalin was isolated because the only potential allies, Britain and France, had no intention of reaching an agreement with the USSR. A year earlier the two democratic countries had participated in the notorious Munich agreement that led to the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia through the policy of appeasement. Only Churchill opposed Hitler but world leaders were allegedly more afraid of Stalin than the German dictator.

Lastly, Kanavin maintains that the Soviet Union should not take be blamed for permitting Hitler a free hand in his assigned sector of Poland. Stalin then had little choice but to sign the agreement, in full knowledge that he was only postponing the conflict.

These arguments can be questioned on a number of grounds, and not least because they distinguish between a rapacious Hitler regime and a defensive-minded and implicitly benign Stalin government that eventually would bear the brunt of the war.

The comment that Stalin was occupying only territories formerly under the Russian Empire is inaccurate. In the summer of 1940, for example, after forcing the Romanians out of Bessarabia, Stalin also occupied northern Bukovina (today it is the Chernovtsy Oblast of Ukraine) that had never been under Russian rule. When Molotov visited Germany late in 1940 he made several more territorial demands that reportedly led Hitler to accelerate plans for the invasion of the USSR.

Eastern Poland’s Volhynia region was part of the Russian Empire but Eastern Galicia had only been under Russian rule briefly during the First World War. It is hard to perceive acquisition of these territories as anything other than the westward expansion of the USSR.

But it is the assault on the annexed population that belies the arguments of Kanavin and Narochnitskaya, and particularly because there are several instances of collaboration between the two occupying powers. Both systematically eradicated the Polish population—the Nazis overtly and the Soviets through deportations and secret executions in forests such as Katyn. More than 15,000 Polish officers were executed.

Stalin, however, claimed to be liberating subject populations—Ukrainians and Belarusians—who wished to join the USSR. The Soviet advance only took place 16 days after the German invasion of Western Poland. In this way the Russian side did little fighting—only in Grodno did the Poles offer much resistance—and was able to pose as a friendly power.

However, having eliminated all vestiges of Polish rule, the new government organized mass deportations of Ukrainians, Belarusians, and Jews in 1940 and 1941. A similar policy was deployed after the USSR occupied the three Baltic States in the summer of 1940.

President Medvedev and Russian historians have to face a few home truths. Even Kanavin concedes that the mass execution of Red Army officers weakened the Soviet military. But this action was part of the Terror that the Stalin regime applied both domestically and in newly conquered territories, committing mass murders on an epic scale. Today, the Baltic States consider the entire period 1940-90 to have been one of Soviet occupation. That is why their citizens initially welcomed the Germans in the summer of 1941. Large sectors of Western Ukraine remain alienated from Moscow today for the same reason.

By the agreement of August 23, 1939, two dictators acted in Machiavellian fashion. It is facile to suggest that Stalin should be regarded differently because he emerged as a victorious war leader responsible for the defeat of Fascism. His naïve trust in Hitler, manifested by the Treaty, also was responsible for the Soviet failure to respond in the first days of the ‘Great Patriotic War’ leading to the mass loss of territory and capture of millions of Soviet citizens.

August 23 was a dark day for Russia, as it was for the rest of Europe and that is how it should be remembered.

[This article first appeared in the Moscow Times, August 20, 2009]

Russian Duma’s Discussion of Second World War Revisionism in the Near Abroad States

By Ilya Khineiko

In Russia as well in other post-Soviet states, history, particularly the history of the Second World War, is not merely a matter of academic debate. Politicians from the highest echelons of power often find it instrumental to dwell on controversial historical issues. Last October, in a letter sent to the Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko, his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev weighed in on the proper interpretation of the Ukrainian Famine, the Holodomor. In December 2008, the Russian parliament decided to move in a similar direction, creating a working group to draft a new law against the rehabilitation of Nazism and Nazi collaborators in the post-Soviet states. Chaired by deputy head of the Duma’s Committee for CIS Affairs, Konstantin Zatulin, the group produced a legislative draft proposal with a lengthy title “On the countermeasures against the rehabilitation of Nazi criminals and their facilitators in the new independent states on the territory of the former Soviet Union.” It was published by the pro-government news agency Regnum on 20 April 2009 (full Russian text is available here: http://www.regnum.ru/news/1153517.html).

Probably the most striking feature of the bill is the issue of jurisdiction as it explicitly targets Russia’s neighbors. While the notion of universal jurisdiction has gained ground in the past decade, an attempt to direct domestic legislation against a specific set of countries represents a novel approach to international law. Furthermore, according to a Russian legal expert quoted in the Moscow Times, the proposed legislation would violate the Russian Criminal Code as it “only allows penalties for crimes committed in Russia.”

However, even the stated intention to focus on all former Soviet republics is somewhat misleading. In an interview with Radio Liberty, Konstantin Zatulin singled out Latvia, Estonia, and Ukraine where “the attempts to rehabilitate Nazi criminals and their facilitators… have become a matter of state policy”. He admitted that any similar actions in other, more remote, countries, such as Australia for example, would be of no concern to the bill’s authors. According to Radio Liberty, many Verkhovna Rada deputies are convinced that the bill is directed primarily against Ukraine. This comes as no surprise as Zatulin’s troubled relationship with Ukrainian authorities is well known. In July 2008 he was denied entry into Ukraine. Ukrainian Security Chief Valentyn Nalyvaychenko later explained that Zatulin had violated a Ukrainian law on the status of a foreigner during a previous visit to Ukraine when he made statements regarding the country’s territorial integrity.

The reaction of Ukrainian parliamentarians has been uniformly negative. Yuri Kostenko from Our Ukraine sharply criticized the bill, saying that it would turn Russia into a new “gendarme of Europe.” Even members of the ostensibly pro-Russian Party of Regions were not impressed. According to Valery Konovalyuk, as far as the international law is concerned, such legislative initiative does not represent a sound approach. In the context of Russian-Ukrainian relations, the bill can be considered a response to the draft law against Holodomor denial that President Viktor Yushchenko submitted to the Verkhovna Rada in December 2008. Although the Ukrainian bill does not attempt to prosecute people outside Ukraine, it proposes to imprison those who deny the genocidal character of the Holodomor against the Ukrainian people, an interpretation vigorously contested by Russia’s authorities and most Russian historians.

Perhaps the most ambiguous and controversial aspect of the new legislation is its definition of what constitutes a rehabilitation of Nazism and who should be deemed Nazi facilitators. The draft states that a Nazi facilitator (posobnik) is someone who served in or collaborated with the German occupation administration on the territory of the USSR voluntarily or as a result of mobilization (sic! – I.Kh.). Rehabilitation of Nazism is defined as “any actions aimed at… the reinstatement of rights, glorification, [as well as any attempts] to restore reputation of Nazi criminals and facilitators and their organizations by bestowing them with benefits, state or societal awards and to deny Nazi genocide and crimes against humanity”. This incredibly vague definition leaves a lot of room for interpretation, and obfuscates the true intentions of the bill’s authors, namely to criminalize any opinion that questions the role of the USSR in the Second World War. According to Konstantin Zatulin, “There were no third forces in the Second World War. The logic of war compelled people either to side with Nazi Germany and then start shooting at Soviet soldiers or to choose the side of the anti-Hitler coalition.” Zatulin’s definition does not differ substantially from the old Soviet line that equated anti-Soviet resistance with Nazi collaborationism. That the struggle against alleged ‘rehabilitation of Nazism’ is being used to defend the Soviet past and its remaining symbols is revealed in Zatulin’s statement made in early April. In an interview with the Russian news agency RIA-Novosti, he called the dismantling of the statue of the Soviet Soldier in the city of Stryj in Lviv oblast an outrageous act and promised to accelerate work on the appropriate legislation.

While the draft bill purports to target equally Russian citizens and citizens of other post-Soviet states, it is unlikely that the legislation would be ever applied against the rise of pro-Nazi sentiment in Russia itself. In an ironic twist of events, a few days after the bill’s publication, fans of the Russian soccer club Spartak Moscow unveiled a banner commemorating the anniversary of Hitler’s birthday during a game in the Russian Premier League. Understandably, such an act caused outrage among the Russian public and was roundly condemned. However, a Duma representative, Gennady Gudkov, stated that the perpetrators could only be fined under the current legislation, being seemingly unaware of the proposed bill that seeks to criminalize precisely such actions. Indeed, should this bill be adopted, its main brunt will likely be directed not at individuals but at ‘hostile’ states. As such it will just serve as another weapon in the growing conflict between Russia and Ukraine, in which history is just another battlefield.

Ukrainian President declares national day to remember victims of communist repressions

On the 70th anniversary of the Great Terror Yushchenko signs a decree to honor the memory of the victims of communist repressions

By Ilya Khineyko

In the midst of his continuing standoff with the Verkhovna Rada, President Viktor Yushchenko took a step that supersedes the current political crisis. In a presidential decree signed on May 21 the president proposed to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the Great Terror of 1937-1938 by making the third Sunday of May an annual Day of Remembrance for the victims of political repressions by the Soviet regime. The announcement was made the next day when Yushchenko visited the Bykivnia memorial site on the outskirts of Kyiv where those executed by NKVD were buried between 1936 and 1941. It was during the Perestroika era when the information regarding mass burials of the victims of Stalinist terror such as Kurapaty in Belarus or Levashovo near Leningrad was made public, which ultimately played an important role in the unraveling of the Soviet system.