The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact between Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Soviet Union, an accord which opened the way to World War II in Europe and which cost the Baltic countries their independence for 50 years, should be a source of pride rather than shame for Russians, according to an Internet magazine directed at veterans of Russia’s elite special forces.
Such a view certainly does not reflect mainstream opinion in Russia today. Indeed, its author is notorious for his pro-Stalinist writings – including an effort three years ago to justify Stalin’s deportation of nationalities at the end of World War II. But the appearance of the current article in this forum does suggests that it may have some broader support within the Russian security community.
Given both the increasing role of that community within the Russian government as a whole and the likelihood that at least some in that community will extract certain lessons from this article on how they should approach some current problems, these views may affect policy outcomes even if they are unlikely to define them.
In an 8500-word article in the October issue of „Spetsnaz Rossii” - available here - Igor Pykhalov uses his title to ask rhetorically „Is It Necessary to Be Ashamed of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact?” His answer is a clear and unqualified „no.”
Much of Pykhalov’s argument will be familiar to students of earlier Soviet and Russian commentaries on the pact: The Soviet government couldn’t trust the West because of its behaviour at Munich. Moscow needed to win time in order to build up its own forces. And it was already confronting a serious challenge in the east from Japan.
But in the course of his heavily-footnoted essay, Pykhalov pointedly adds three additional notes to this discourse, each of which is worth noting because of what the clues it provides about how at least some in Moscow are thinking about how to deal with Eastern Europe and the West’s relationship with that region.
First, Pykhalov suggests that German demands about the Danzig corridor were justified and that Poland should have agreed to them. Specifically he writes: „However negatively we relate to Hitler, his first two demands [that Poland transfer to German control Danzig and that Warsaw agree to the construction of extraterritorial rail and highway links between Germany proper and East Prussia] are difficult to describe as being without foundation..”
Indeed, Pykhalov says, Berlin’s demands were „extremely moderate,” and Poland should have at least been willing to talk about them. Given Moscow’s current complaints about transit arrangements across Lithuania between Russia and Kaliningrad, Pykhalov’s conclusion is especially troubling.
Second, the Western democracies encouraged both Czechoslovakia and Poland to take a harder line against Moscow than either of them could sustain unless the West supported them fully, something the Western powers proved themselves unwilling to do in a consistent fashion until after the war began.
Czechoslovakia represented a clear object lesson in this regard, Pykhalov continues. It „was the favourite child of the Entente, the only democratic country in Eastern Europe and the true and devoted ally of Paris and London.” But as Munich proved, the West was prepared to sell it out, a lesson that was not lost on Soviet leader Joseph Stalin.
That argument may take on contemporary relevance for some given Moscow’s current pressure on Estonia and Latvia concerning the status of ethnic Russians in those two Baltic countries and Russia’s ongoing effort to cause European countries to back away from their support of these new EU members in order to win favor with Russia.
And third, Pykhalov argues, the most important reason for viewing the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in a positive light is that it effectively destroyed the Anti-Comintern Pact. As a result, Japan decided to move against the United States rather than the Soviet Union, a decision that spared the USSR a two-front war and allowed Moscow to win World War II „on the diplomatic front.”
Stalin’s willingness and ability to shift his foreign policy course dramatically and unexpectedly made that possible because his approach forced other powers to fight with one another before confronting the Soviet Union and thus it gave Moscow the „chance to enter the war later than the others and retain[ed] for itself a certain freedom of choice as to whose side it would support.”
Readers of „Spetsnaz Rossii” are likely to find this realpolitik argument especially attractive, suggesting as it does that Russia should be ready and willing to make dramatic shifts in its foreign policy line to achieve its goals. But precisely because of that possibility, Pykhalov’s argument on this point may be for almost everyone else the most disturbing of all.
(Via MAK)
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