Marching in step

Window on Eurasia notes that

Sixty-nine years ago today, Soviet and Nazi German soldiers marched together in a military parade in Brest, just one month after Hitler and Stalin had concluded the non-aggression pact that made their countries allies, opened the way for World War II in Europe, and led to Moscow’s occupation of half the continent for 50 years.

That event and even more that alliance – which ended when Hitler invaded the USSR almost two years later -- are not things that most Russians are inclined to recall, especially because of the parallels such recollections invite between the policies of the Soviet government and those of the Nazi one.