Anna Borshchevskaya: Putin The Historian
[Anna Borshchevskaya is a research assistant at the Peter G. Peterson Institute for International Economics.]
On Aug. 31, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin published an open letter in which, for the first time, he condemned as immoral the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact that divided much of Eastern Europe into Soviet and Nazi spheres of influence. But despite this significant and surprising departure from Russia's old policies, rather than signal a new era of conciliation seven decades after Stalin's deal with Hitler, Putin's essay, recently republished in Poland's Gazeta Wyborcza, suggests a worrying remnant of Soviet thinking.
While his tone is softer than in the past, Putin never apologizes to the Polish people for Soviet actions in World War II. Indeed, his predecessor Boris Yeltsin's gestures of atonement were more significant. Putin instead suggests that the Soviet Union had little choice but to strike a deal with Nazi Germany and blames instead the rise of Hitler and Nazi power on the humiliation the Treaty of Versailles placed on Germany as well as France and Britain's earlier pacts with Hitler. As misguided as Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and French Prime Minister Édouard Daladier may have been, London and Paris were motivated by peace; Moscow by seizing land to expand Soviet territory.
For the first time, Putin acknowledged the 1940 Soviet massacre of Polish officers at Katyn. "Together [with the Polish people], we must keep alive the memory of the victims of this crime," he wrote. However, Putin then immediately diminished the true significance of this crime to the Polish people espousing a revised version of history. "Katyn and Mednoye memorials, just as the tragic fate of the Russian soldiers taken prisoners in Poland during the 1920 war, should become symbols of common grief and mutual pardon."
Equivalency between the episodes is unwarranted. The Red Army soldiers captured toward the end of the Russian civil war died in an epidemic, albeit one exacerbated by poor conditions in prisoner of war camps. The same epidemic killed many Polish soldiers. As deaths mounted, Polish authorities worked to improve conditions. The situation was far different from the Soviet secret police's (NKVD) deliberate slaughter of disarmed soldiers. True reconciliation cannot be built on historical distortions...
... On Sept. 1, international media focused on commemorations marking the 70th anniversary of the start of World War II. On the same day, Russian students began the school year. While world leaders marked the close of a dark chapter in history, Moscow dictates that the chapter not only remains open, but also rewritten and the lessons unlearned.
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On Aug. 31, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin published an open letter in which, for the first time, he condemned as immoral the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact that divided much of Eastern Europe into Soviet and Nazi spheres of influence. But despite this significant and surprising departure from Russia's old policies, rather than signal a new era of conciliation seven decades after Stalin's deal with Hitler, Putin's essay, recently republished in Poland's Gazeta Wyborcza, suggests a worrying remnant of Soviet thinking.
While his tone is softer than in the past, Putin never apologizes to the Polish people for Soviet actions in World War II. Indeed, his predecessor Boris Yeltsin's gestures of atonement were more significant. Putin instead suggests that the Soviet Union had little choice but to strike a deal with Nazi Germany and blames instead the rise of Hitler and Nazi power on the humiliation the Treaty of Versailles placed on Germany as well as France and Britain's earlier pacts with Hitler. As misguided as Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and French Prime Minister Édouard Daladier may have been, London and Paris were motivated by peace; Moscow by seizing land to expand Soviet territory.
For the first time, Putin acknowledged the 1940 Soviet massacre of Polish officers at Katyn. "Together [with the Polish people], we must keep alive the memory of the victims of this crime," he wrote. However, Putin then immediately diminished the true significance of this crime to the Polish people espousing a revised version of history. "Katyn and Mednoye memorials, just as the tragic fate of the Russian soldiers taken prisoners in Poland during the 1920 war, should become symbols of common grief and mutual pardon."
Equivalency between the episodes is unwarranted. The Red Army soldiers captured toward the end of the Russian civil war died in an epidemic, albeit one exacerbated by poor conditions in prisoner of war camps. The same epidemic killed many Polish soldiers. As deaths mounted, Polish authorities worked to improve conditions. The situation was far different from the Soviet secret police's (NKVD) deliberate slaughter of disarmed soldiers. True reconciliation cannot be built on historical distortions...
... On Sept. 1, international media focused on commemorations marking the 70th anniversary of the start of World War II. On the same day, Russian students began the school year. While world leaders marked the close of a dark chapter in history, Moscow dictates that the chapter not only remains open, but also rewritten and the lessons unlearned.