Malicious historical revisionism, the practice of re-reading history and reformulating it, but not based on new studies and evidence, but mainly to “justify” some ideology is clearly a very problematic practice. And it has been practiced many times in the last years, and it spreads strongly through the internet, finding a willing audience to “listen to a new interpretation”, without knowing the real facts in depth.
We only had such a sample of malice on Tuesday, September 17, and indeed from the official account of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which also published an unlikely historical “cooking” video. Which together with the accompanying text says what? How on September 17, 1939 (as a reference to the sad anniversary), the then Soviet Union “launched a military operation in Eastern Poland, to prevent the genocide of the population of Western Belarus and Western Ukraine”.
Let us explain here how historically outrageous and unfortunately fraudulent the above statement-interpretation is:
Indeed on this date the Soviet Union invaded Eastern Poland. He invaded directly and did not “launch a military operation”. Why did he do that? Because as early as September 1, Nazi Germany invaded Poland from the west, which waged a lightning war, thus starting the Second World War.
However, the two countries, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, had a few days earlier, on August 23, 1939, concluded the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact, as it was named by the two foreign ministers. The pact was officially called “German-Soviet Non-Aggression”, and it contained a secret supplementary protocol, which provided for the dismemberment of Poland, i.e. the “intermediate” country between Germany and the USSR, and indeed with a map of the expansion limits between them. Furthermore, the same secret protocol contained an agreement on “spheres of influence” of the two major countries, in Romania, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Finland. In simple words, USSR and Nazi Germany “divided” between them a large part of Eastern Europe.
To place this pact in the historical context: There is a solid argumentation of historical scholars, that this agreement was concluded on the part of the Soviet Union, as an attempt to “brake” the German expansion and aggression that had already been seen as threatening, as the Nazis had already seized in the previous years, by various methods, Austria, Czechoslovakia and had openly expressed their intention to expand towards the East (Hitler’s dream for Germany to win its “vital space”). We are also talking about 1939, that is, a period when all of Europe was trying to find “understanding” with Nazi Germany, in a policy of appeasement, which unfortunately only served to fuel Hitler’s insolence that he can do whatever he wants.
In any case, however, with all the above registered facts, to be in 2024 and for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia to say that “we carried out a military operation in Poland to save the population” is a historical joke and profound cynicism. Why do they do it? It is obvious, they are trying to justify and identify the “military operation” against Ukraine in 2022 (ie a modern invasion) which was done supposedly “to save Russian speakers”, with a fictional “military operation in Poland in 1939” for similar reasons.
So others are true and a huge amount of study has shown and proven them. Where the Soviet Union invaded Poland in 1939, after a deal with the Nazis, the Soviets killed many Poles and arrested hundreds of thousands (with tragic consequences for many of them, but let’s not mince history). And of course it is true that when the Soviet Union accepted the Nazi invasion 2 years later, in 1941, since the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact was of course not respected by Hitler, it made a magnificent and unprecedented resistance and a terrifying sacrifice of people and infrastructure . And it is very much the Soviet blood that first stopped, and then wore down and chased the Nazis to Berlin, so that the Allied victory came in 1945. And it is necessary that this supreme war story of the 20th century be respected and we especially honor, together with her, the peoples of the USSR, who counted close to 20 million dead against the Nazis.
In this whole route, however, today Russia, with its still prominent group of diplomats, is “diving”, mixing the past with the present, doing a selective reading, overlooking very important historical phases and milestones, forgetting the past itself of the USSR (sometimes problematic and sometimes deifying, like almost all states), to try to tell us “we did well and invaded Ukraine now” is naive. And no one is vindicated by history with such cheap tricks of logic (absurdity).
The paradox today? The bitter truth about Russian “constructions” was reminded… by Germany. Which, to the original Russian post, responded from the account of its foreign ministry, publishing the map of partition of Poland, which had been agreed upon by Ribbentrop (minister of Nazi Germany at the time) and Molotov (respectively foreign minister of the USSR), one that is historical document found in official archives. By simply writing “Seriously?”
This “Seriously” is unfortunately what is missing from Russian diplomacy today. Which remains top executives who follow the Soviet analogous tradition, but who are now forced to try to justify Putin’s decisions and Moscow’s nationalist upsurge by producing strange narratives, lest anyone believe them.
And this -malicious- historical revisionism is not only recent, it is since 2020 or so that Putin himself has developed a theory with his public statements that “Poland is to blame for the start of the Second World War” (!). And since then this has been cultivated by Russian media and sympathizers, creating a disturbance in Poland but also in general, about what exactly Moscow seeks to “impress” on the modern public. Is it just a reaction to an equally malevolent Western revisionism that wants to nullify Soviet history (this also exists, unfortunately, and with strong visibility), or is it a harbinger of aggressive extroversion? Something that the invasion of Ukraine, showed, was attempted to be justified, again with Russian constructions of anti-historical arguments.
However, if Russia has valid arguments for the invasion of Ukraine (and not fantasies of national grandeur), let it develop them in international forums, and with serious dialogue. In any case, let’s leave the excavation of a complex history of the interwar period, which exposed the then USSR (as well as Britain and France who also made appeasement agreements with Hitler) and destroyed Poland.
