In a long essay, the Russian head of state Vladimir Putin outlined his Version of the history of the Second world war. "The war was provoked only by Hitler but also by the policy of the Compliance of the Western powers, through the encirclement of the Soviet Union and the betrayal of Czechoslovakia", summarizes Sławomir Dębski, the longtime head of the national center for Polish-Russian dialogue and understanding (CPRDiP), Putin's Narrative.

What is striking Dębski, is the relativisation of the Hitler-Stalin Pact. It is safe to say that this German-Soviet non-aggression Pact, by the then foreign Ministers of Germany and Russia, Joachim von Ribbentrop and Vyacheslav Molotov, on August 24. August 1939 in Moscow was signed, Hitler had opened the way for the invasion of Poland and the outbreak of the Second world war. This contract has, according to Putin's greater significance in a reading, however, as other contracts of this kind, which have about completed Poland in 1934 with Germany.

but What is concealed by the Soviet and now the Russian side: The Hitler-Stalin Pact contained a secret Protocol, in which the division of Poland and Eastern Europe, as well as the new border between Germany and the Soviet Union was established.

For Sławomir Dębski contains Putin's article "nothing, what we know of the Soviet Propaganda is not already in the forties of the 20th century. Century would have heard". It is going to prove that the Soviet Union was led, of course, a policy of peace, not a country invaded and occupied, says Dębski, who is currently in charge of the Polish Institute of International Affairs (PISM).

Balts decided to "voluntarily"

Wacław Radziwinowicz was since 1997, the Russia correspondent for the Polish daily newspaper "Gazeta Wyborcza", to Moscow with him in 2015 showed. Unlike the PISM Director of the Journalist in Putin's Text, but something New. "You must not blame Moscow, therefore, to have, thanks to the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact, the Baltic States annexed. The Baltic States have 'voluntarily', on the basis of the decisions of their 'democratically elected governments', their republics of the USSR connected. This is the lie that the Russian President is not prevalent earlier and it is probably the only novelty in his Writing," the Polish Russia-expert.

"A Commission of historians from Lithuania and Russia, published at the beginning of the 2000s archival documents to the preparation and implementation of the annexation of the Baltic States," says the historian Ekaterina Makhotkina of the University of Bonn in the DW-interview. "The colleagues have clearly shown that the secret Protocol to the German-Soviet non-aggression Pact Nations was unlawful. Both the Soviet Union as well as Germany have set in determining the fates of small countries on violence and foreign territories divided. That Stalin believed, to have the security of his country improved, may explain the actions of the Kremlin against Poland but by no means justify."

"It has something to do with the present"

Putin's article was originally supposed to be 75. Anniversary of the victory over Hitler-Germany on may 9. May appear to be. The celebrations were due to the Corona of a pandemic on the 24. June moved.

But why would Putin has written his article? The German historian Karl Schlögel, author of the book "The Soviet century", is convinced that have to do with the story. "It has something to do with the present. He exploited the interpretation of History for its current policy. It is the attempt, Poland and the Ukraine and the Baltic States as a reactionary, a nationalist is added and to a large extent also anti-Semitic. It is the attempted isolation of these countries," he says in a DW interview.

In Poland it is assumed that this also has to do with the desire of Poland to the kidneys as many U.S. soldiers on the Vistula river station. 24. June should visit the President of Poland, Andrzej Duda, U.S. President Donald Trump in Washington. It is expected that the current U.S. quota will be increased in Poland, in part with the soldiers to be withdrawn from Germany.

Wacław Radziwinowicz see in Putin's article, rather a response to the Resolution of the European Parliament on the causes of the Second world war in September 2019. The EU Parliament called in it Hitler-Stalin Pact as the immediate reason for the outbreak of the 2. World war. What sounds but for Radziwinowicz particularly troubling: Putin proposes in his essay, a new Format of cooperation of the nuclear powers. "From the history of Putin draws the conclusion that it's time for a new Yalta, a the great powers is merger, to create a new world order."

author: Aureliusz Marek Pedziwol

*The contribution of the "Hitler-Stalin Pact: Putin's geschichtsk suffered on aging," published by Deutsche Welle. Contact with the executives here.

Deutsche Welle

Date Of Update: 19 June 2020, 22:26