Pick Your Version : Rewrite History

"August 23 will mark 80 years since the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany that sparked World War II and doomed half of Europe to decades of misery. The Pact contained the secret protocol which effectively carved up Eastern Europe into spheres of influence."
"This is why on this day proclaimed by the European Parliament as a European Day of Remembrance for Victims of Totalitarian Regimes we remember all those whose deaths and broken lives were a consequence of the crimes perpetrated under the ideology of Nazism and Stalinism."
"Pain and injustice will never fall into oblivion. We will remember."
Joint statement: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania

"Naively calculating that the war would pass them by, the Western powers played a double game. They tried to steer Hitler's aggression eastwards."
"In those conditions, the USSR had to safeguard its own national security by itself."
Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov

"The Soviet Union made massive efforts to lay the groundwork for a collective resistance to Nazism in Germany, made repeated attempts to create an anti-fascist bloc in Europe. All of these attempts failed."
And when the Soviet Union realized that it was being left one-on-one with Hitler's Germany, it took steps to avoid a direct confrontation, and the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was signed."
Russian President Vladimir Putin, 2015

"Putin is saying that annexation of the Baltic states, aggression on Poland, aggression on Romania, on Finland, all of this was not a big deal, a natural part of history, and that is a problem."
"We should ask ourselves why we commemorate all these historical events. Not because these politicians are historians."
"We do it to send a message to our contemporary society about what is right and what is wrong."
Slawomir Debski, political scientist, historian, Director, Centre for Polish-Russian Dialogue and Understanding

German Nazi Foreign Minister Joachim Von Ribbentrop (L), Soviet head of state Joseph Stalin (2nd L) and his Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov (R) are seen on 23 August 1939 in Kremlin in Moscow during the signing of the Treaty of Non-aggression between Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, making the outbreak of war virtually inevitable.AFP/Getty Images

They certainly deserved one another's company, the Black Widow Spider and the Deadly
Scorpion. A pact to ensure they agreed as they attacked and invaded their neighbours in Eastern Europe, a pact to divide the spoils, a pact to make certain that one would not turn on the other. And then, of course, it was set aside, and Nazi Germany set upon Communist Russia, two ideologies, fascism and communism at supposedly opposite ends of the political spectrum, but in reality uncannily alike in their despotism and carnage of the human spirit.

Representatives of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union met in 1939 as a preliminary to World War II. The non-aggression agreement complete with an agreeable formula to loot Europe and divide the spoils between them. Poland, which had undergone so many invasions and entitled 'ownerships' that it could vie with Afghanistan as a wearily war-torn nation, to be shared between them while the fate of Estonia, eastern Finland, Latvia, Lithuania and parts of Romania ceded to the open maw of the USSR.

Germany, however, did not appear to be looking for a rival as a world power prepared to overwhelm the world, but a temporary rival it could appease for a time before adding it to its list of conquests. While Russia felt content to absorb its neighbours in the near-abroad in its tentacle grasp, leaving Germany to get on with its invasion of Western Europe. Hitler's sinister deadly plans for the Final Solution merely in its initial stages would face no objections from Stalin.

Hitler's troops hit Poland, and then Stalin's. And soon the Baltic states were annexed to Moscow's grand plan of absorbing the east, establishing the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, satellite states loyal without choice to Russia's persuasive force. All this history now revealed in living colour in a new exhibition presenting the fateful pact as a normal business agreement between two political entities, two countries with the best interests of the continent in their rear view mirror, ever closer.

For many years the existence of such a pact was described as a fabrication by Russia until the 1980s when Russia finally agreed, yes, the protocol was real, but as real as any compact between two nations potentially useful to each other would be. And the pact undergoes a not-too subtle transformation as a self-protective measure by the USSR defending itself against the seemingly evident potential of West's eventual pact with Hitler that would target Russia.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has her own interpretation, condemning the secrecy of the pact yet explaining: "Molotove-Ribbentrop Pact is difficult to understand without considering the additional secret protocol. (Agreement on dividing the spoils of invasion and occupation). With that in mind, I think it was wrong, it was done illegally", she stated; 'illegally'?

"Contrary to allegations that the agreement between Stalin and Hitler triggered #WWII in fact the USSR was practically the last geopolitical actor forced to sign an agreement with the Nazi Germany #TrueHistory."
Russian mission to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe

Britain's perfidiously cowardly appeasement through then-British leader Neville Chamberlain was the closest the West ever got to an 'agreement' with Nazi Germany. And an infuriated British political establishment made quick work of his "peace in our time". "You were given the choice between war and dishonour. You chose dishonour and you will have war", Winston Churchill informed Chamberlain predictively.

Britain’s Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain is photographed signing the Munich Treaty as Hitler’s secretary Martin Bormann (R) looks on on September 29, 1938 in Munich. AFP/Getty Images