Russian History from the Russian Perspective

Weirdly, when the Communists were in charge, we were told to pay attention to this perspective

This is a portion of Vladimir Putin’s lengthy disquisition on Russian history in his interview with Tucker Carlson:

Good, good. I’m so gratified that you appreciate that. Thank you.

(14:24)
So before World War II, Poland collaborated with Hitler, and although it did not yield to Hitler’s demands, it still participated in the partitioning of Czechoslovakia together with Hitler. As the Poles had not given the Danzig corridor to Germany, had went so far pushing Hitler to start World War II by attacking them. Why was it Poland against whom the war started on 1st September 1939? Poland turned out to be uncompromising and Hitler had nothing to do but start implementing his plans with Poland.

(14:59)
By the way, the USSR, I have read some archive documents, behaved very honestly. It asked Poland’s permission to transit its troops through the Polish territory to help Czechoslovakia. But the then Polish foreign minister said that if the Soviet plans flew over Poland, they would be downed over the territory of Poland. But that doesn’t matter. What matters is that the war began and Poland fell prey to the policies it had pursued against Czechoslovakia under the well-known Molotov Ribbon Shop Pact. Part of the territory, including Western Ukraine, was to be given to Russia, thus Russia, which was then named the USSR, regained its historical lands.

(15:54)
After the victory in the Great Patriotic war, as we call World War II, all those territories were ultimately enshrined as belonging to Russia, to the USSR. As for Poland, it received, apparently in compensation, the lands which had originally been German. The eastern parts of Germany, these are now Western lands of Poland. Of course, Poland regained access to the Baltic Sea and Danzig, which was once again given its Polish name.

So this was how this situation developed. In 1922, when the USSR was being established, the Bolsheviks started building the USSR and established the Soviet Ukraine, which had never existed before. Stalin insisted that those republics be included in the USSR as autonomous entities. For some inexplicable reason, Lenin, the founder of the Soviet State, insisted that they be entitled to withdraw from the USSR.

And again, for some unknown reasons, he transferred to that newly established Soviet Republic of Ukraine, some of the lands together with people living there, even though those lands had never been called Ukraine, and yet they were made part of that Soviet Republic of Ukraine. Those lands included the Black Sea Region which was received under Catherine the Great and which had no historical connection with Ukraine whatsoever. Even if we go as far back as 1654, when these lands returned to Russian Empire, that territory was the size of three to four regions of modern Ukraine with no Black Sea Region. That was completely out of the question

Commentary:

Putin mentions the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact — which gave the green light for Germany and the USSR to partition Poland — but he puts the blame on Poland for cooperating in the partition of Czechoslovakia.

Poland did indeed demand a tiny portion of Czech territory inhabited by ethnic Poles in 1938.

The Institute for National Remembrance (“INR”), which was established by the Polish Parliament to “remember” modern Polish history and, therefore, represents the Polish perspective, shifts the blame for this to England and France (under the tradition of never blaming the actual cause, i.e., Nazi Germany). There is no indication that there was any coordination and the border dispute had long existed.

The INR offers the following :

For this reason, on September 30, 1938, Poland issued an ultimatum to Prague, expecting the constituencies of Cieszyn and Fryštát to be included within the borders of the Republic of Poland within ten days, conducting a plebiscite in the remaining territories of the Republic inhabited by Poles, and the release of all political prisoners of Polish origin. On October 1, the demands were accepted and the ČSR authorities emphasized their goodwill in efforts to resolve the conflict.

Considerations about the possible appearance of Poland in defense of the ČSR are purely speculative. There is no doubt that the passivity of the great powers and the willingness to shift political and moral responsibility for the course of events to the Republic of Poland determined the actions of the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and ruled out the possibility of Poland acting in defence of its southern neighbour. In the international situation of that time, such an action was doomed to failure, and the Polish Republic would fight alone with the Third Reich due to Paris and London’s unpreparedness for war and their adherence to the appeasement policy.

On the other hand, the view that in the event of an armed conflict with Germany the Polish army would actively support France, if only it showed the will to fulfil its alliance obligations towards Prague, is fully justified. Thus, the responsibility for the crisis of Czechoslovak statehood rests with France and Great Britain, whose diplomatic representatives repeatedly forced Prague to make subsequent concessions to Berlin in 1938.

The Republic of Poland did not initiate actions aimed at the territorial disintegration of the state of Czechs and Slovaks. Also, the Polish minority, living in a dense mass at the Polish-Czechoslovak borderland (mainly Cieszyn Silesia), subjected to harassment for years, was not the main driving force causing further crises of the Czechoslovak statehood. The Poles living in the Republic modelled their postulates on the programme of other minorities, so they certainly were not a factor analogous to the role played by the Sudeten Germans.

The loss of Cieszyn and Fryštát to Poland could not have been as “destabilizing” as the loss of the Sudetenland. After all, it was not like Poland was going to drive into Bohemia and take the rest. Nonetheless, Poland did not cover itself with glory in October 1938. Poland’s actions look opportunistic and left the Czechs with the knowledge that they were surrounded by wolves.

It also provided a precedent for the “legitimacy” of one country slicing off a neighboring country’s territory if that territory was inhabited by its language speakers. Putin’s point plays on this precedent and basically says that Russia did to Poland what Poland did to Czechoslovakia… apart from the fact that Russia took Polish territory and extinguished the Polish state in a joint plan with Nazi Germany.

So, weirdly, Putin has a basis for what he is saying and the Polish example does stand as something of a precedent for what Russia claims to have done in 1939 to Poland and what it is doing today in Eastern Ukraine.

However, the implication that Poland was an ally of Nazi Germany or that Russia was not an ally — and the failure to mention that Russia was an ally of Nazi Germany in 1939 — is a singular distortion of the facts. On the other hand, I do not doubt that Putin honestly believes it to be true because that is how Russia has been presenting its history to its citizens for nearly a century.

The Polish question aside, Putin does a good job of articulating the Russian perspective on Ukraine. It is not insane. The Polish issue aside — which does have a kernel of truth (as all Marxist untruths have) — it is a fair representation of Russian history.

Is it surprising that Putin knows Russian history so well?

Probably not. Americans used to know American history before we decided that America was the enemy of all that was good. Further, Putin was raised as a Marxist. Go through his disquisition and see how often he talks about history from the standpoint of oppression and imperialism. I think those are the “tells” of a Marxist perspective.

Nonetheless, Russia is a nuclear-armed power. It used to be the case before we decided the old rules no longer applied to us bright and eager moderns, that knowing the mindset of the opponent was important in establishing a modus vivendi. Apparently, now that Russia is not Communist, we no longer have that concern, nuclear weapons or not.

Weird.

Dangerous.