You know those images I frequently put on the header to taunt Russia, the poster of Stalin and Hitler saluting each other, the photo of Stalin and Ribbentrop smiling and shaking hands?
On November 5 Vladimir Putin spoke to a group of young Russian historians, they look to be college-age kids. He made a statement about the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. The headlines taunt him much as I do. Here's a few:
Vladimir Putin says there was nothing wrong with Soviet Union's pact with Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany-Telegraph.
Putin’s defence of Soviet-Nazi pact ramps up security tensions-Financial Times.
Russia: Putin Defends Soviet-Nazi Pact.-New York Times.
Putin has defended the Nazi-Soviet pact. Time for the west to wake up.-Guardian.
The New York Times article contrasts his recent speech with a written statement he sent, as Russia's Prime Minister, to the Polish government in 2009. The Times summarizes Putin as writing in 2009 that the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was "immoral."
Here are excerpts, expanded for context, from the official transcripts.
2014:
"...[W]e had the so-called Munich Agreement in 1938. And what is it? Incidentally, your colleagues in western nations hush it up. Chamberlain arrived, shook his paper and said, “I brought you peace” when he returned to London after the talks. To which Churchill, I believe, in private, stated, “Well, now the war is inevitable.” Because appeasement of the aggressor, which Nazi Germany was, would clearly lead to a major future military conflict, and some people understood that. There should be a deep multilateral study of what was happening before World War II."
"Or, for example, there are still arguments about the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, and the Soviet Union is blamed for dividing Poland. But what did Poland itself do, when the Germans invaded Czechoslovakia? It took part of Czechoslovakia. It did this itself. And then, in turn, the same thing happened to Poland."
"I do not want to blame anyone here, but serious studies should show that these were the foreign policy methods at the time. The Soviet Union signed a non-aggression agreement with Germany. They say, “Oh, how bad.” But what is so bad about it, if the Soviet Union did not want to fight? What is so bad?"
"Moreover, even knowing about the inevitability of war, supposing that it could happen, the Soviet Union desperately needed time to modernise its army. We needed to implement a new weapons system. Each month had significance because the number of Katyusha rocket launchers or T-34 tanks in the Soviet army was in the single digits, whereas thousands were needed. Each day had significance..."
On November 5 Vladimir Putin spoke to a group of young Russian historians, they look to be college-age kids. He made a statement about the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. The headlines taunt him much as I do. Here's a few:
Vladimir Putin says there was nothing wrong with Soviet Union's pact with Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany-Telegraph.
Putin’s defence of Soviet-Nazi pact ramps up security tensions-Financial Times.
Russia: Putin Defends Soviet-Nazi Pact.-New York Times.
Putin has defended the Nazi-Soviet pact. Time for the west to wake up.-Guardian.
The New York Times article contrasts his recent speech with a written statement he sent, as Russia's Prime Minister, to the Polish government in 2009. The Times summarizes Putin as writing in 2009 that the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was "immoral."
Here are excerpts, expanded for context, from the official transcripts.
2014:
"...[W]e had the so-called Munich Agreement in 1938. And what is it? Incidentally, your colleagues in western nations hush it up. Chamberlain arrived, shook his paper and said, “I brought you peace” when he returned to London after the talks. To which Churchill, I believe, in private, stated, “Well, now the war is inevitable.” Because appeasement of the aggressor, which Nazi Germany was, would clearly lead to a major future military conflict, and some people understood that. There should be a deep multilateral study of what was happening before World War II."
"Or, for example, there are still arguments about the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, and the Soviet Union is blamed for dividing Poland. But what did Poland itself do, when the Germans invaded Czechoslovakia? It took part of Czechoslovakia. It did this itself. And then, in turn, the same thing happened to Poland."
"I do not want to blame anyone here, but serious studies should show that these were the foreign policy methods at the time. The Soviet Union signed a non-aggression agreement with Germany. They say, “Oh, how bad.” But what is so bad about it, if the Soviet Union did not want to fight? What is so bad?"
"Moreover, even knowing about the inevitability of war, supposing that it could happen, the Soviet Union desperately needed time to modernise its army. We needed to implement a new weapons system. Each month had significance because the number of Katyusha rocket launchers or T-34 tanks in the Soviet army was in the single digits, whereas thousands were needed. Each day had significance..."
2009:
"Today, we understand that any kind of collusion with the Nazi regime was morally unacceptable and had no prospects of practical implementation."
...
"The Soviet diplomacy was quite right at that time to consider it, at least, unwise to reject Germany's proposal to sign the Non-Aggression Pact when USSR's potential allies in the West had already made similar agreements with the German Reich and did not want to cooperate with the Soviet Union, as well as to be confronted with the Nazi allmighty military machine alone."
Different wording, similar thought. In context the similarity outweighs the different wording. I do not see significant difference.
