23 August 1939
Russia Must Face Up to Tragic Reality of Hitler-Stalin Alliance
September 17, 2009By Paul Goble Today’s Russians are in no way responsible for Stalin’s alliance with Hitler, but they must acknowledge its immorality if their calls for the creation of a new collective security system are to be taken seriously, the Memorial...
Romania's King Michael Recalls Start Of World War II
August 31, 2009Romania's former sovereign, King Michael, is one of the three surviving heads of state from World War II (alongside Bulgaria's King Simeon and Cambodia's Norodom Sihanouk), and the only one involved directly in the war. RFE/RL correspondent Eugen Tomiuc...
Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact And Slippery Slope Of Big Power Politics
August 23, 2009By Ahto Lobjakas On August 24, 1939, the British writer Evelyn Waugh wrote in his diary (I'm quoting from memory): "Russia and Germany have signed a cooperation pact. War now inevitable. Went for a stroll.'" Waugh here unwittingly offers...
23 August: The Night Stalin And Hitler Redrew The Map Of Europe
August 21, 2009By Robert Coalson A world slipping ever closer toward war awoke on the morning of August 24, 1939 to the shocking news that Adolf Hitler's Germany and Josef Stalin's Soviet Union had signed a nonaggression pact. Hitler was beaming when his foreign...
Russia Needs Honest Discussion of Molotov-Ribbentrop
August 20, 2009By Paul Goble Russia Needs Honest Discussion of Molotov-Ribbentrop Lest It Repeat Mistakes behind It, Moscow Analyst Says Unlike France or Britain where few people today are prepared to defend their countries’ 1938 Munich Accord with Hitler...
Moscow attempts to reinterpret the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact
August 20, 2009By Pavel Felgenhauer Russian Manipulation of History: "the Art of Interpretation" To mark the 70th anniversary of the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact by Russia (USSR) and Nazi Germany on August 23, 1939, the Foreign Intelligence...
Moscow’s Miscalculation on Falsification of History
July 06, 2009By Paul Goble A decision by an OSCE Parliamentary Assembly committee to declare August 23 an international day of memory of the victims of Nazism and Stalinism underscores just how much Moscow miscalculated with its campaign against “historical...