16 days after Germany’s brutal invasion, the Soviet Union joined its National Socialist ally to dismantle an outnumbered Poland, all without a formal declaration of war. 

Despite everything we know today about past Soviet activity (mass massacres, tortures, deportations, rapes, religious persecution…), the USSR is hardly ever put on an equal footing with Nazi Germany by Western intellectuals.

In Western Europe and on many American campuses, it’s politically incorrect to recall the close collaboration between Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler in dismantling Poland and the rest of Central and Eastern Europe.

The Soviet Union is often perceived as the “liberator” of this region from the German occupation. This can be explained on the one hand by the efficiency of the Soviet propaganda machine and, on the other hand by a general lack of curiosity and intellectual integrity of some university professors, for example.

The truth is that the Soviet Union was a godless, destructive, and bloodthirsty dictatorship that wanted to spread the communist revolution throughout Europe right after Lenin took power in Moscow in 1917. This ambitious plan was stopped by Poland in 1920 during the Polish-Bolshevik war.

Two decades later, Stalin took his revenge. Following the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union partitioned Poland and its neighbours among themselves. Tens of thousands of people were then deported to Soviet gulags or displaced.

“The Soviets owe us huge damages for crimes and robberies they have done in Poland. It was so and such a narrative should dominate in talking about Polish-Soviet relations“, Polish historian Wojciech Polak told wPolityce in an interview dating back to 2021.

“The Soviet troops entering Poland in 1944 and 1945 committed murders, rapes of women, and the robbery of Polish raw materials and equipment from factories,” he added, noting that “the expulsion of Germans from Poland was not accompanied by the independence of our country […] It was replaced with Soviet captivity that lasted for several decades.“

The Red Army and members of the NKVD committed numerous war crimes against the civilian population and were never held accountable for them. From 1945, half of Europe fell under communist rule and had to wait over 40 years to finally regain freedom.

Image: YouTube (Knowledgia / screenshot)

Author: Sébastien Meuwissen