#nazi soviet pact

[evilelitest2]

Hot take: I know it started as backlash towards America centric view of history and implicit lionification of American jingoism, but the "USSR won the WW2, they single-handedly kicked the Nazi ass with no help" is, if not equally tiresome, at least getting there. Yes, we get it, the biggest piece of shit in modern history got defeated by the second biggest who pretty much destroyed his country to do it, you don't have to be so smug about it.

I"m sorry for taking so long to get back to that Covid was...Covid was a hell of a time.

So to get into the history of this, no one country won WWII by itself, the whole point of WWII was that a bunch of powerful nations allied together to crush Fascism (eventually). So no one nation did it all by thesmelves, American jingoism of "We showed up inad crushed the Nazis by ourself, no Canadians or Brits at DDay" is obviously nonsense. And that also applies to the Soviet Union.

So the Sovets 100% did the most killing of the nazis, and they certianly did most of the dying. 9 out of every 10 europeon fascists. And they also lost the most people, somewhere between 27-35 million soviet citizens died during the war, some historians think it might even be as high as 40 million, like the level of fighting on the Eastern Front is a nightmare. However the Soviets were doing that fighting with American bullets, american uniforms, American jeeps, American tents, American food, and American medical supples. If the US had stayed neutral in WWII after 1941, then the Soviets might have won the war anyways but it would have been far harder, taken far longer and probably destroyed the soviet union. Hell Japan might have taken another shot at the East. The US was the great "arsenal of democracy" in WWII and that ultiamtley mattered as much as fighting. Both sides pretending they were the only protagonists of the fight.

Now many nations are pretty justified for calling the US out not joining for the first 3 years of WWII, like when Brits are like "Hey you guys were staying neutral when you shouldn't." fair enough. But when people from the former Soviet Union call the US out, I'm like "We joined six months later" There is a six month period where the USSR is fighting Fascism and the US is not, between June 1941 (start of Operation Barbarossa) and September 7th 1941 (Pearl Harbor). Before that, the US was staying neutral in the war (bastards) and the Soviets were worse than neutral, being the main suppler of oil to Hitler and engaging in imperalism (Poland, Finland).

Also part of the reason why the Soviet Union took so many losses was because of how badly run the Soviet union was run.

TLDR: no one nation can take full credit for the war, and the US and the USSR are both really annothing about trying to pretend they were the only winners of the war

[tomorrowusa]

On this day in 1939, the Soviet Union invaded Poland. Hitler was already conducting an invasion from the west and Stalin joined him by invading Poland from the east.

This double invasion was part of the agreement drawn up by the foreign ministers of Nazi Germany and the USSR less than a month before.

As a result of the double invasion, the two worst people in the 20th century got to divide Eastern Europe between themselves.

Of course dictators do not necessarily stick to agreements with each other. On 22 June 1941 Hitler invaded the Soviet Union and the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact became null and void.

History reverberates – more so in Eastern Europe than in most places.

What the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact tells us about today’s war in Ukraine

Here's a vid made by Poland's Ministry of Foreign Affairs about a year ago.

[stillunusual]

The International Day of Remembrance for Victims of Stalinism and Nazism….

[septictankie]

Myth: Stalin and the USSR collaborated with Hitler and Nazi Germany before WW2

Reality: Stalin and the USSR raised alarm bells about Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan before WW2, but the capitalist Allies rejected Soviet attempts at collective security

[enriquemzn262]

Russia trying to claim the 1939 Soviet invasion of Poland was actually a humanitarian operation meant to stop a made-up genocide, only for Germany to come out with a map presented to fucking Hitler of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, which effectively set the stage for the combined invasion of the country and its partition between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, has to be the best destruction of modern state propaga I’ve ever seen!

[whencyclopedia]

Nazi-Soviet Pact

The Nazi-Soviet Pact, also called the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact after the respective foreign ministers of the USSR and Germany, was a non-aggression agreement signed in August 1939. The pact allowed the leader of Nazi Germany Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) to attack Poland and then Western Europe without having to face at the same time a Soviet army. Meanwhile, the leader of the USSR Joseph Stalin (1878-1953) acquired freedom of action in Eastern Europe and bought valuable time to continue rearmament.

The Nazi-Soviet Pact carved up Central and Eastern Europe into two spheres of influence between the two signees, led to direct occupations of free countries, and directly influenced where much of the fighting occurred in the first two years of the Second World War (1939-45). The agreement was, though, shattered when Germany attacked the USSR in June 1941.

Hitler's Foreign Policy

In order to understand why the USSR signed a treaty with Germany and not Britain or France in 1939, it is necessary to retrace the hectic developments in European affairs through the 1930s. When Adolf Hitler took power in Germany in 1933, he set out on an aggressive foreign policy of absorbing neighbouring territories. This was something Hitler had written about in his 1925 book Mein Kampf where he described the need for Lebensraum ('living space') for the German people, that is, new lands where they could prosper. This land would be sought for in the East. In addition, Hitler had long promised the German people that he would overturn the humiliating losses and restrictions imposed by the Treaty of Versailles that formally concluded the First World War (1914-18), which Germany had lost. The Saar region was taken back (1935), the Rhineland was remilitarised and Germany began to rearm (1936), then Austria was absorbed into Hitler's Third Reich (1938). In 1938, Hitler looked to Czechoslovakia.

The League of Nations (the forerunner of today's United Nations), which had been created after WWI to promote world peace, had proved itself to be inadequate when it came to aggressor states attacking weaker states. This weakness was particularly evident when Japan invaded Chinese Manchuria in 1931 and Italy invaded Abyssinia (Ethiopia) in 1935. Hitler's aggression also failed to rouse any meaningful response from the League. The USSR's leader Joseph Stalin must have watched all of these events with dismay as Germany expanded eastwards.

Europe on the Eve of WWII, 1939

Simeon Netchev (CC BY-NC-ND)

Continue reading...

[feminismisstillahatemovement]

It's happened crazily fast, too. There is no internal logic, consistency or sanity left anywhere ON the Left anymore.

It's particularly noticeable today, with oxymorons like "Queers For Palestine", "Islam Is A Religion Of Peace" and "Transwomen Are Women" being mandatory positions demanded of believers, but I first became aware of how far back this has been a thing when I read George Orwell's reporting from the 1940s on how all the card-carrying British Communists had screamed about killing and punching the Nazis just as much as they do today until the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939, between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, when for going on two whole years they began engaging in activism defending and supporting the Nazis, until America entered the war in 1941 and the Soviets changed sides and suddenly Communists were allowed by head office to hate Nazis once more.

The same thing is happening around us in many different forms today: in the late-80s and 1990s, left-wing feminists would ceaselessly condemn Female Genital Mutilation as practiced by Muslim countries. Now there is largely complete silence, and any one who does speak out is accused of the other great modern oxymoron, "Islamophobia", and turned upon by the others.

[apas-95]

Do you have any good reads on the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact? I don’t trust wikipedia on this because all sources are from anglo-american sources and one is from radio free europe lol

I'm bad at giving reading references, but in brief: the USSR first approached each of the western powers and attempted to form an anti-Nazi alliance, but none of them aggreed, because they wanted the Nazis to weaken or outright destroy the USSR, and kill two birds with one stone (hence the 'appeasement' period); all the other powers had their own treaties with Germany that were generally equivalent wrt non-aggression; and the USSR eventually formed its own non-aggression treaty with Germany *because* they and everyone else knew Germany was planning to invade and genocide the USSR, so they needed as much time as possible to prepare their defences (for their piece, the Nazis would expect increased war preparations on the part of the USSR to actually *benefit* their invasion, as they hoped that the USSR would dedicate all its forces to its western border, and have them decisively encircled and destroyed all at once with the initial, speedy push - the USSR showed great restraint and forced Germany instead to commit to a lengthy, protracted invasion to fight the bulk of the Soviet army in its own depth). The Soviet occupation of Poland, while having its obvious negative aspects, also prevented further Nazi advance, and prevented the Nazi occupation of half of Poland, during which time Polish jews were able to be evacuated - and lest we forget that Poland itself was an extremely reactionary, antisemitic state at the time already. The USSR only occupied Polish territory once it became clear that the Nazis would not stop at the part of Poland designated to be in 'their sphere', and would continue to occupy the part that was technically protected in the treaty by being designated as part of the 'Soviet sphere'. The idea of a 'Nazi-Soviet alliance' that carved up Poland is a key piece of ideological justification for the equivocation of fascism and communism, and, along with the 'double genocide' myth, was perpetrated directly by the Nazis themselves.

[mariacallous]

For 700 years, Moscow has expanded through relentless land grabs, growing into the largest country on Earth while subjugating countless nations.

In a recent video address, President Zelenskyy appeared wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the slogan “Make Russia Small Again.” But this isn’t just a catchy phrase—it’s a call for historical justice and a reminder of Russia’s centuries-old imperial ambitions.

The T-shirt displays a map of the Grand Duchy of Moscow as it was in 1462, under the rule of Prince Ivan III, who sought to break free from the Golden Horde’s dominance. This era marked the beginning of Muscovy’s expansionist campaigns, during which it claimed lands beyond its borders. In the following years, neighboring principalities such as Yaroslavl, Tver, Ryazan, and Rostov were conquered—the same region that made headlines in August 2024 when Ukrainian forces advanced into it.

Even back then, Moscow employed methods that would become its standard practice for centuries—deportation. After conquering the Novgorod Republic, Moscow forcibly relocated its population to other regions. This move was designed to crush any resistance, as Novgorod had long been independent and a powerful rival to Moscow. By dismantling its center of influence, Moscow eliminated any hope for independence and silenced the potential for protest.

It was Ivan III who first declared himself “Tsar of All Rus,” even though he had never ruled over the lands of Kyivan Rus and merely aspired to conquer them. Over time, his ambitions extended to the northern territories of modern Ukraine—Siveria and Chernihiv regions.

The territory of Tatarstan, where the BRICS summit took place in Kazan in 2024, was conquered in the mid-16th century. These lands have never historically belonged to Russia.

In the following centuries, Moscow simultaneously pushed in all directions—deep into Siberia, south to the Caucasus, even waging war with modern-day Iran, while also advancing westward. The empire continuously grew, fueled by a desire to extend its global influence. When Peter I proclaimed the Russian Empire in the early 18th century, he claimed to be “reclaiming lands,” but in reality, it was a relentless campaign of conquest. Like every other empire, Russia’s expansion was built on the systematic expansion of its territories and subjugation of the peoples within them.

A particularly revealing example is Alaska. Russia sold the territory because it lacked the resources to maintain control, while the U.S. initially hesitated over whether it was worth purchasing.

Even in the 20th century, after the collapse of the Russian Empire and the rise of the Soviet Union, Russia continued its territorial conquests. In 1939, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact—a secret agreement between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union—was signed. This pact divided Poland and carved out spheres of influence in Eastern Europe, effectively igniting the start of World War II.

While global empires were letting go of their colonies and former vassals were gaining independence, the Kremlin remained focused on expanding its influence. Moscow backed the war in Korea, as well as numerous other military conflicts, particularly in Asia. Its socialist-communist reach extended well beyond Asia.

Russia is a vast prison of nations. Over centuries, it has conquered vast territories, and in doing so, has not only seized land but also sought to erase the identities of the peoples it subjugated—just as it did in Novgorod. Native inhabitants were deported and resettled elsewhere. Crimean Tatars were forcibly expelled from Crimea, while people from central Russia were relocated to Ukraine’s Donbas.

The “Make Russia Small Again” T-shirt symbolizes a call for historical justice: Moscow was a principality in 1462. The history of the territories beyond serves as a reminder that Russia’s big size is the result of imperial conquest, with many nations still trapped in a sprawling colony.

[lookninjas]

So I was curious as to why exactly Russia was calling for the arrest of Estonian PM Kaja Kallas, and it turns out they're pissed off at her for taking down Soviet monuments in Estonia.

As a reminder, the Soviet Union invaded Estonia in 1939 as part of a joint operation with Nazi Germany for the two countries to divide Europe between them (the Molotov-Ribbentrof pact). They briefly lost control when Germany decided they could have all Europe, not just half, but reoccupied the Baltic nations as the war turned against the Nazis. Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania remained occupied by the USSR until 1991.

Just. The unmitigated gall of it. Claiming that the warrant is about her removing tributes to the "heroes" that "denazified" Estonia. Charging the leader of a sovereign nation with committing an offense against Russian laws, as though she's somehow subject to them.

If there was ever any doubt in you -- if ever for a second you thought that maybe the Russian government could be stopped from invading other countries by any means other than overwhelming force -- I need you really to think hard about what this means. That they're still acting like Estonia is their territory to occupy. That they think their laws apply to the leaders of other nations.

Russia will not stop until they are stopped. That's it. That's all.

[weirdestcountryhumans]

Nazi Germany: What the fuck is happening with this shit.

Before I begin, I'm just going to say that I will not be referring to Nazi Germany as the Third Reich. I feel like that name gets used to distance what people do with the fact that it is the Nazi country, and I think using Nazi Germany in this post will kinda drive home the fact to some people that this is not some cute fun little guy, he's a fucking Nazi, and you need to remember that, because some people here aren't.

This one I am also not going to be playing nice in. I will be pissed off about this all, because this fandom playing nice to the personification of Nazi Germany is something that some of you people should be fucking ashamed of.

ThirdUnion and the reason why this ship makes no fucking sense

This is singlehandedly the worst ship in this entire fandom, and someone decided that Sunshine Harem was a good idea. For some reason, people take the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact as a sign that these two were in love with each other. However, this is the furthest thing from the truth. The Nazis always planned to betray the USSR, and in Nazi ideology, Slavs, the majority ethnic group in the USSR, were considered subhuman. The Nazis also hated socialists and communists, and they were imprisoned and sent to concentration camps. The Nazis hated what one could argue were the two most important/powerful traits of the USSR. They were communists, and they were Slavs. This pact was not made because they "loved each other" or whatever stupid explanation people have for it, but because the Nazis didn't want a two-front war like in WWI, so they signed a back with the USSR so they could wipe out Western Europe before attacking the USSR. It was a matter of politics and trying to achieve the quickest and safest victory they could. The other thing about this ship that is distasteful is that it is often portrayed as a homosexual ship. The Nazis killed queer people during the Holocaust. There is no way on earth that Nazi Germany would be gay or openly/acknowledge that he is gay. Not only that, but if the USSR was openly gay that would only make Nazi Germany hate him more, as not only was he Slavic and therefore inhuman, but queer, a minority group that Nazis hated and declared an "enemy of the state." They wouldn't be in a gay relationship. Nazi Germany would kill him. The USSR hated the Nazis just as much. During the end of WW2, and after WW2, in the Soviet Satellite states and their occupied half of Germany, the Soviets committed many atrocities against the Germans. The German people, whether they lived in Germany or not. There was no love on either side. There never was. Not before the war, not during, and certainly not after.

Guilt Over The Holocaust

There is nothing that makes me more mad with the fandom's characterization of Nazi Germany than this. Nazi Germany is a personification of Nazi Germany. You cannot argue that someone who might have been equal to Hitler in terms of power didn't know about the Holocaust or hated that it was happening. The Nazis created that personification, and in a way, they would have raised Nazi Germany. You think he wasn't indoctrinated into their beliefs? "But they were his people," some might argue. But the victims of the Holocaust might have lived in Germany, but the Nazis stripped away their rights and, in the cases of some, their citizenship. The Holocaust was the genocide of the Jewish people, but prisoners in those death camps included political prisoners, homosexuals, Romani, Freemasons, Slavic peoples (including Poles, USSR citizens, and POWs, Serbs, Slovenes), disabled people, Jehovah's Witnesses, other religious groups and leaders, Spanish Republicans, academics from any of these groups, and many others. It is impossible to put into words the amount of cognitive dissonance it must take to look at the personification of Nazi power and ideology and say he had no knowledge of, or even regretted the Holocaust. The personification of Nazism would support the ideas and goals of Nazism. There is no avoiding that. All the pretending he feels guilt for the Holocaust is a cheap tactic used by writers to include Nazi Germany in stories and include him as a character that is not related to the crimes and history of Nazism and Nazi Germany. It is a cheap tactic to allow someone to write Nazi Germany as sympathetic and deny the consequences of his crimes and ideology.

Nazi Germany living after the dissolution of his government

It is fucking laughable to me that some people seem to think that the Allies wouldn't murder Nazi Germany for all that he did to them, especially France and the USSR. You think they would let him live after the entire point of the Allied Occupation was to de-nazify Germany and rebuild the country. They would absolutely ensure he died, whether they had to do it themselves or not. Wikipedia can tell you this. And if you argue that "Oh, it's just a matter of headcanon, he doesn't have to die after WW2; the Allied powers would never do that," then I need you to take a fucking seat and think about what you are saying. The USSR, as said before, committed war crimes and ethnic cleansing against Germans, not just Nazis, but anyone who was German wouldn't kill Nazi Germany? You are defending a Nazi who would have been complicit in genocide and in causing one of the bloodiest wars in human history. You are defending a Nazi. You are defending a character whose identity is linked to Nazism. You cannot remove this character from the context of Nazism. You cannot sit there with a character whose flag is that of FUCKING NAZI GERMANY and say that they are not linked with Nazi ideology in any way. You cannot say that in a period in which the Allies were removing all traces of Nazism in Germany, that they would let someone like that live. The Nazi Germany will always die because Nazi Germany no longer exists. Fucking deal with it.

The Issues With A Nazi being a popular character

"But Ailbhe," you say, "It's just a few people doing that. It's not that big of a deal." But the problem is, it is a big deal. It is a problem when people on the internet romanticize, water down, or god-forbid glorify Nazism through a character that represents Nazism. Sometimes, that water downed version can be someone's first real introduction to Nazism, or it can make people think that perhaps the Holocaust was not as bad as it was. By trying to make Nazi Germany sympathetic, you are presenting a false portrayal of the true horror and scale of Nazi crimes. I am not trying to accuse anyone of being a Nazi or supporting Nazism. I am simply trying to explain why watering down Nazism is a dangerous thing to do. I know that this is a fiction fandom, and it is not the real world, but by providing a platform for sympathy towards Nazism, one allows dangerous and harmful views to be seen as "not as bad," and those who do call them out on it are said to be "overreacting." I think the fandom, and especially those that feature a watered-down version of Nazi Germany in their content, need to sit back and think through what they are doing and what opinion and portrayal of Nazism they are presenting to the world.

[marykk1990]

My next post in support of Ukraine is:

Next site, the city of Zhovkva in Lviv Oblast. The city was founded in 1597 as a private fortified town and was originally named Żółkiew after its founder, hetman Stanisław Żółkiewski, a Polish military commander. During WWII, the city was occupied first by the soviet union in 1939 when the soviets, then allied with Nazi Germany under the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, attacked Poland. Later, in 1941, after Hitler broke their pact, the city was occupied by the Nazis. 3,200 Jews of the city were sent to Belzec, a Nazi extermination camp. The Nazis also blew up the Great Synagogue in the city in 1941. After WWII, the city became part of the soviet union again, & part of the Ukrainian SSR. Its name was changed to Nesterov in 1951 after the WWI "russian" aviator, Pyotr Nesterov. In 1992, after Ukrainian Independence, its name was changed to Zhovkva, the Ukrainian spelling of the original name of Żółkiew.

#StandWithUkraine

#СлаваУкраїні 🇺🇦🌻

[newhistorybooks]

As the Chicago Tribune’s bureau chief in Berlin, Sigrid Schultz interviewed Hitler, broke the story of the Nazi-Soviet pact, and reported firsthand from the death camps. She deserves to be far better known than she is, and in The Dragon from Chicago, Pamela Toler admirably rescues her legacy.

[thelostdreamsthings]

On this day 1945, Russian military took over Berlin, and Hitler committed suicide. Russia’s Red Army raised the Soviet Union flag over Reichstag in Berlin. Russia destroyed 75-80% of the Nazi military during WW2. However, during the Cold War, the U.S. rewrote history and claimed all the kudos for defeating Nazi Germany!

By some estimates, the Battle of Berlin was the largest battle in human history! 2.5 million Soviet soldiers fought one million Germans. As for the Americans, they were 100km away, letting the Russians do the tough part.

The narrative about America saving the world from Nazis or fascism is a testament to the extraordinary power of propaganda and brainwashing. Hitler was just a tool to defeat communist USSR, which itself was a creation of globalist bankers to conquer Russia! All through the 1920s, Western banks and corporations poured enormous money into Germany, which became an extremely profitable Wall Street colony. In 1933, UK and France made a pact with Hitler right after he came to power. Five years later was the famous Munich agreement

[deborahdeshoftim5779]

VERY IMPORTANT.

In the future, I will be responding to the "historical" claims made by Vladimir Putin concerning his theft of Ukrainian territory to American journalist Tucker Carlson. As I have mentioned before, I was sidetracked by the murder of Alexei Navalny, as well as the need to learn some more Russian history myself to see whether Putin was telling the whole truth.

But there is one key point that @afranse has shown with damning picture evidence: the fact that the Soviet Union was, prior to 1941, an ally of Nazi Germany. This is a fact that Putin mendaciously concealed from Tucker Carlson, instead pointing to the collaboration between Ukrainians and Poles and the German Nazis during World War Two. Because those accusations are true, Putin was able to deflect any suspicion that he wasn't telling the whole truth.

He did not mention Stalin's pact with Hitler, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact signed in August 1939 and following a prior agreement of neutrality between Germany and the Soviet Union.

Furthermore, Putin insinuated during his interview with Tucker Carlson that Stalin's crimes were only "alleged", which is a disgraceful lie that insults the millions who lived in pure misery and terror because of Stalin's dictatorship.

Putin has long been an open apologist for the Soviet Union's brutal dictatorship and has encouraged falsification of the Russian history curriculum in school to sanitise the USSR and Stalin. (The Russian education department is doing the same thing right now in order to justify Russia's theft of Ukrainian territory.) The Russia historian Orlando Figes noted how Putin had claimed that the Soviet Union's crimes weren't any worse than those of other nations, a blatant lie.

These lies may shock Westerners, but they are hardly surprising, given that Putin worked for the KGB, an organisation responsible for countless crimes against humanity.

Although the Soviet defeat of Nazi Germany in 1942 was a tremendous achievement that deserves full credit (especially given the number of Soviets who died during the Battle of Stalingrad), and the later liberation of the Auschwitz death camp in 1945 deserves the same, Soviet claims that they were bravely fighting Nazism are misleading propaganda at best.

The undisputed fact is that the Soviet Union was an open ally of the Nazis-- until Stalin discovered that Hitler could not be trusted. Stalin and Hitler both demonstrated aggressive expansionist aims, and, as @afranse has correctly pointed out, used ruthless terror against so-called "enemies of the people".

It should be noted that one of Stalin's last acts was to plan another large-scale massacre of the Jews. Prior to his death, he had already begun circulating anti-Jewish articles and libels (using the West and "Zionists" as a scapegoat). His three-stage plot would involve condemning large numbers of Jews to the deadly journey to camps. Instead of the deliberate, fanatical killings of the Nazis, Stalin would exonerate himself by allowing the Jews to die of exposure and starvation.

My understanding is that this plot was never carried out to its terrible end because Stalin suffered a stroke shortly afterwards (01 March), and died on March 5, 1953. Otherwise, the Jews would have faced a calamity almost as horrifying as that inflicted upon them by Stalin's former ally, Adolf Hitler.

Советский Союз всегда был фашистской страной,

И гасил вольнодумцев убийствами, диким рыком…

А когда в России полился фашистский гной,

Советский Союз в могиле ехидно хихикал.

Россия считает, что вечно останется в силе,

Но с каждым днём всё ближе к своей могиле.

Хотя и держава ядерная, но атом

Не терпит тех, кто с ним говорит матом.

#######################

The Soviet Union has always been a fascist country,

It eliminated opponents with murders and brutality waves.

And when fascism pus poured out in Russia abundantly,

The Soviet Union sarcastically chuckled in grave.

Russia believes that remains forever in force.

But rolls towards its grave by Soviet Union endorsed.

It’s nuclear power but may be damned for infinity.

Civilization hates those who speak to it with obscenities.

[reddest-flower]

In 1917, the Soviets revealed the secret treaties of the imperialist powers. When he released these documents, Leon Trotsky – the People’s Commissar of Foreign Affairs – noted, ‘Secret diplomacy is a necessary weapon in the hands of the propertied minority which is compelled to deceive the majority in order to make the latter serve its interests. Imperialism, with its worldwide plans of annexation, its rapacious alliances and machinations, has developed the system of secret diplomacy to the highest degree’. The Soviet record against colonialism was clear, even as the Comintern struggled to produce a firm line in this or that country. There was no instance where the Soviets considered colonial rule to be worthwhile. The same with fascism, which the Soviets saw as anathema to humankind. Soviet aid to Republican Spain was one test and the other was the immense sacrifice of the USSR in the fight against fascism in World War II.

In 1931, the Spanish Left won the elections and inaugurated the Second Spanish Republic. An even more radical Popular Front government came to power in 1936. Only two countries, Mexico and the USSR – the two peasant republics that had been formed by revolutions – backed the Spanish Republic. Progressive policies to undercut landlords, the aristocrats and the capitalists set the Republic against the ruling bloc. That bloc would rapidly find solace in the fascist movement as well as in the army of General Francisco Franco that left Spanish colonized Morocco for the mainland. From North Africa, the fascists came into the Iberian Peninsula with the intent of overthrowing the Republic by force. A war ensued, which was – with the fascist Italian invasion of Ethiopia in 1935 – an early frontline of the fascist assault. The Soviets backed the Republic, as did Communist parties from around the world. Communists came to the aid of the Republic from the United States to the Philippines, from India to Ireland. The International Brigades, supported by the USSR, provided a bulwark against the onrush of the fascist armies, which were backed not only by the fascist powers (Italy and Germany) but also by the imperialist bloc (Britain and France). Fissures between the anarchists and the communists fractured the unities necessary in the fight against fascism, surely, but there it is undeniable that without logistical help – Operation X – from the Soviets the Republic would have been crushed immediately and not lasted until 1939.

When the Republic fell in March 1939, the imperialist and fascist blocs seemed fused. When Franco marched into Madrid, the British Ambassador went to greet him. When Nehru, who had been to the Republican front-lines and was fully behind the Republic, heard of this, he shuddered. This imperialist and fascist alliance was against humanity. Franco would remain in power until his death in 1975. He remained heralded by the ‘democratic’ countries of Europe.

The USSR, through the summer of 1939, faced the imminent threat of invasion by the fascist and imperialist powers. Such an invasion had taken place right after 1917. In the war in Spain, it became clear that Soviet armaments that went there through Operation X were not of the same quality as those produced by the Germans and the Italians. The Soviets sent 772 airmen in heavy Tupolev SB bombers, which turned out to be far slower and more vulnerable than the German Messerschmitt Bf 109. The Soviet army staff feared that an invasion by the Nazis and the imperialist bloc, after the fall of Spain, would be catastrophic for the USSR. The Nazis had already seized Austria in the Anschluss of 1938 and had threatened Lithuania with conquest in March 1939. The Italians had seized Albania in April 1939 and the two fascist powers – Italy and Germany – signed a decisive Pact of Steel in May 1939. Britain’s appeasement of the fascist bloc at the Munich meeting in 1938 suggested collusion between the imperialist and the fascist bloc. This was the context of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of August 1939, where the Soviets hoped to get some time to build up their capacity before an inevitable Nazi attack. Surely there should have been no compromise with fascism. But this was in the realm of realpolitik – a way to salvage time before the war that was to come. Indeed, in September 1939, the USSR opened nine factories to build aircraft and seven factories to build aircraft engines. The Red Army grew from 1 million (Spring of 1938) to 5 million (June 1941).

But Stalin had other ideas as well. On March 10, 1939, when the Spanish Republic was ready to fall, he said that the USSR should allow the ‘warmongers to sink deeply into the mire of warfare, to quietly urge them on’. If Germany and Britain went to war, then it would ‘weaken and exhaust’ both allowing the USSR ‘with fresh forces’ to enter the fray eventually ‘in the interest of peace to dictate terms to the weakened belligerents’. This would not happen. France was easily defeated by the Nazis and Britain could not find the way to bring troops to the European mainland. The war came to the USSR without the imperialists being weakened. The Nazis attacked the USSR as expected. The Soviets fought valiantly against the Nazis, losing over 26 million Soviet citizens in the long war that eventually destroyed the Nazi war machine.

It was the Soviet Union that saved the world from Nazism. It was Soviet armies that liberated most of the Nazi concentration camps, and it was the Soviet armies that entered Berlin and ended the war. General Dwight Eisenhower, the leading American soldier in the European sector, recalled his journey into the Eastern front after the end of the war, ‘When we flew into Russia in 1945, I did not see a house standing between the western borders of the country and the area around Moscow. Through this overrun region, Marshal Zhukov told me, so many numbers of women, children and old men and been killed that the Russian Government would never be able to estimate the total.’

Red Star Over the Third World, Vijay Prashad, 2019