By Mike Eckel Jun 4 2009
MOSCOW (AP) — As the Kremlin presses a campaign to recast Russia’s 20th century history in a more favorable light, a research paper published Thursday on the Defense Ministry’s Web site blamed Poland for starting World War II.
The unorthodox reading of history appears to be the latest effort by Russian historians to defend the Soviet Union and its leaders, especially their role in what Russians call the Great Patriotic War.
Russia has angrily rejected claims that a Stalin-era famine in Ukraine amounted to genocide, and Russia’s Supreme Court recently turned down an appeal to re-open an investigation into the massacre by Soviet secret police of Polish military officers and intellectuals in Russia’s Katyn forest during World War II.
The generally accepted view is that Poland was a victim rather than the aggressor in the conflict, and that Adolf Hitler’s 1939 invasion of Poland marked the start of the war.
Many Western historians believe Hitler was encouraged to invade by the treaty of non-aggression signed by Moscow and Berlin, called the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, which secretly divided eastern and western Europe into spheres of influence.
Hitler’s pact with the Soviet dictator Josef Stalin was signed on Aug. 24, 1939. Germany invaded Poland Sept. 1.
Blaming Poland would deny Russia played a role in starting the war by sealing the secret accord.
The research paper posted on Russia’s Defense Ministry Web site is not an official government statement. But the author is listed as Col. Sergei Kovalyov, director of the scientific-research department of military history, part of the Institute of Military History of the Ministry of Defense.
A person who answered the phone at the Defense Ministry press office refused to comment, but said a statement would be posted on the Web site soon.
Ministry spokesman Col. Alexander Drobyshevsky told the Interfax news agency that analytical articles posted on the ministry’s Web site do not necessarily reflect the ministry’s official position.
The paper, titled “Fictions and Falsifications in Evaluating the USSR’s Role On the Eve of World War II,” recounts how in the run-up to Germany’s invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, Hitler demanded that Poland turn over control of the city of Danzig as well as a land corridor between Germany and the territory now known as Kaliningrad.
“Everyone who has studied the history of World War II without bias knows that the war began because of Poland’s refusal to satisfy Germany’s claims,” he writes.
Kovalyov called the demands “quite reasonable.” He observed: “The overwhelming majority of residents of Danzig, cut off from Germany by the Treaty of Versailles, were Germans who sincerely wished for reunification with their historical homeland.”
Kovalyov, who works in St. Petersburg, could not be immediately located for comment.
Arseny Roginsky, a historian with the rights group Memorial, said Kovalyov was entitled to his opinion “and he shouldn’t be thrown in prison for that.”
“But if this indeed reflects the position of the government — in as much that it appeared on the Web site of the Ministry of Defense — then this is indeed dangerous and shameful,” he said.
Polish government officials had no immediate comment; much of the country on Thursday was marking the 20th anniversary of the collapse of communism in Poland.
Last month, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev announced the creation of 28-member commission to investigate “the falsification of historical facts and events aimed to disparage the international prestige of the Russian Federation.”
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party is drafting legislation that would make it a crime to belittle the Soviet contribution to victory in World War II.
Both moves were widely criticized by liberals as efforts to whitewash Soviet era abuses.
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