14-05-2009, 06:42 PM
The Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, or to a Pole like me, the Nazi-Soviet pact, is one of the Twentieth Century's most shameful events.
Of course the USSR was hated and double-crossed by the powers that would soon be the Allies. However, the Nazi-Soviet Pact also carved countries such as Poland in two.
The USSR cannot claim complete victim status. After Hitler had taken out the Polish army in western Poland in 1939, the NKVD and Ukrainian bands ethnically cleansed much of eastern Poland.
As an example, my family were targeted because there were military officers and teachers in the bloodline. The NKVD arrived at the family home in the middle of the night with the list of men they wanted to arrest. My grandfather and two of his teenage sons had already escaped over the Tatry mountains to western Europe, and later fought in the Polish free forces. So, the NKVD dragged my 7-year-old father and his dementia-ridden grandfather from their beds (as they were the only males present on their list). They put this child and this dementia-ridden man on a cattletruck to Siberia. Presumably they were considered a threat to the great Soviet Union.
My father's mother, and his 19-year-old sister, found the train carriage and begged to be allowed in. They voluntarily went to Siberia because otherwise my child father would almost certainly have died. As the dice roll, my great-grandfather died on the train, and my aunt lost her infant daughter, Halina, to starvation and dehydration.
Soviet secret police then executed tens of thousands of the Polish intelligentsia at sites such as Katyn: a war crime that, for decades, they blamed on the Nazis.
In the last months and immediate aftermath of WW2, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army and the Red Army massacred hundreds of thousands of Polish men, women and children. Sometimes by herding Polish women and children into churches and burning them down, or by bayonetting pregnant women in their wombs. Sometimes by omission - such as during the Warsaw Uprising.
The USSR then ethically cleansed the rest of eastern Poland until few Poles remained, and at the Yalta sell-out, claimed eastern Poland to be part of the Soviet Union. Churchill and Roosevelt tugged their forelocks affirmatively at Stalin.
The Nazi-Soviet Pact was disgraceful, shameful, geopolitics writ large.
Of course the USSR was hated and double-crossed by the powers that would soon be the Allies. However, the Nazi-Soviet Pact also carved countries such as Poland in two.
The USSR cannot claim complete victim status. After Hitler had taken out the Polish army in western Poland in 1939, the NKVD and Ukrainian bands ethnically cleansed much of eastern Poland.
As an example, my family were targeted because there were military officers and teachers in the bloodline. The NKVD arrived at the family home in the middle of the night with the list of men they wanted to arrest. My grandfather and two of his teenage sons had already escaped over the Tatry mountains to western Europe, and later fought in the Polish free forces. So, the NKVD dragged my 7-year-old father and his dementia-ridden grandfather from their beds (as they were the only males present on their list). They put this child and this dementia-ridden man on a cattletruck to Siberia. Presumably they were considered a threat to the great Soviet Union.
My father's mother, and his 19-year-old sister, found the train carriage and begged to be allowed in. They voluntarily went to Siberia because otherwise my child father would almost certainly have died. As the dice roll, my great-grandfather died on the train, and my aunt lost her infant daughter, Halina, to starvation and dehydration.
Soviet secret police then executed tens of thousands of the Polish intelligentsia at sites such as Katyn: a war crime that, for decades, they blamed on the Nazis.
In the last months and immediate aftermath of WW2, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army and the Red Army massacred hundreds of thousands of Polish men, women and children. Sometimes by herding Polish women and children into churches and burning them down, or by bayonetting pregnant women in their wombs. Sometimes by omission - such as during the Warsaw Uprising.
The USSR then ethically cleansed the rest of eastern Poland until few Poles remained, and at the Yalta sell-out, claimed eastern Poland to be part of the Soviet Union. Churchill and Roosevelt tugged their forelocks affirmatively at Stalin.
The Nazi-Soviet Pact was disgraceful, shameful, geopolitics writ large.
"It means this War was never political at all, the politics was all theatre, all just to keep the people distracted...."
"Proverbs for Paranoids 4: You hide, They seek."
"They are in Love. Fuck the War."
Gravity's Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon
"Ccollanan Pachacamac ricuy auccacunac yahuarniy hichascancuta."
The last words of the last Inka, Tupac Amaru, led to the gallows by men of god & dogs of war
"Proverbs for Paranoids 4: You hide, They seek."
"They are in Love. Fuck the War."
Gravity's Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon
"Ccollanan Pachacamac ricuy auccacunac yahuarniy hichascancuta."
The last words of the last Inka, Tupac Amaru, led to the gallows by men of god & dogs of war