
Moscow Publishes Photocopies of Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, Secret Protocols - okket
http://windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2019/06/for-first-time-moscow-publishes.html
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drglitch
As a bit of an aside, it is surprising how concise and to-the-point each of
the articles (points) are. Compared to contracts written in modern legalese or
your typical website TOS this looks almost "dumbed down" and yet it was one of
the most important documents of 20th century. Perhaps we're overcomplicating
things a bit today?

(ps: native Russian speaker here, but the German version looks similar.)

~~~
dao-
TOS are written for lawyers and courts. For bilateral contracts like this
there's no overarching law and legal authority, so they're more like a
protocol of a verbal contract.

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sambe
Contract law and international arbitration do exist though. The ultimate
inability to enforce seems like it is a separate issue and not limited to
bilateral contracts - nation states are more powerful than international
courts in many cases.

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microcolonel
Particularly at that time, there were no international courts that I know of
who would have anything to say about a secret pact between two belligerents in
the second world war.

The contract was to be enforced by the militaries of these belligerents, and
to be interpreted and settled privately.

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sambe
The International Court of Arbitration already existed, and there were other
such courts even earlier.

It may well be the case that this was never intended as a formal contract, but
I am responding to the assertion that there was no way for it to be. I stand
by the claim: the issue is authority/power, not the necessary legal means.

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unityByFreedom
> The Soviet copy of the original document was declassified in 1992 and
> published in a scientific journal in early 1993.

> Despite publication of the recovered copy in western media, for decades, it
> was the official policy of the Soviet Union to deny the existence of the
> secret protocol

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov–Ribbentrop_Pact](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov–Ribbentrop_Pact)

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lalabert
Ignorant Brit here! Is there an English version available?

Agree on the comment re this being one of the most important documents of the
20th century.

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ACS_Solver
You can read it in English on Wikisource [1] among other places. The text
itself is nothing new, it's been available for decades, it's just that few
people have seen the Soviet-held original copies.

[1]
[https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Molotov–Ribbentrop_Pact](https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Molotov–Ribbentrop_Pact)

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laacz
It's chilling to see actual document which robbed so many people of freedom
for 50 years, brought death and deportation to gulags and labor camps to more
than 200k people in Baltics alone.

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HocusLocus
The phrase "publishes photocopies" has me in stitches.

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duxup
Legal stuff and photocopies go hand in hand it seems.

There was a local case involving some harassing txt messages, the evidence was
a series of photocopies of an iPhone on a copier....

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Koshkin
Looks like the pact was a smart move after the West’s failure to support the
initiative to create an anti-fascist coalition (in the hope that Hitler would
attack the Soviet Union); its announcement even caused a government crisis in
Japan.

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Aloisius
The West hoped that Hitler would attack the Soviet Union?

That would mean the West hoped that Hitler would attack Poland as that was the
only possible way that Hitler could even get to the Soviet Union at the time
the pact was negotiated.

The Soviet Union wanted to modernize and expand. Hitler gave them that
opportunity. If anything, it was the Soviet Union that hoped that Hitler and
Western Europe would duke it out thereby weakening all their enemies.

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kvark
Pragmatically, every party knew the massacre was about to start and tried to
duke it out.

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jagger11
A digression: in effect of the secret protocol being signed, then-USSR
attacked Poland on 17-th of September 1939 (co-starting the 2WW, together with
Germany). Wikipedia articles describing this "event" are typically named
"Soviet invasion of Poland" or "Soviet occupation of East Poland", or
something similar:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_invasion_of_Poland](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_invasion_of_Poland)

The Russian version is titled: "Polish march/hike/walk of the Red Army
(1939)", and Russian speaking Wikipedians don't like the idea of changing the
title.

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gdy
"co-starting the 2WW, together with Germany"

It's so convenient to ignore the Munich agreement and the dismemberment of
Czechoslovakia by Germany, Poland and Hungary with the approval of the West
and despite the USSR's objections.

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jagger11
That's something both Polish and international historians condemn, and there's
no serious justification of this act, not in maintream Polish history books,
nor on Wikipedia (described as "annexation" in .pl wiki). PS: Poland was not a
signatory to the Munich agreements.

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vetinari
At the time, it didn't prevent Poles to take their bite from Czechoslovakia
too.

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onetimemanytime
No honor among thieves. Poland was marked to be taken off the history books
because her neighbors were powerful. Poland would have the same back then, if
it was in their position. History of the world. The last few decades are very
unique as we have peace, minus a few things here and there.

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mcguire
There's a short story (by Alan Dean Foster?) about the Polish empire surviving
into the 20th century and leading to a glorious utopian age.

