The History Russians and Communists Want Us to Forget | Intellectual Takeout

The Soviet Union did not free the world of tyranny in World War II. It merely helped defeat one evil while ruthlessly attempting to supplant it with another one.

The truth is that the USSR and Nazi Germany were functionally allies in the early stages of World War II, as historian Timothy Snyder explained in his book “Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin.”

The “sharp ideological differences” between these two merciless systems was perhaps not so sharp in reality. Both stood fundamentally opposed to concepts such as “natural rights” and limited government of the people, by the people, and for the people.

This can be seen in the country of Ukraine, which suffered first under Soviet tyranny, then under Nazi tyranny.

In the 1930s, the Soviet Union conducted a program to exploit Ukraine, a breadbasket of the region, by taking their food, the fruit of their labor, and starving them to death.

“Ukrainians would die in the millions, in the greatest artificial famine in the history of the world,” Snyder wrote—a fact badly obscured by a pro-communist propaganda in The New York Times by Walter Duranty.

The Soviets would soon lose control, but Ukraine’s misery was far from over.

“ … In 1941 Hitler would seize Ukraine from Stalin, and attempt to realize his own colonial vision beginning with the shooting of Jews and the starving of Soviet prisoners of war,” Snyder wrote. “The Soviets colonized their own country, and the Nazis colonized occupied Soviet Ukraine: and the inhabitants of Ukraine suffered and suffered.”

This history has often been obscured by the fact that Germany turned on the Soviet Union, pushing the USSR to ally itself with Great Britain and the United States to form a powerful, yet ideologically incompatible alliance in order to defeat a greater threat.

In August, 1939, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. In September, both powers invaded and occupied Poland together under this nonaggression treaty. The two belligerents continued to carve up much of Eastern Europe until Hitler’s ill-fated decision to turn on Stalin in 1941—which pushed the Soviets into cooperation with the Allies.

It’s important to acknowledge this history, as much as Russia would like to ignore it.

Source: The History Russians and Communists Want Us to Forget | Intellectual Takeout