MOSCOW - The Communist Party's parliamentary faction wants the Russian State Duma to adopt a resolution justifying the conclusion of two agreements between the Soviet Union and Germany in 1939 and secret protocols to them.
The Soviet Union and Germany signed the Non-Aggression Treaty on August 23, 1939, known also as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, and the Treaty on Friendship, Cooperation, and Demarcation on September 28, 1939.
The draft resolution was submitted by parliamentarians Viktor Ilyukhin, Sergei Obukhov, and Valery Rashkin, and the document prompts the Duma "to confirm the political judgment" about this document expressed in a resolution by the Soviet People’s Deputies Congress on December 24, 1989. "The secret protocols to the said Soviet-German treaties mentioned in this resolution, if such were actually concluded, realistically reflected a complicated political and military situation of the time, met the national interests, and ensured the country’s security in the initial period of WWII," the draft resolution says.
"The State Duma declares that the conclusion of secret agreements was quite common diplomatic practice of the time used by many states, and the Soviet Union had to act in the same coordinate system of international relations," it says.
"After the conclusion of an agreement on building an anti-Hitler coalition failed because of the British and French governments in 1938-1939 and the WWII began, the Soviet Union had to ensure its political and military security, which was the main reason for concluding the said Soviet-German treaties," it says.
The Communist parliamentarians noted, in particular, that the deployment of Soviet forces in Lithuania was authorized by a secret protocol to the Soviet-Lithuanian treaty of October 10, 1939, under which the city of Wilno (currently Vilnius) and the Wilno region became part of the Lithuanian republic.
The authors of the document insist that the Duma pass the resolution before the 65th anniversary of the victory over Nazi Germany in response to "attempts by a number of Western and Eastern European states to distort the Soviet Union’s policy, blame the Soviet Union for beginning WWII, and diminish the Soviet Union’s role in defeating Nazi Germany and Japan."
