Would you please not post flamebait to HN? Especially not nationalistic flamebait. It's pretty amazing that the commenters who replied stayed so level-headed, because normally a comment like this would lead straight to the inner circles of hell.
How would you state facts on the ground without getting an ire of people whose own political position puts them on a collision course with truth?
I'm not being provocative here. Saying that "genocide of Jews during ww2 is an established fact," for example, does not feel to be an insult or provocation to any level headed person.
You could start by making sure that your "fact" is both true and relevant, and by giving people enough information to establish that for themselves.
Comparing your comment to something that everybody knows is misleading in this case. You made a provocative claim on an inflammatory topic (which all nationalistic topics are, and unfortunately getting more so). That's flamebait by default, so to follow the HN guidelines, you need to pack your comment with flame retardants like substantive information and neutral language.
This, of course is a bit of exaggeration, but I see what you mean.
As a one who had to study history from Soviet textbooks, as far as I remember there was no such thing as Secret Protocols to that pact. Correct me if I am wrong, but the Soviet invasion of Poland did not happen (and Katyn massacre was work of Germans) and Baltic states asked to be "admitted" into Union (all of them, almost simultaneously). The winter war with Finland of course was Finnish provocation, for which they had to pay by giving up parts of Karelia.
I wouldn't be surprised that officially endorsed interpretation of history in modern Russia is not far from what it was back then.
I'm Czech, and I was hitchhiking around Balkan last summer. One time we stopped a young-ish Russian driver (around 35). He didn't even know that their army occupied Czechoslovakia, he thought we got attacked and the Warsaw Pact army came to help. He thought (and probably still thinks) I'm lying, even after I've shown him a wiki page. He nearly left us on the side of a highway over this, he got really angry about it (but he was a good person!).
I wonder was it something he had been thought at school or did he learn it from media/internet/friends later on. I'm Polish and I remember history classes on Tesin in 1938 or Poland's involvement in 1968 invasion. But I also see a lot of history whitewashing from nationalist movements succesfully penetrating the society.
I too used to hitchhike in the Balkans and usually tried to avoid politics or sensitive subjects but I guess I wouldn't be able to resist myself in this case. Probably ending up thrown out by the driver considering current Poland-Russia relations. Sad how people in Central/Eastern Europe are still traumatized by the consequences of WW2.
You can't really blame him for being taught an alternative history. Another victim of soviet propaganda. I don't know what they've been telling people in Czechoslovakia before 1989, but in the rest of the Warsaw Pact countries the Soviets were touted as liberating heroes, even after they invaded Hungary and Czechoslovakia.
I don't blame him in the slightest. I was already aware by then that Russians are taught bullshit from different personal experience. One point though, he went to school after the fall of the Soviet Union, not before.
I'm sure they think that they liberated Crimeea and Donbass as opposed to occupying parts of Ukraine. No wonder the accepted line of thought in Russia is still that the USSR has liberated all these ungrateful nations.
A few weeks ago I watched the police detain a drunk 60-ish Russian man in Prague who screamed at people visiting the protest (against Babis, the prime minister who is directing EU fund money to his corporation Agrofert) that we're "ungrateful bitches" and "we'll [Russians] be back to take what we gave you".
I assume this comment was not intended to be taken seriously. Most of the population of what are now independent countries of Belarus and Ukraine, but used to be part of USSR, are pretty well aware of where the Polish border was in 1939. If you visit, it becomes apparent that this fact would be impossible to hide, and no serious efforts to hide it have been made in recent years or earlier. Most towns West of Minsk still bear polish-sounding names and are predominantly catholic while those East of Minsk are orthodox with Russian-sounding names. Many people in western parts of Ukraine and Belarus hold the equivalent of polish green cards issued to them as poles, and everyone is pretty well aware of the reasons, and so on. I don’t know what the modern school books say on the subject (it is true that 30 years ago they began the WWII history with the 1941 events) but there is abundance of information on the subject, including Russian resources, and none of it certainly “gets you killed”.
2. Going to jail in Russia is a 1 in 10 to 1 in 5 chance to die from terrible conditions or prison violence. And that is of course will be more aggravated if you are a political prisoner.
3. A list of people who went missing going into thousands now
Thank you for posting. I was very interested to know what the modern-day school history books say.
For non-Russian speakers I can confirm that on page 203 of the above-referenced history book for the 9th grade it says that World War II started on Sep. 1, 1939 with the German invasion of Poland. It also contains plenty of info on Soviet invasion of Poland, albeit in such context as “it was necessary to create a buffer zone” etc - but it’s there. The Soviet-German pact is also referenced and so is the secret addendum, and it specifically states that Germany and USSR have divided Poland and other countries of Eastern Europe into “spheres of influence”. Which is pretty much what the actual newly declassified document says.
I myself studied by a much earlier version of this textbook, and can attest an almost 5 fold reduction in material covering thirties in comparison to edition I was taught on.
The biggest omission being the use of word invasion or statements amounting to Soviet-German conspiracy to start the war against these countries.
> specifically states that Germany and USSR have divided Poland and other countries of Eastern Europe into “spheres of influence”
You have to admit, dividing "spheres of influence" sounds way more benign in comparison to "joint invasion plan"
>Польский поход Красной армии (17—29 сентября 1939 года), в советской историографии освободительный поход РККА, в современной историографии также советское вторжение в Польшу
Polish march of the Red Army, liberating march of The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army in soviet historiography, also Soviet invasion of Poland in modern historiography.
For some reason some people over here are very eager to 'prove' some weird fantasies.
The polish invasion is there. Not awful lot about it, just that Hitler and Stalin desided this is how it shall be and that sovieat army entered Poland on 17th.
> What's the officially sanctioned version of history?
To hear the official version, you have to ask first, and that either gets you a jail term for "denial of historical facts (of course, without stating which facts)" or you will just go missing to be found in separate body parts a month later.
Instead of WWII they started to teach about The Great Patriotic War, which starts in 1941, when Germany attacks USSR. I heard many Russians deny WWII, since the first two years are full of shameful acts and nazi-friendly stuff.
WWII, its dates and events were all in history textbooks in Russla when I was in school (1995-2005) and they are stil there.
We do not teach about The Great Patriotic War instead of the WWII. For TGPW is the greatest part of the WWII, for obvious reasons, that is why it is tought in more deapth and has more hours than other parts combined.
As I recall from conversation, it's that the USSR did not jointly invade Poland with Germany; this is evidenced in the fact that they did not invade on the same day. Furthermore, the USSR wasn't even invading Poland; the USSR was striking West through Poland in order to protect Poland from Germany.
Not true. One of the commenters on this thread was nice enough to post the modern-day history book for the 9th grade. Unless you believe he went through the effort of redacting it, you will see that it contains details of USSR’s invasion of Poland in 1939, German-Soviet pact and its secret addendum, nature of the agreement to divide Poland and other countries between Germany and USSR, and so on. Factually it seems to agree pretty well with Western sources.
Orlov's history textbook don't even give it a glancing mention in latest editions. That one is more common in more lower tier educational institutes.
A more liberal Brandt's textbook, the one posted above, been heavily edited year after year to its current state where the pact, invasion of Poland, and whole of thirties was reduced to just few pages.
