In Saturday’s interview for the Polish PAP news agency, Roger Moorhouse argued that the Russian president was distorting historical facts about Poland to shift focus away from Russia’s own domestic problems.
“If we take a look at the last few months, they were not particularly successful for Russia including a doping scandal which put the country in a very bad light, or setbacks in Ukraine where Putin did not achieve the goals he had intended," Moorhouse told PAP.
In the historian's view, Putin's shifting the spotlight on historical issues while attempting to picture Poland as the war’s perpetrator rather than victim, was aimed to divert Russians’ attention from domestic problems.
“For Putin's Russia, World War II represents a kind of founding myth. This myth is completely black and white… This mythology does not allow for a Soviet Red Army that could have committed inappropriate or morally questionable acts,” Moorhouse said. He argued that in this narrative the Soviets could only be a victim or victor. Therefore, in Putin’s propaganda it was unacceptable for the Soviet Union or the Red Army to be charged with adverse or morally dubious conduct during the war.
In Moorhouse’s opinion, Putin's historical manipulations, however, could prove counterproductive as the ensuing media storm has triggered a greater worldwide interest in the 1939-1945 period. Thus, issues like the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact or the fact that Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union were allies until 1941, which until recently have been little discussed in the West, were now becoming more widely known, he added.
Moorhouse is a historian and author specialising in WWII. He is best-known for his book "The Devils' Alliance: Hitler's Pact with Stalin, 1939-1941" (2014). Last year he published “First to Fight: The Polish War 1939” in which he argues that Stalin played the role of Hitler’s assistant; he had the last opportunity to stop Hitler in August 1939, but decided to use it for his own imperial game.
Source: PAP
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