It also severely misrepresents the relationship between the USSR and Germany. Hitler made no secret of the fact that one of his chief aims was to destroy the Soviet Union. The Soviets feared a German invasion and pursued an alliance with France. The USSR wanted to intervene to prevent a German invasion of Czechoslovakia, but after the British and French signed the Munich agreement with Hitler, the Soviets feared the western powers would let the USSR and Germany fight it out and moved to make their own accommodation with Hitler. Both sides regarded that deal as temporary, and knew that it would come to war later. The Soviets wanted to buy time to build up the Red Army.
This narative omits the contradicting fact that Soviet Union decimated Poland and others it conquered in alliance with Germany. If the alliance was just to buy time for Red Army, then it would not make sense for Red Army to spend time massacring the elites and armies of conquered states [0] that could become their buffer against Germany or even become their allies. This narative, which I started hearing after the start of last Russian war, is therefore pretty naive attempt of current day Russia to spin the story of their initial alliance with nazi Germany which was definitely real.
> If the alliance was just to buy time for Red Army, then it would not make sense for Red Army to spend time massacring the elites and armies of conquered states
The USSR did not have to expend much effort in taking eastern Poland. It moved in after the Polish army had been largely defeated by the Germans in the West. The USSR's actions here were opportunistic.
> This narative, which I started hearing after the start of last Russian war
This "narrative" has been around for many decades, and is not particularly controversial. Even at the time, the fact that the USSR and Germany signed a pact at all stunned the world, because they were arch enemies.
It was not a marriage of love, and calling it an "alliance" is a major stretch. It was an opportunistic move by two enemies that each had their reasons to temporarily put off their conflict. The Red Army was in turmoil because of the purges and Stalin was deathly afraid of a German attack. The Germans wanted time to go after Poland and the western powers.
A central tenet of Nazism was its hatred for Bolshevism (and that was tightly connected to the Nazis' antisemitism as well). Hitler had openly stated his goal of destroying the Soviet Union, and it was clear that any pact could not last.
The USSR did not have to expend much effort in taking eastern Poland.
The poster above wasn't referring to the effort expended in "taking" eastern Poland militarily -- but in subjugating the population and massacring the elites. This was not an accidental byproduct of the invasion; it was part of its intent. Along with the extremely rapid and violent annexation of the Baltic states in the same period.
It wasn't like Soviet troops wandered in these countries, and didn't know what else to do with the local population. The Bolsheviks were against the independence of all 4 of these countries after the end of WW I, and in the years 1919-1920 tried and failed to conquer each of them. Each attempt was swiftly (enough) repulsed, providing the Bolshevik regime with the first of its many deeply embarrassing setbacks.
The main trigger for the M-R pact was of course the question of how to deal the Germans. But judging by how the Soviets focused their energy and attention in these countries 1939-1941, and its relations with them in the interwar years -- it wasn't their only motivation.
> The Bolsheviks were against the independence of all 4 of these countries after the end of WW I, and in the years 1919-1920 tried and failed to conquer each of them.
The Soviets accepted the independence of Finland, and it was Poland that invaded Soviet Russia in 1920, not the other way around.
I know, and I'm pretty sure you know that I know. The context was M-R, so that's the time frame I was referring to. Your bringing Finland into this just didn't make sense any sense otherwise, so if I misread you there, that was why.
The war began with ...
Look - I see why you're saying what you're saying. But you're misstating the details, and the overall narrative you're presenting just doesn't add up, given the full context of surrounding events. I'd dissect the matter further, but I just don't think you're engaging in good faith here (either with me, or with the other commenter who jumped in at the same point in the thread). Which is a pity because you're obviously quite knowledgeable about lots of things. But you're also reading things into what people say that just aren't there, and your responses seem to attempt shift the topic rather than address what they're saying.
> in the years 1919-1920 tried and failed to conquer each of them
Then when I pointed out that the Soviets accepted Finnish independence, you switched to talking about the Winter War, which is 20 years later.
> I know, and I'm pretty sure you know that I know.
I can accept that you know when the Winter War occurred, but then I can't understand why you would raise it to justify a point you specifically made about 1919-20. During the revolution, the Soviets let Finland go. They accepted its independence. You claimed they tried to reconquer it in 1919-20, which is not correct.
> A central tenet of Nazism was its hatred for Bolshevism (and that was tightly connected to the Nazis' antisemitism as well).
Another central tenet of both Nazism and Bolshevism is their hatred for capitalism and democracy. Their alliance allowed to suffocate Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Finland (attempt failed), and expand their borders until they met, as they had agreed in the secret protocol to the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact - without triggering a direct conflict between Germany and the USSR.
The obsolete narrative that portrays USSR as the victim or opportunistic bystander fails to explain why the USSR murdered Polish officers, scholars and other members of the national elite by tens of thousands, and unleashed similar terror in every other occupied country, or why the USSR tried to invade Finland and allocated a significant part of its entire military to the task while it was allegedly so worried about German attack, or why it supplied Germany with incredible amount of raw resources bypassing the British naval blockade, or why Germany initiated large technology transfer to the USSR, including drawings, performance testing data and actual samples of their latest fighter planes and bombers and a ton of other equipment.
The argument that Germany and USSR were on long-term collision course in terms of ideology doesn't change the fact that the alliance was very beneficial to both of them while it lasted and allowed them to maul Europe with impunity. That's why USSR denied until its final days that the secret protocol to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact even existed; the protocol and events that followed completely shatter the myth of USSR as opportunistic bystander.
Even in the present day, Russian goverment (including Putin personally) can't make up its mind whether Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania all saw "working class uprisings" at the same time and joined the USSR "voluntarily" (one narrative), or whether USSR performed a clever trick on Germany and invaded those countries on its own initiative to win time (another narrative). The narrative keeps shifting to whatever is convenient at the moment; it has become a meme.
> Another central tenet of both Nazism and Bolshevism is their hatred for capitalism and democracy.
Nazi Germany was a capitalist country. The reason why German conservatives brought the Nazis into government was in order to smash the German socialist and labor movement. Portraying Nazi Germany as anticapitalist is deeply ahistorical.
Your argument, that the repression carried out in Poland and the Baltics by the USSR proves it wasn't motivated by fear of Germany, does not logically follow.
> why the USSR tried to invade Finland and allocated a significant part of its entire military to the task while it was allegedly so worried about German attack
The USSR's invasion of Finland was intimately bound up with its fear of German invasion. I'm just reciting some basic history here - nothing new or groundbreaking. The USSR wanted a buffer outside of Leningrad, which was directly on the border, and the right to use naval bases in the Baltic sea. The Soviets did not believe that a small country would be able to remain neutral when push came to shove, so it did not trust Finnish promises of neutrality. Those were the considerations that led the USSR to invade Finland.
