An idiot’s guide to defending the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact

In 1939, the Soviet Union engaged in "treacherous collusion" with Nazi Germany by signing the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact with a secret protocol to divide sovereign European nations into their spheres of influence, igniting the Second World War.

"Treacherous collusion", by the way, is not an accusation from a decadent Western bourgeoise capitalist, but rather the Peoples Deputies of the USSR who, after half a century of fierce denials, officially admitted it in 1989 under pressure from the Baltic countries.

Furthermore, the Russian Federation then made the whole pact with its secret protocols available to the public in 1992.

This all makes things a bit awkward for the Soviet Union's modern day apologists. It's now too tricky to keep denying the secret pact so they instead have to deny there was anything wrong with it.

That's not easy, morally or logically.

In our time online though, we've come across some of the best apologists on this subject so we put together this guide to help any other tankies. If you see one of them attempting these great feats of mental gymnastics, do share this article to encourage them.

The idiot's guide

Firstly, never call it an alliance!

Who can say what an alliance is anyway? Well, the dictionary can and it defines an alliance as an "agreement where two or more people, groups, or countries join forces to work together for a shared goal or mutual benefit." Ignore that.

Insist that it was just a "a Non-Aggression Pact", which totally makes sense when you are both agreeing to start a war of aggression.

After convincing yourself of that, you can then resort to some classic Soviet whataboutism and liken the Pact to all other non-aggression pacts that allies signed with Nazi Germany.

What's the difference?

Well, apart from the fact that the only pact you like is the one with the secret protocol to greenlight Nazi aggression.

And quite why the Soviet Union needed to invade other countries too is a tricky one to explain.

The usual tactic is to say the Soviet Union was only ever fighting Nazis, although someone might point out that doesn't quite add up when you are talking about the period in which the Soviet Union was allied with the Nazis.

But, wait, you can still say that it was all part of a cunning plan to defeat the Nazis. The Soviet Union was playing the long game. 4D chess!

Because if you wanted to defeat the Nazis militarily then of course the first thing you'd do is help them expand their territory and then follow that up by providing substantial economic, logistical, and material support to aid their war machine.

That's exactly what the Soviet Union did after the Pact for the first two years of the Second World War, right up until the Nazis turned on them.

Those joint parades had to be convincing to make the long game work.

The Nazis would never suspect that all the time the Soviet Union was working to defeat them, especially as the Soviet Union also spent those two years aligning its propaganda with the Nazis and encouraging a favourable view of them among Soviet citizens, while decrying Western democracies as their shared enemy.

Despite that, insist the Soviet Union always knew that Nazi Germany would turn on them.

…even though all historical evidence is that Stalin dismissed that idea as British propaganda, continued providing military support to Nazis until then, was angry when it happened, and his army was absolutely in no way prepared for the surprise attack.

Whatever you do, definitely don't share this photo of Stalin distraught by the news that he totally expected.

Invasions are easy to predict, of course.

Well, let's forget the fact that you almost certainly spent the lead up to Russia's full scale invasion of Ukraine insisting that there was no way that invasion would take place either and that was also all just Western propaganda.

But, come on, the Nazis and Soviets could never have really been allies on the same side because their ideology is completely different. That's why they then allied with the Western democracies, despite their ideologies being completely different.

The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact with its secret protocol for mutual aggression was all just a brilliant act of calculated peaceful strategy.

So brilliant, in fact, that the Soviet Union spent half a century censoring any discussion about it and Molotov himself insisted until his death that there was no secret protocol. So modest!

Anyway, the Soviet Union rectified the crime of having to invade and brutally repress so many countries by.. er, invading and brutally repressing them again, continuing the occupations originally agreed with the Nazis and claiming the annexations staged then as their legal basis.

And don’t forget to attribute all deaths fighting the Nazis to Russia even though it included many people conscripted in the occupied nations that you usually claim were just as much part of the Soviet Union too.