>>> Brett Knowlton <brettk at unica-usa.com> 12/10/99 11:46AM >>>
Charles,
First let me apologize for implicitly comparing you to Henry Kissinger - I respect you views, and agree with you on a lot of other issues. I only meant to point out that I thought (and still do) that you were using the same method of rationalization to defend soviet aggression that US apologists use to justify US violence. But I could have been more polite about it.
Now on with the debate.
>Charles: Sorry, Henry Kissinger is with your side in this argument. You
sound >like Henry Kissinger and the whole anti-Soviet history school.
I believe in the principles that violence and arbitrary power, especially on the scale of invading a helpless neighboring country, is unjustifiable.
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Charles: Well, I can't very well disagree with that. Basically, my response is, with all due respect, that the above is a bit naive. Many of the neighboring countries were not so helpless, and fascist governments took over and joined the Nazis and Fascists. It is true that this was not true, in the several specific Baltic states , Finland and Poland as much as others, though I believe there were fascists in the political mix in those countries. But when , again, I consider that we have hindsight, the Soviets had an enormously difficult military strategic problem to figure out. Who was going fascist. When the German's would attack , all kinds of other things that are so much clearer to us now, because of hindsight. And of course it doesn't mean that the Soviets solved every issue even militarily correctly. They may have been caught immediately off guard by the exact moment of the German attack, but I do not at all think, and there is plenty of evidence to support what I say, th! at the Soviets didn't think that the German could never anytime soon attack them. That the Germans would only capture capitalist countries etc. That makes Stalin, of all people, the Devil himself , sound naive. Sure Stalin was evil, but doesn't wiliness and street smarts go with that ? How could he be so treacherous in the infighting in the SU, but be not be suspicious of the Germans externally ? He may even have believed that the Pact would hold longer than it did , and so didn't expect the exact time. But, I doubt he ever thought that the SU was completely free of German attack. Hitler had made big speeches about invading Russia.
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With this starting point, it then follows that the Nazi conquests should be denounced and resisted. It follows that the US adventures all over the globe, such as the invasion of Vietnam and the support of brutal puppets like Somoza and Baby Doc, should be resisted and denounced. And it follows that the Soviet aggression against Poland and Finland in 1939 and against Afghanistan in the 80's should be resisted.
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Charles: These are good ideals, but in reality it came down to if one was realy going to resist Nazi conquests and U.S. invasions in deed and not just in word, one had to be willing to fight enormous wars. I mean gigantic wars, the biggest of all times. I don' t want to make a speech about what necessary evils are involved in such an undertaking, but even a defensive war is use of mass terror and killing. That is just what it is. This is the difference between being a pacificist and believing in self-defense for peace.
As I say, in my opinion the Soviet "aggression" against Poland and Finland in 1939 was not the same thing as imperialist aggression. It was preemptive defensive aggression. There was something of a mixed history in the background , too. Poland had been part of the invasion of the SU. There were boundary disputes. Finland was part of the 1919 aggression against the baby SU too. These muddy up the picture of them as socalled defenseless and weak nations. Finland joined the Nazis after they came in, and helped to invade the SU.
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When it comes to Poland, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia in 1939, or Eastern Europe after WWII, or Afghanistan in the 80's I disagree.... If I lived in eastern Poland in 1939, Soviet imperialism would have been the problem.
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Charles: There was no Soviet "imperialism". It was strategic defensive maneuver. In 1939 in Poland , if you had been worrying about Soviet aggression, you would have had your back turned to the real threat. As a matter of fact, the Poles had all of their troops on the Soviet border when the Germans invaded from the other end of the country. So, the Poles made the same mistake as you.
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I'm not arguing that the fSU acted as a brake on US imperialism during the Cold War - it did. I'm saying there are cases where the fSU acted like an imperialist power.
>Charles: The Poles attacked the Soviet Union with the "NATO" force in
1919. >The Poles had been conquered by the Germans. It became a strategic
issue.
And Russia had conquered the Poles before WWI. How is this, or the fact that the Poles fought against the Bolsheviks during the Russian Civil War, relevant to the question of whether or not a Russian invasion of Poland in 1939 was justified?
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Charles: Russia had had a revolution since before WWI. There was a qualitiatively new government in Russia.
As to the Russian invasion of Poland, it was mainly justified as a strategic military maneuver. It occurred after the Germans had invaded Poland. As to Poland as an aggressor earlier in 1919, it undermines your portrayal of that country as a helpless, non-aggressive neighbor of the SU, and thus addresses a secondary aspect of your argument. The SU had reason to fear Polish aggression too. In the treaty of Brest-Litovsk, the SU lost land to Poland. I can't recall , but the part of Poland that the SU invaded in '39 may have been considered part of Bylerussia by their side of the dispute. The German invasion of the SU started at Brest.
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Anyway, the Poles were conquered by the Germans in part because Stalin promised not to come to their defense. Quite the contrary, Stalin agreed to carve it up into pieces, a German and a Russian piece. I don't find your reasoning even slightly compelling.
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Charles: Oh, now you place some obligation on "Stalin" ( by himself ?) to come to Poland's defense against Germany. I don't find that argument very "compelling". If I start looking it up , I will probably find that the Soviets had offered mutual defense pacts with Poland before the non-aggression pact with Germany. The whole bunch of capitalist countries from Poland to England to the U.S. refused numerous and strenous efforts by the SU to form mutual defense pacts to thwart German aggression. You can't claim that the SU should have defended Poland anyway after Poland had refused. You have an inaccurate picture of the political regime in Poland in this era. It was very bourgeois, with the West more than the East.
Everything turns on the SU desparately trying to buy as much time as possible to continue their military-industrial buildup for the big hit coming. It was all the Soviets could do to save themselves. They didn't have the means to save Poland at that time. They did save Poland a few years later.
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>In any case, the Germans mopped up Poland with Russia's assistance. The
>Nazi-Soviet Pact was vital in this respect. The Germans were worried about
>a two-front war, since this was a big part of why they lost WWI. Making
>sure the Russians would not interfere gave Hitler a free hand in Poland and
>later in France and the low countries (Belgium and Holland).
>
>Charles: The main confrontation was between Germany and the SU. The
Russians were not helping the Germans do anything, except to prepare longer
to fight them.
All the evidence I've seen argues against this interpretation.
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Charles: You are ignoring some of the evidence I have put before you. If I get a chance I will copy some of _ The Unbroken Record_ which has some of the details of the extensive efforts by the Soviets to form mutual defense pacts with everybody but the Germans before the non-aggression pact. In fact, even Winston Churchill, a famous anti-communist and anti-Sovieteer, said that the Soviets had done everything. I'll copy some of what Churchill said.
CB