This is the history Vladimir Putin wants us to forget
On August 21, The Globe and Mail published a new opinion piece by Marcus, “This is the history that Vladimir Putin wants us to forget.”
In the piece, Marcus argues that Vladimir Putin’s claim that Russia is fighting “Nazism” in Ukraine is not simply wartime propaganda. It rests on a much older Kremlin effort to manipulate the history of the Soviet Union and obscure Stalin’s collaboration with Hitler at the outset of the Second World War.
At the centre of that history is the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of August 23, 1939, and its secret protocols, which divided Central and Eastern Europe between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. Hitler invaded Poland from the west on September 1, while Stalin invaded from the east on September 17. Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania were assigned to Moscow’s sphere and subsequently occupied and incorporated into the Soviet Union.
For Marcus, this history is also deeply personal. His parents fled Soviet-occupied Estonia and came to Canada. Like hundreds of thousands of other Central and Eastern Europeans who escaped Soviet repression, they belonged to communities that Moscow later sought to discredit as fascists, collaborators and extremists. Marcus writes that versions of those same smears continue today against Ukrainians, Balts and Eastern European diaspora communities that challenge Kremlin narratives.
The article also explains why Black Ribbon Day, observed on August 23, remains so important. Remembering Soviet crimes does not diminish the crimes of Nazi Germany. As Marcus argues, historical truth does not require choosing which dictatorship’s victims deserve to be remembered.
The broader lesson is especially relevant today. Putin continues to manipulate history to legitimize Russia’s war against Ukraine. Countering Russian information warfare therefore requires more than debunking individual falsehoods; it also means challenging the historical myths that sustain them.
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