Svetlana’s last two links are to, respectively, Russian Wiki and English Wiki entries on the Soviet invasion of Eastern Poland in 1939 that Nash is referring to. Since I don’t read Russian I can’t tell if these two pages give differing accounts of the events, though I wouldn’t be surprised.

As I pointed out above, countries teach their own history, and sometimes that means their own version of history. The basic facts are that under the secret protocols of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, Hitler and Stalin had secretly carved up Poland, as well as deciding who was going to rule what bits of Eastern Europe. A week after the pact was signed, Germany invaded Western Poland, and then a couple of weeks after that the Red Army moved in and annexed the Eastern bits.

I imagine this was taught in Soviet schools as an heroic act of liberation – this was certainly what the Soviet Politburo insisted on calling it – and perhaps it is still taught that way in Russia. Certainly some parts of the population in then eastern Poland, like the large ethnic Ukranian and Belarusian minorities, initially welcomed the Soviet army, as you can read on the English Wiki page.

Obviously there is more to say, but the Wiki pages offer a good introduction, and I am extremely bored with arguing with Svetlana. I only post up her (less personally offensive) comments out of a general distaste for censorship, even of ravings.

[Edit: comment penned before reading Svetlana's latest rant of 8.46 pm, which was stuck in a seemingly unusually discerning spam filter]

Basta. Our retirement has finished. Now we shall throw out you from all quarters of the earth.No, we shall not fight against you! You will kill yourselves by your own hands. Do you want to come to make a war in Afghanistan? Aren’t you fed up with sh*t in Iraq? Do you want else? Welcome! We let you. We let you even come there through our territory. And then we shall watch how you, brainless idiots, kill there your own children. Fuc..d “partiots”! I wonder how is it possible to be British patriots, making war tens thousands miles off your own UK – in Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, etc? What “geopolitical interest” can you seek there, eh?
But if you so want – come and die. Come on! Flag to your hands, bayonet to your a..se.
Flag vam v ruki, schtyk vam v zhopu… (Rus.)

The Russians did open a second front of sorts in 1939. They invaded Poland a week or so after Germany and the country was divided between the two as per the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact.

if we’re playing the WW2 shame game why didn’t you open up a second front when they invaded Poland, eh?