Since 1939 the Soviet leadership conducted a convoluted dance to correctly present its engagement with the Nazi Third Reich. If you know the detailed history of that period, you could think it's an impossible task – the facts are:

• In 1939 USSR and Third Reich entered the Ribbentropp-Molotov pact which was called a “non-aggression pact” but in reality the legal text codified not only partition of Poland between the two parties (a very “non-aggressive” step, indeed) but also far fetching “security” and “commercial” cooperation
• The “security” part was literally a cooperation agreement between NKVD and Gestapo targeted at, among others, joint propaganda efforts and countering any resistance on the occupied territories. As part of this agreement the USSR kindly returned German communists and Jews, whom it accepted as refugees in 1930's, back into hands of Gestapo
• The “commercial” part involved USSR supplying the Nazi Germany with millions of tons of fuel, food and industrial resources at a very difficult period when the Allies enforced economic blockade of Germany – thanks to USSR the Nazi Germany could continue its march through Europe and build up of its military power in preparation for the next target – the same USSR.

Of course, back in 1939-1941 all of the above quite logically placed the USSR among active allies of Nazi Germany, not merely neutral bystanders. Therefore, when on 1 May 1941 Soviets celebrated the International Workers' Day in Moscow, they had a group of prominent guests – the Nazi officials shaking hands of proud Soviet generals:

Then, on 22 June 1941 the Nazi Germany treacherously attacked its ally, the Soviet Union and since that day – and only then – the Soviets stopped being allies and became enemies, subsequently entering the Allies and the anti-Nazi coalition. Russians even officially recognise this by using a private alias for the WW2 – they call it “Great Patriotic War” which started in 1941, not 1939 as everyone else thinks.

What happened during these two years is usually skipped in discussions in Russia, as if there was nothing. If you push, they may admit the Ribbentropp-Molotov pact was a fat, but highlight that it was a genius step by Stalin who expected the war and somehow delayed German invasion by pretending to be friends, allowing USSR to prepare. The part where USSR for two years literally armed and fueled Germany's war effort preparing invasion on USSR is conveniently skipped. Pushing Russians about this part somehow makes them angry and emotional.

There's one more important part here: during German invasion, hundreds of thousands of Soviet citizens collaborated with Nazis, including both civilians and formation of 125'000 strong Russian Liberation Army, which fought along with Wehrmacht. This number, 125'000 Soviet citizens, mostly Russians who enlisted into German army, is important because later on Stalin deported whole ethnic groups for “collaboration”.

So thousands of Chechens, Ingush, Balkars, Kalmyks were deported as a collective punishment for “collaborators” (counted in hundreds) – but Russians weren't, in spite of hundreds of thousands of collaborators among them. It's also important to keep in mind for the following legal debate...

Article 354.1 “Rehabilitation of Nazism”

In 2022 I have written a long article explaining the peculiar definition of “Nazism” in USSR and Putin's Russia. In short, it explains why and how Russian authorities convicted people who literally fought with Nazis of being “Nazis” themselves. The secret was simple: a twisted logic built on an axiom that because the USSR was the only only truly anti-Nazi country in the world, so automatically everyone who opposed USSR... must have been a Nazi! That was how it worked through all the period of 1945-1991 after which there was a brief period where lucky historians could access KGB archives and saw a glimpse of the Soviet war-time collaboration with Nazis and Soviet war crimes.

First thing Putin did in 1999 was to shut down this window and then extend the classification period of all Soviet WW2 archives. Why? The popular interpretation is that it was to hide the scale of Russian collaboration under Nazi occupation 1941-1943, and to hide the Soviet war crimes against its own population. The former is likely – none of the today's great Russian “patriots” wants to have their ancestors' names published as Nazi collaborators.

And in 2014 Russian Criminal Code also introduced an absolutely incredible regulation – the Аrticle 354.1 of the Criminal Code of Russian Federation.

The law has a peculiar wording, because it’s titled “Rehabilitation of Nazism” but nowhere in the actual legal text includes the term “Nazism”! Just to reiterate: the law called “rehabilitation of Nazism” doesn't legally prohibit neither “rehabilitation” nor “Nazism” in its legal text! So what does it ban?

In this case the Russian lawmakers really tortured the wording of this law:

Denial of facts established by the judgment of the International Military Tribunal for the Trial and Punishment of Major War Criminals of the European Axis Countries, approval of crimes established by the said judgment, as well as the dissemination of deliberately false information about the activities of the USSR during the Second World War and about veterans of the Great Patriotic War, committed publicly.

Let's dissect this convoluted single (!) sentence:

• “denial of facts established...” – reference to the Nurember trials where Nazi leaders were convicted of numerous war crimes, which at the same time serves as justification for the Soviet actions during WW2 (see below...). Whatever Soviets did, says the Russian legislator, was “approved” at Nuremberg because it was Germans who were judged there, not USSR.
• The above requires some clarification: for example, in Nuremberg the Soviet delegation attempted to add the Katyn massacre conducted by NKVD in 1940 as “Nazi war crime”, presenting fabricated evidence. The Tribunal dismissed it as unproven, thus acquitting Germans of this particular war crime... but did not name the actual perpetrator! Therefore, according to this legal text, Russia can pursue people attributing this massacre to USSR, even though Russian authorities themselves admitted it in 1991 and 2010. After all, USSR was not named as perpetrator in Nuremberg which serves as the key reference here!
• “the activities of the USSR during the Second World War and about veterans of the Great Patriotic War” – this is a very curious example of intentionally obscured wording: Russian historiography clearly distinguishes the “Great Patriotic War” – the period of WW2 from 1941-1945 that is after USSR was invaded by its ally – from the actual WW2 1939-1945, as recognised by most countries. In Russia, the term “Second World War” is used rarely and reluctantly, for reasons clearly explained at the start of this article.

Thanks to this carefully crafted wording and courts practice of stretching it to suit political orders, it is now illegal to discuss the Soviet-Nazi cooperation or Soviet war crimes. Russian citizens are actually being sentenced based on this law.

The law also distinguishes between the “two wars”, that is WW2 and GPW covering different periods, “activities of the USSR during WW2”, which includes invasion on Poland, Finland or Katyn massacres (1940) – all of which can be prosecuted – and “veterans of the Great Patriotic War” (from 1941), because, apparently, since USSR did not participate in any war in 1939 so there couldn’t be any “veterans”?

And now about the law's title – why refer to “Nazism” if it's not even mentioned in the legal text? It's a clever black PR trick that serves as an additional pressure point for the accused. The general public reading FSB press announcements learns merely that the perpetrators were sentenced for “Rehabilitation of Nazism” – because that's how the law is titled – regardless of what they actually said or have done! So displaying the above 1 May 1941 parade on your social media in Russia accompanied by a clear condemnation of Nazism will get your convicted for... “rehabilitation” of the very Nazism you have just condemned.

And that's the core of the Soviet and now Russian system of statewide gaslighting, which will twist your own words into something completely opposite and ultimately convince everyone that you have said the very opposite of what you did.

P.S. it's a cruel irony that the preceding item in the Russian Criminal Code, article 354, makes it a crime to “incite, start and conduct an aggressive war” which is all Russia has been doing 2014-2025, but I will write about it more next time.

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Paweł Krawczyk https://krvtz.net/
Fediverse @kravietz@agora.echelon.pl