AS THE Kremlin presses a campaign to recast Russia's 20th century history in a more favourable light, a research paper published yesterday on the Defence Ministry's website has blamed Poland for starting the Second World War.
The unorthodox reading of history appears to be the latest effort by Russian historians to defend the Soviet Union and its leaders, especially their role in what Russians call the Great Patriotic War.
The generally accepted view is that Poland was
a victim rather than the aggressor in the conflict, and that Adolf Hitler's 1939 invasion of Poland marked the start of the war.
The research paper is not an official government statement. But the author is listed as Colonel Sergei Kovalyov, director of the scientific research department of military history, part of the Institute of Military History of the Ministry of Defence.
The paper, titled Fictions and Falsifications in Evaluating the USSR's Role On the Eve of the Second World War, recounts how in the run-up to Germany's invasion of Poland on 1 September, 1939, Hitler demanded that Poland turn over control of the city of Danzig as well as a land corridor between Germany and the territory now known as Kaliningrad.
"Everyone who has studied the history of the Second World War without bias knows that the war began because of Poland's refusal to satisfy Germany's claims," he writes.
Kovalyov called the demands "quite reasonable". He observed: "The overwhelming majority of residents of Danzig were Germans who sincerely wished for reunification with their historical homeland."
