Russian rethink

Like Scott McIntosh (Letters, 27 May) I too have been horrified by the superficiality of the ­response not only to Prince Charles’ ­remarks, but also to the situation in Ukraine and Crimea.

This superficiality is displayed not only by general correspondents, but also by many supposed experts.

There is generally, and has been for many years, a lack of knowledge of the complexity of history/politics in the USSR and adjacent territories going back at least to the Russian revolution and possibly even further.

History is as important there as in Ireland, if not more so. We in the West seem to prefer the simplistic accounts which fit it with the two-dimensional view of the Second World War which deals only with the UK-US anti-Nazi axis, and finds anything to do with the four-dimensional complexities of the war in Eastern ­Europe does not fit in with understood mythologies.

In 1939, the USSR was allied to Nazi Germany, and under the terms of the secret protocol of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact ­annexed the Baltic States and Eastern Poland.

In March 1940, the UK and France were embarking an expeditionary force to fight with the Finns against the Soviet Union on the very day the Finns were forced to surrender.

The Soviet Union only changed sides when Hitler was unwise enough to invade in June 1941.

Scott McIntosh’s excellent, well-written letter will be very rapidly dismissed by the Kremlinocracy as “revisionist slander”.

Marina Donald

Tantallon Place

Edinburgh