# Putin: "The Molotov - Ribbentrop Pact was okay . . . the UK and the US caused WWII" **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [November 7, 2014, 7:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/putin-the-molotov-ribbentrop-pact-was-okay-the-uk-and-the-us-caused-wwii/704008 "2014-11-07T19:55:59Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Simplicio](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c37758/32.png) [@Simplicio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Simplicio)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2014, 3:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/putin-the-molotov-ribbentrop-pact-was-okay-the-uk-and-the-us-caused-wwii/704008/21 "2014-11-08T03:28:39Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > 😕 That’s understandable while Stalin was alive – one couldn’t very well say he had made a mistake – but after Stalin, and after everything the Germans had done to them, I can’t see how the Soviets would cling to the notion that the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was ever a good idea. I think the idea is that with the other allies leaving them in the cold, they were better off seeking a separate peace with Germany for a few years so they could get the war-machine going for what everyone realized was going to be an eventual Soviet-German war, rather than risk standing alone against a German invasion in 1939 with their relatively unprepared military. Which I don’t think is even wrong as far as it goes. But it ignores the fact that beyond non-aggression, the treaty also divided up a good chunk of Eastern Europe between the Soviets and the Germans. But since the Soviet Union never admitted that that part of the Treaty existed, presumably it wasn’t taught in Putin’s highschool history class. ---
**Author:** ![KarlGauss](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/karlgauss/32/3713_2.png) [@KarlGauss](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KarlGauss)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2014, 3:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/putin-the-molotov-ribbentrop-pact-was-okay-the-uk-and-the-us-caused-wwii/704008/22 "2014-11-08T03:30:38Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > FTR, it is well established from Hitler’s writings, particularly his unpublished [“Second Book”](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zweites_Buch), that his war-aim from the beginning, while falling well short of world conquest, was still plenty aggressive: He intended all along to destroy the nations of Poland and Russia – not merely conquer and exploit them like a colony in Africa, but to destroy them utterly as nations, and build a greater Germany on their bones, colonize their territory with Germans, exterminate the Slavs or reduce them to slavery,. . . And that’s why Pat Buchanan (see above) is either an ignoramus, troll, or closet Nazi. ---
**Author:** ![Monty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/monty/32/47_2.png) [@Monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monty)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2014, 3:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/putin-the-molotov-ribbentrop-pact-was-okay-the-uk-and-the-us-caused-wwii/704008/23 "2014-11-08T03:51:51Z")
Just a few minutes ago, I was watching an interview on NHK World during which a Japanese reporter was interviewing some [del]flack[/del] spokesperson for Putin. After each answer, in which the spokesperson basically accused the the West in general and the US in particular of various and sundry crimes against Russia, the interviewer’s face showed even more shock than at the previous answer, and she still managed to get through all the questions without calling that lying fool a lying fool. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2014, 5:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/putin-the-molotov-ribbentrop-pact-was-okay-the-uk-and-the-us-caused-wwii/704008/24 "2014-11-08T17:08:38Z")
From [_Modern Times: The World from the Twenties to the Nineties,_](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=16686358&highlight=%22paul+johnson%22#post16686358) by Paul Johnson, Chapter 10, “The End of Old Europe”: > [@](#): > > Hitler’s aims can be reconstructed not merely from Mein Kampf itself, with its stress on the ‘East Policy,’ but from his early speeches and so-called ‘Second’ or Secret Book of 1928. This material makes it clear that the ‘cleansing’ process – the elimination of the Jews – was essential to the whole long-term strategy. Being a race-socialist as opposed to a class-socialist, Hitler believed the dynamic of history was race. The dynamic was interrupted when race-poisoning took place. The poison came, above all, from the Jews. He admired the Jews as ‘negative supermen’. In his Table-Talk he said that if 5,000 Jews emigrated to Sweden, in no time at all they would occupy all the key positions: this was because ‘blood purity’, as he put it in Mein Kampf, ‘is a thing the Jew preserves better than any other people on earth’. The Germans, on the other hand, were poisoned. That was why they lost the First World War. Even he was poisoned: that was why he sometimes made mistakes – ‘all of us suffer from the sickness of mixed, corrupt blood’. Race-poisoning was a comparatively common obsession in the time of Hitler’s youth, rather as ecological poisoning became an obsession of many in the 1970s and 1980s. The notion of ubiquitous poisoning appealed strongly to the same type of person who accepted conspiracy theories as the machinery of public events. As with the later ecologists, they thought the race-poison was spreading fast, that total disaster was iminent, and that it would take a long time to reverse even if the right policies were adopted promptly. Hitler calculated it would take a hundred years for his regime to eliminate racial poisoning in Germany: on the other hand, if Germany became the first nation-race to do so successfully, it would inevitably become ‘lord of the Earth’. (Mein Kampf.) > > What distinguished Hitlerian race-theory was, first, this rooted belief that ‘cleansing’ could make Germany the first true superpower, and ultimately the first paramount power in the world; and, secondly, his absolute conviction that the ‘Jewish race-poison’ and Bolshevism were one and the same phenomenon. In 1928, when he wrote his Second Book, he did not appreciate that old-style ‘Jewish’ Bolshevism had ceased to exist and that Stalin’s Russia was in essentials as anti-Semitic as Tsardom had been. On the contrary, he believed the Soviet Union was a Jewish cultural phenomenon. Hence the object of his policy was to combat ‘an inundation of diseased bacilli which at the moment have their breeding-ground in Russia’. Thus the ‘cleansing’ fit in perfectly with the resumption of traditional German East policy, but on a far more ambitious scale. > > Hitler’s full programme, therefore, was as follows. First, gain control of Germany itself, and begin the cleansing process at home. Second, destroy the Versailles settlement and establish Germany as the dominant power in Central Europe. All this could be accomplished without war. Third, on this power basis, destroy the Soviet Union (by war) to rid the ‘breeding-ground’ of the ‘bacillus’ and, by colonization, created a solid economic and strategic power base from which to establish a continental empire, in which France and Italy would be mere satellites. In the fourth stage Germany would acquire a large colonial empire in Africa, plus a big ocean navy, to make her one of the four superpowers, in addition to Britain, Japan and the United States. Finally, in the generation after his death, Hitler envisaged a decisive struggle between Germany and the United States for world domination. > > No one since Napoleon had thought in such audacious terms. In its gigantic scope the concept was Alexandrine. Yet until he was engulfed by the war he made, Hitler was always pragmatic. Like Lenin he was a superb opportunist, always ready to seize openings and modify his theory accordingly. This has led some historians to conclude he had no master-programme. In fact, while always adjusting the tactics to suit the moment, he pursued his long-term strategy with a brutal determination that has seldom been equalled in the history of human ambition. Unlike most tyrants, he was never tempted to relax by a surfeit of autocratic power. Quite the contrary. He was always raising the stakes on the table and seeking to hasten the pace of history. He feared his revolution would lose its dynamism. He thought himself indispensable, and at least four of his phases must be accomplished while he was not only still alive but at the height of his powers. It was this impatience which made him so dangerous in the short term and so ineffectual in the long term (the very reverse of the Soviet strategists). In a secret speech to German newspaper editors in November 1938, after his great Munich triumph, he deplored the fact that his need to talk about peace had led the German nation to relax too much. He argued that for Germany to accept peace, and thus stability, as a permanent fact of international life was to accept the very spirit of defeatism. Violence was a necessity, and the public must be prepared for it. Same book, Chapter 11, “The Watershed Year”: > [@](#): > > Hitler’s ultimate aim was to create a German Volk of 250 million. He said that he proposed settling 100 million Germans on the great plains to the west of the Urals. In 1941 he envisaged that over the next decade the first 20 million would move east. Though he saw the colonization process clearly, he was vague on where the settlers were to come from. Those eligible and willing to settle, the Volksdeutsche from south-east Europe, numbered only 5 million, perhaps 8 milllion at most. His colleage Alfred Rosenberg considered the idea of ‘drafting’ Scandinavian, Dutch, and English settlers, being racially approximate to Germans, when the war was won. Some aspects of this great population transfer, to be the most formidable and decisive in history, were determined in meticulous detail. There was to be polygamy and a free choice of women for servicemen with decorations. The Crimea, after being ‘cleansed’ of Slavs and Jews, was to be turned into a gigantic German spa under its old Greek name of Tauria, populated by a mass transfer of peasants from the South Tyrol. Over vast areas of the Ukraine and south European Russia, a new Volk civilization was planned. As Hitler described it: > > > [@](#): > > > > The area must lose the character of the Asiatic steppe. It must be Europeanized! . . . The ‘Reich peasant’ is to live in outstandingly beautiful settlements. The German agencies and authorities are to have wonderful buildings, the governors palaces. Around each city, a ring of lovely villages will be placed to within 30 or 40 kilometers . . . . That is why we are now building the large traffic arteries on the southern tip of the Crimea, out to the Caucasus mountains. Around these traffic strands, the German cities will be placed, like pearls on a string, and around the cities the German settlements will lie. For we will not open up Lebensraum for ourselves by entering the old, godforsaken Russian holes! The German settlements must be on an altogether higher level! > > As Hitler’s vision expanded, in the heady days of 1941, it came to embrace all Europe. Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, the whole of France north of the Somme were to be incorporated in a Greater Germany, the names of the cities being changed – Nancy would become Nanzig, Besancon Bisanz. Trondheim would become a major German city and naval base of 250,000 inhabitants. The Alps would be the boundary between ‘the German Empire of the North,’ with a new ‘Germania’ as its capital, and ‘the Roman Empire of the South’. The Pope would be hanged in full pontificals in St. Peter’s Square. Strasbourg Cathedral would be turned into a giant ‘Monument to the Unknown Soldier’. New crops, such a perennial rye, would be invented. He would forbid smoking, make vegetarianism compulsory, ‘revive the Cimbrian art of knitting’, appoint a ‘Special Commissioner for the Care of Dogs’ and an ‘Assistant Secretary for Defence Against Gnats and Insects’.’ The [Greater Germanic Reich](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Germanic_Reich) the Nazis envisioned. ---
**Author:** ![KarlGauss](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/karlgauss/32/3713_2.png) [@KarlGauss](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KarlGauss)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2014, 5:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/putin-the-molotov-ribbentrop-pact-was-okay-the-uk-and-the-us-caused-wwii/704008/25 "2014-11-08T17:33:32Z")
> [@](#): > > Assistant Secretary for Defence Against Gnats and Insects Everyone needs a goal in life. I think I’ve just found mine. I’m not naive; I know it’s going to take a lot of hard work, dedication, perseverance, and more. Still, I think I’m up to the task. All I’m asking for is the chance. Remember, ’ . . . a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a bug bomb for?’ ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2014, 5:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/putin-the-molotov-ribbentrop-pact-was-okay-the-uk-and-the-us-caused-wwii/704008/26 "2014-11-08T17:35:35Z")
> [@KarlGauss](#): > > Everyone needs a goal in life. I think I’ve just found mine. > > I’m not naive; I know it’s going to take a lot of hard work, dedication, perseverance, and more. Still, I think I’m up to the task. All I’m asking for is the chance. > > Remember, ’ . . . a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a bug bomb for?’ _Heil Orkin!_ ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2014, 5:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/putin-the-molotov-ribbentrop-pact-was-okay-the-uk-and-the-us-caused-wwii/704008/27 "2014-11-08T17:38:04Z")
BTW, [Patrick L. Smith’s analysis](http://www.salon.com/2014/11/07/the_new_york_times_doesnt_want_you_to_understand_this_vladimir_putin_speech/) of Putin’s speech actually makes Putin look rather sane and clearheaded compared to the American leadership. ---
**Author:** ![Cicero](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cicero/32/3594_2.png) [@Cicero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cicero)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2014, 5:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/putin-the-molotov-ribbentrop-pact-was-okay-the-uk-and-the-us-caused-wwii/704008/28 "2014-11-08T17:46:29Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > No, no, Hitler was a vegetarian . . . No, he wasn’t. As you would have seen from other posts I’m actually in St Petersburg at the moment. There is a paper that is published every day (St. Petersburg Times) which is quite critical of Mr. Putin, saying he is 20 years out of date and all that sort of thing. However, it gets published- and it includes a lot of articles that aren’t favourable to said Govt. I have no idea if it is widely read, and recognise that this is a very Westernised city but support for Mr. Putin is supposed to run at about 40%. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2014, 5:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/putin-the-molotov-ribbentrop-pact-was-okay-the-uk-and-the-us-caused-wwii/704008/29 "2014-11-08T17:53:52Z")
[Putin’s whole speech.](http://eng.kremlin.ru/transcripts/23137) Judge for yourself. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2014, 5:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/putin-the-molotov-ribbentrop-pact-was-okay-the-uk-and-the-us-caused-wwii/704008/30 "2014-11-08T17:55:24Z")
> [@Cicero](#): > > As you would have seen from other posts I’m actually in St Petersburg at the moment. There is a paper that is published every day (St. Petersburg Times) which is quite critical of Mr. Putin, saying he is 20 years out of date and all that sort of thing. However, it gets published- and it includes a lot of articles that aren’t favourable to said Govt. > I have no idea if it is widely read, and recognise that this is a very Westernised city but support for Mr. Putin is supposed to run at about 40%. I would compare Russia at present to Mexico under the PRI: A quasi-democracy, dominated by one party, with rigged elections, but not quite a dictatorship. ---
**Author:** ![Hector\_St\_Clare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5ac83/32.png) [@Hector\_St\_Clare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hector_St_Clare)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2014, 6:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/putin-the-molotov-ribbentrop-pact-was-okay-the-uk-and-the-us-caused-wwii/704008/31 "2014-11-08T18:06:43Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > I would compare Russia at present to Mexico under the PRI: A quasi-democracy, dominated by one party, with rigged elections, but not quite a dictatorship. St. Petersburg is also almost certainly not representative of much of anything. Neither would Moscow be. I’d expect both of them to be much more liberal/westernized than Russia as a whole. Also, when and if Putin’s regime falls, it’s not likely to be replaced by anything more liberal, democratic or pro-western. His most significant opposition is the Communists. > **[State Duma](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_Duma)** > > Controlled opposition (102) > Vacant seats (1) > The State Duma\[b\] is the lower house of the Federal Assembly of Russia, the upper house being the Federation Council. It was established by the Constitution of the Russian Federation in 1993. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2014, 6:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/putin-the-molotov-ribbentrop-pact-was-okay-the-uk-and-the-us-caused-wwii/704008/32 "2014-11-08T18:10:55Z")
> [@Hector\_St\_Clare](#): > > Also, when and if Putin’s regime falls, it’s not likely to be replaced by anything more liberal, democratic or pro-western. His most significant opposition is the Communists. Based on [their ideology and party program](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_Party_of_the_Russian_Federation#Ideology), they actually seem to be rather reasonable as Communists go. But, somehow I don’t think they’re going anywhere. ---
**Author:** ![Dissonance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/85f322/32.png) [@Dissonance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dissonance)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2014, 6:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/putin-the-molotov-ribbentrop-pact-was-okay-the-uk-and-the-us-caused-wwii/704008/33 "2014-11-08T18:19:51Z")
> [@KarlGauss](#): > > I had never actually _read_ that Buchanan piece before. Sure, I’d heard of it, but I had not bothered to peek at it myself. > > Having now, belatedly, read it, I will say that what Buchanan wrote may be about the most uninformed, ignorant, and absolutely absurd piece I’ve ever encountered. It’s just ludicrous, and on multiple levels. Was he trying to be provocative (and willing to sacrifice a bit of credibility for the sake of publicity)? Unfortunately that piece was just some glurge to promo his full length book on the subject: [_Churchill, Hitler and the Unnecessary War_](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Churchill,_Hitler_and_the_Unnecessary_War). Rather more depressingly, the book debuted at sixteenth place on The New York Times best-seller list. If I had to pick between ignoramus, troll, or closet Nazi, I’d have to go with closet Nazi. ---
**Author:** ![Hector\_St\_Clare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5ac83/32.png) [@Hector\_St\_Clare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hector_St_Clare)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2014, 6:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/putin-the-molotov-ribbentrop-pact-was-okay-the-uk-and-the-us-caused-wwii/704008/34 "2014-11-08T18:25:12Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Based on [their ideology and party program](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_Party_of_the_Russian_Federation#Ideology), they actually seem to be rather reasonable as Communists go. But, somehow I don’t think they’re going anywhere. Oh, I don’t disagree. (The Russian Communists have even dropped their one-time atheism, and Zyuganov had a much touted mutual back-slapping meeting with Patriarch Kirill). On the nationalism front, though, I don’t think the Communists are likely to be any less nationalistic than United Russia is. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2014, 6:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/putin-the-molotov-ribbentrop-pact-was-okay-the-uk-and-the-us-caused-wwii/704008/35 "2014-11-08T18:31:10Z")
> [@VarlosZ](#): > > He’s not **entirely** without a point. The Soviets tried repeatedly to get the western powers interested in an anti-German pact in the run-up to the war – they were more frightened of renewed German military might than anyone else, with good reason – but were continually rebuffed. Stalin probably could see the writing on the wall a little clearer than others, so finally in 1939 he replaced his Jewish, pro-western Foreign Minister (Litinov) with one who help him strike a deal with Germany instead (Molotov). From a self-interested point of view it wasn’t unreasonable, even if it didn’t work out in the end. > > Of course, at the end of the day you’re still striking a deal with the Nazis, and carving up Eastern Europe in the process is despicable no matter what. Also, “Litinov cocktail” does not sound as scary as “Molotov Cocktail”. 🙂 More seriously, I do remember that Churchill wanted a war with the USSR after WWII, but less known is that he also had wanted it before WWII too. When the Russians did attack Finland in 1938 Churchill (then the British First Lord of Admiralty) wanted to intervene in favor of Finland, (He claimed that the intervention would not lead to war with the USSR :dubious:, but that attempt told Stalin to make alliances elsewhere) in the end Finland ended the war with Russia by conceding territory and the Allies did not had time or could not organize to send equipment or troops there. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2014, 6:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/putin-the-molotov-ribbentrop-pact-was-okay-the-uk-and-the-us-caused-wwii/704008/36 "2014-11-08T18:31:46Z")
> [@Dissonance](#): > > Unfortunately that piece was just some glurge to promo his full length book on the subject: [_Churchill, Hitler and the Unnecessary War_](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Churchill,_Hitler_and_the_Unnecessary_War). Rather more depressingly, the book debuted at sixteenth place on The New York Times best-seller list. If I had to pick between ignoramus, troll, or closet Nazi, I’d have to go with closet Nazi. Well, not exactly – that is, I can’t see a decentralist, isolationist, traditionalist paleocon like Buchanan getting behind the idea of an all-powerful centralized national state, nor a war of imperialistic conquest, nor any form at all of “socialism” or “New Order” – but, I’m sure he does have quite a racist streak and quite an anti-Semitic streak. ---
**Author:** ![DinoR](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dinor/32/2821_2.png) [@DinoR](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DinoR)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2014, 7:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/putin-the-molotov-ribbentrop-pact-was-okay-the-uk-and-the-us-caused-wwii/704008/37 "2014-11-08T19:00:23Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > [Putin’s whole speech.](http://eng.kremlin.ru/transcripts/23137) Judge for yourself. I’d already read it. It’s certainly at a level that is not usually seen in American discourse but the audience also was not a typical public speech either so that’s to be expected of someone competent. His view of the world is conveniently as self serving of Russian interests as the other dynamic has been of US interests though. He’s pointing the finger about the US using advantage after more actively playing the great game in regions of primary concern to Russia (because the US was so focused on the middle east.) It’s one thing to raise the question of how we modify international systems for a post Cold-War vs a post World War II environment. He happens to do it from the position of a major regional power that has used significantly the same playbook on regional scale as he accuses the US of using to the detriment of the world. A system that would protect non-western powers from western meddling would also make them more susceptible to regional power meddling since there’s no counterweight. It’s certainly an important speech in the renewed Great Game. I’m not sure if it’s more than a move on that chessboard though. ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2014, 9:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/putin-the-molotov-ribbentrop-pact-was-okay-the-uk-and-the-us-caused-wwii/704008/38 "2014-11-08T21:29:43Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > [Putin’s whole speech.](http://eng.kremlin.ru/transcripts/23137) Judge for yourself. Yeah, and you stole 1 1/2 hour of my life (and more importantly of my week-end) that I intended to spend procrastinating and playing games and instead used to educate myself. :mad: ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2014, 9:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/putin-the-molotov-ribbentrop-pact-was-okay-the-uk-and-the-us-caused-wwii/704008/39 "2014-11-08T21:51:03Z")
> [@clairobscur](#): > > Yeah, and you stole 1 1/2 hour of my life (and more importantly of my week-end) that I intended to spend procrastinating and playing games and instead used to educate myself. :mad: :o Sorry. Here, relax and unwind with some [TVTropes!](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TVTropesWillRuinYourLife)😃 ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2014, 9:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/putin-the-molotov-ribbentrop-pact-was-okay-the-uk-and-the-us-caused-wwii/704008/40 "2014-11-08T21:53:57Z")
> [@DinoR](#): > > It’s certainly an important speech in the renewed Great Game. Of course, the original Great Game was the rivalry of Britain and Russia for control of Central Asia. Nobody much wants to take over Central Asia any more, I think, not even the Russians, it’s just one big headache. The battleground at present is Eastern Europe – and what vital interests does the West have there anyway? I really can’t see why the U.S. and Russia can’t be friends now. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/putin-the-molotov-ribbentrop-pact-was-okay-the-uk-and-the-us-caused-wwii/704008.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/putin-the-molotov-ribbentrop-pact-was-okay-the-uk-and-the-us-caused-wwii/704008.md?page=3)