On the eve of his visit to Poland to attend the celebrations of the 70th anniversary of the outbreak of World War II, the Russian prime minister, Vladimir Putin, has written an article for Gazeta Wyborcza in which he presents his view on historical events whose interpretation has been subject to Polish-Russian controversy, and, among other things, condemns the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact.

Mr Putin seldom publishes his own texts in the foreign press. Three years ago, he wrote an article for the Financial Times that presented his views on the future of Russia-EU relations.

In the 'Letter to the Poles' - as internauts have already dubbed the article - Mr Putin judges the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact which, following a series of mendacious publications in the Russian press, has recently become the subject of intense controversy between Poles and Russians. The Russian prime minister writes that 'without any doubt there are good reasons to condemn the pact' and that the Soviet Union's Congress of People's Deputies did so as long as twenty years ago.

At the same time, Mr Putin stresses that in the 1930s Western governments sought an amicable settlement with Hitler, and France and Great Britain by signing the 1938 Munich agreement 'ruined' hopes for the creation of a 'common anti-fascist front.' That meant that the Soviet Union could not reject Germany's proposal to 'sign a non-aggression pact.'

From this historical lesson Mr Putin draws the conclusion for today that it is 'impossible to create an effective collective security system without the participation of all of the continent's countries, including Russia.'

The Russian prime minister stresses that the Russian people, whose 'history has been distorted by a totalitarian system,' understand how 'sensitive' the issue of the Katyn massacre is for Poles. He calls, therefore, for the cemeteries in Katyn and Mednoye, as well as the tragedy of the Red Army soldiers taken prisoner in Poland in 1920, to become a symbol of 'mutual grief and mutual forgiveness.'

The head of the Russian government points out that it was the Poles who 'first stood in Hitler's way' and then alongside the allies fought Nazi Germany to the very end. He also expresses hope for an eventual Polish-Russian reconciliation, just as the French-German reconciliation after the war lay foundations for the creation of the European Union.

In Russia, just as in Poland, many wondered what the Russian prime minister would tell the Polish public. Some experts worried that we might hear something along the lines of the aggressive speech Mr Putin delivered in Munich in 2007 and which was hailed as the beginning of a new cold war. The text we publish today proves that they were wrong.

Źródło: Gazeta Wyborcza