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A telling sign of the state of Russia is that a speech by Vladimir Putin, admitting that the Hitler-Stalin pact was a mistake, is seen as a significant concession. We are talking, after all, about 20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, long after Mikhail Gorbachev's Glasnost and the opening of some of the files in Moscow attesting to the complicity between the two dictators.
But as president, Mr Putin slammed the door on Glasnost Mark 2. Even this week, on the anniversary of the outbreak of war that decimated first Poland, then Europe, he spoke of it being "possible with good reason" to see the pact as a mistake - adding that it "would not have worked" and had to be seen in the context of Britain's failure at Munich.
The problem with the Hitler-Stalin pact is not that it would have failed (whatever that means) but that it was a confirmation of the primitive similarities between the two great repressive systems of the past century. Today's Russia lives by relativism: a new generation of politicians and diplomats has learned to rebuff every criticism with an attack on some shortcoming of the West.
The Munich Agreement, while an abject blunder by Neville Chamberlain, was not a cynical and calculated attempt to carve up Europe between two tyrants, which is what the pact unambiguously was and did - an outcome that outlasted the agreement itself.
That bit seems to have escaped Mr Putin, because he never distances himself outright from the full atrocities of the Stalinist era. His comments fall short of full acknowledgement of guilt for the Katyn massacre and the occupation of the country after the war by Stalin's heirs.
Put bluntly, he has thrived on a sub-Stalinist cult himself, regretting the purges en principe but firmly allying himself with the dictator's building of a strong Russia. He has presided over a cultural celebration of figures who have family links to the Stalin apparat - and clamped down on democratic organisations such as Memory on the spurious grounds that they damage the country's standing.
Even without a formal censor, television and state-backed film carefully screen out treatments of bygone eras that do not accord with a nationalist account of Russia's past.
We might ask why it matters if a powerful Russian figure messes about with history. But the shadow of the past century hangs over the attempts in this one to find a new way of dealing with Russia, its power and its insecurities.
Next week, President Barack Obama will try to put his stamp on a new era. His talk of "hitting the reset" button is code for a readiness to negotiate - a step that would be the clearest break yet with the Cold War two-step, in which the West's attempts to provide protection for states emerging from Russia's shadow were matched by Moscow's complaints about alleged "encirclement" by a hostile West.
Everyone can see this is going nowhere. Nato has been weakened by the inability of its key states to agree on approaches to the fast-breaking multiple crises of the past decade. It will not now expand further to the east. The defensive "umbrella" of planned missile shields in Poland and the Czech Republic is more trouble than it is worth.
Just before the US election, a powerful Democrat foreign policy figure told me that he was convinced the likely new President would make a radical promise to abandon the plans. The price would be greater co-operation on Iran and North Korea, and a general warming of the US-Russia relationship, which would also help melt the permafrost which has settled on the UK's dealings with the Kremlin.
I will eat my moth-eaten shapka if these negotiations have not been at the centre of the quiet talks leading up to the Moscow visit.
But whether it is just another move on the chessboard depends on Russia's response. This is a key plank of Mr Obama's opening gambit: he wants to "reset" relations but it needs a shift on the other side to make it pay off.
"I think President Medvedev understands that. I think Putin has one foot in the old ways of doing business and one foot in the new," says President Obama.
So the White House is consigning Mr Putin's role to that of former boss and man of influence, and banking on opening up better relations with his successor on a raft of issues from the containment of Iran's nuclear ambitions to energy supplies (a future flashpoint) and climate change.
This is a gamble because Dmitry Medvedev is such an unknown quantity. He has shown a greater readiness to talk to opposition figures but embarrassed the veteran of US-Soviet relations Henry Kissinger, who first built him up as a Putin alternative, by promptly marching into Georgia. There's gratitude for you.
However, Mr Medvedev is at least less avidly nationalist than his old boss and more mild-mannered. If Mr Putin comes across as a body builder, his protégé looks like a young branch manager at Mosbank.
Undoubtedly, he is a Putin creation, otherwise he would not have become his nominated successor. Still, creations in Moscow can take on their own lease of life - as President Gorbachev once proved - so Obama has evidently decided to bet on this one.
All US presidents begin with hopes of forming a special relationship with Moscow. I remember watching in Moscow in the early Nineties as President Bill Clinton played sax for President Yeltsin, with Hillary attempting to buy a loaf of bread to show the hand of friendship to the new Russia. The benefits were shortlived. Old suspicions reasserted themselves.
But the new Russia cannot afford isolation. It has thrusting young elites who travel and do business in the West. It has vast resources but stands as a lonely diplomatic power, with an emerging Iran and China causing it the same headaches as they do the West.
Mr Putin's performance this week is that of a man who cannot escape the past because he cannot really accept what it was.
President Obama offers steps towards an improved future between Russia and the West. Moscow would be wrongheaded and shortsighted to miss it. That doesn't mean it won't.
Reader views (3)
The Russian bear knows how to protect itself and is immune from criticism from lillywhite hindsight merchants who fail to mention (one wonders why) that Europe was liberated from the Nazis via (to a massive extent) Russian determination, guts and (dare I say it) blood.
That which occurred after hostilities ceased can be looked at in several ways, but to accuse the Russian nation as the sole culprit re-drawing borders (largely via the simple human motive of self-protection) is downright nonsense.
Someone wrote that: "all is well that ends well), and that's sufficient for me - so move on you carpers and get a life.
- Ted, London, 03/09/2009 07:53
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salaam,
Only tares down what it does not adore,
to build it in support of another location,
how much is that wall around Palestine Kingdom,
so if it supported not a wall over yonder,
why support it over there?
protested which wall of support?
- Secretslave, earth, 03/09/2009 07:01
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Russia indulges in a poisonous revisionism by equating Molotov-Ribbentrop with Munich and excusing itself by claiming everyone else was as bad as Stalin. This is clear evidence it has simply not owned up to its past and is plunging ever deeper into historical denial.
After the war, the countries we liberated become free democracies, while the ones Russia "liberated" stayed under totalitarian rule for another 55 years. That says all that needs to be said.
- Robert C, London UK, 02/09/2009 14:49
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