66th Anniversary of Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact

Today marks 66 years since the representatives of Stalin and Hitler carved up six European nations between them. The agreement divided Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Finland and Romania between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. Stalinist terror descended soon after upon the eastern areas of Poland, the Baltic States and Moldova (Bessarabia). In good Stalinist tradition, the NKVD forcibly deported hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians from these areas to special settlements in Siberia, Kazakhstan and other remote areas. There they died by the tens of thousands. By the time Hitler betrayed his Soviet partner on 22 June 1941, the NKVD had exiled nearly 400,000 Poles, Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians and Romanians to the interior of the USSR. The perpetrator of these crimes sat in judgement at Nuremburg in the greatest act of hypocrisy in world history.