Paul Goble<\/p>\n
Vienna, August 31 \u2013 Stalin viewed the secret protocols of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact which allowed Moscow to seize the Baltic countries, Bessarabia, and part of Poland as \u201ca model\u201d for the subsequent annexation of portions of Iran, Turkey and China, an Azerbaijani scholar has suggested.
\nAnd while the Soviet dictator did not succeed in doing so in any of these cases, largely because of Stalin\u2019s dependence on the West after Hitler invaded his former ally in June 1941 and because of Western opposition in each, the existence of these plans demolishes the arguments of those who insist that the pact was only a defensive rather than also an offensive accord.
\nIn an analysis of recent research on these questions posted on the 1news.az site over the weekend, Jeyhun Najafov calls attention to an aspect of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact that has attracted little attention during this year\u2019s debate on the 70th anniversary of the accord between Hitler and Stalin (1news.az\/analytics\/20090829104314684.html).
\nAs almost all sides in that debate concede, the secret protocol attached to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact put part of Poland, Finland, Bessarabia, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania in Moscow\u2019s sphere of influence, opening the way for the Soviet Union to expand it borders to the West.
\nStalin\u2019s supporters argue that this was a defensive maneuver, designed to protect the Soviet Union from what the Soviet dictator assumed would be an eventual German attack on the USSR, while critics of Stalin argue that the Soviet agreement with the Nazis was simply about the territorial aggrandizement of Stalin\u2019s empire.
\nResearch conducted by Dzhakhangir Nadzhafov, a scholar at the Moscow Institute of General History, clearly shows that Stalin\u2019s critics have the better argument, given that documents he published in Moscow\u2019s \u201cVoprosy istorii\u201d show that Stalin planned to use the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact as \u201ca model\u201d for annexing other neighboring regions.
\nNot surprisingly, Nadzhafov focused on Stalin\u2019s plans to annex the northern regions of Iran, the population of which was and remains predominantly ethnically Azerbaijani, but he also explored the Soviet dictator\u2019s plans to annex the Xinjiang Region of China and some of the eastern districts of Turkey.
\nIn 1941, Nadzhafov wrote, Mirdzhafar Bagirov, the Communist Party boss of Azerbaijan, invoking Stalin, said that \u201cin Iran it is necessary to undertake the tactic and strategy of the model of uniting Polish territories to Ukraine and Belorussia,\u201d an indication that Moscow\u2019s plans for annexing portions of Iran were \u201cpractically ready.\u201d
\nAdditional evidence of the way in which Stalin viewed the secret protocols as a model concerns Xinjiang and the eastern portions of Turkey, Nadzhafov pointed out. \u201cThe Politburo planned to annex completely the Turkish districts of Kars, Ardahan and part of Avdina and divide the 26,500 square kilometers of territory between Armenia and Georgia.
\nMoscow had also defined the exact dimension of the territory of Iran that would be united with the Azerbaijan SSR, so all three of the republics of the South Caucasus would have expanded significantly, Armenia by 80 percent, Georgia by eight percent, and Azerbaijan more than doubled.
\nThe Politburo was so committed to these territorial transfers and so certain that it they would take place that it had the foreign ministry work up the necessary documents and had decided on both the exact dates \u2013 the Iranian provinces were to be absorbed on November 7, 1941 \u2013 and the names of the Communist officials who would be assigned to these places.
\nHitler\u2019s invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 put all these plans on hold. Stalin needed Western assistance, and much of it flowed through Iran. As a result, the British insisted that Moscow recognize the territorial integrity of that country, something the Soviet Union did in a trilateral agreement with the US and the United Kingdom in January 1942.
\nBut as Soviet forces moved westward and victory over Hitler seemed assumed, Moscow appears to have taken up the Southern Azerbaijan project once again, not only because many ethnic Azerbaijanis on both sides of the border were interested but because of the growing importance of oil, large amounts of which were located in this region.
\nToward that end, the Soviets created the Democratic Republic of Southern Azerbaijan, a regime backed by the present of Red Army troops. But after the end of World War II, those troops were withdrawn, and the Soviet-backed puppet government of Southern Azerbaijan collapsed.
\nAs Najafov noted in his article on Saturday, \u201ccertain [Azerbaijani] scholars connect the fall of the Democratic Republic of Southern Azerbaijan with what they see as a manifestation of the negative attitude toward Azerbaijan by Stalin, Beria, Mikoyan\u201d and other Soviet leaders. But, the journalist says, such conclusions \u201cdo not have any basis in fact.\u201d
\nInstead, he writes, \u201cthe Western powers considered that Stalin and the Soviet leadership had received an enormous zone of influence in Europe and therefore must not be permitted in any way to expand into Central Asia.\u201d Indeed, Najafov argues, \u201cthe West was united on this question.\u201d
\n\u201cFor Azerbaijanis,\u201d he says, Southern Azerbaijan \u201cwas a question of the future of the nation. For the USSR, Iranian Azerbaijan was about the annexation of new territories, but for the West this was the expansion of communism.\u201d And the West, possibly according to some accounts using the threat of a nuclear attack against the USSR, was not prepared to tolerate that.
\nBut however that may be \u2013 and this question is still a matter of dispute \u2013 the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact not only was the product of a far more aggressive Soviet policy than its defenders want to admit but also cast a larger and more ugly shadow than even the victims and opponents of the Hitler-Stalin accord had thought.<\/p>\n
http:\/\/windowoneurasia.blogspot.com\/2009\/08\/window-on-eurasia-stalin-planned-to.html<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Paul Goble Vienna, August 31 \u2013 Stalin viewed the secret protocols of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact which allowed Moscow to seize the Baltic countries, Bessarabia, and part of Poland as \u201ca model\u201d for the subsequent annexation of portions of Iran, Turkey and China, an Azerbaijani scholar has suggested. And while the Soviet dictator did not succeed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":179175,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,782,42,89],"tags":[2127,1503,2128],"class_list":["post-14454","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-azerbaijan","category-eastern-europe","category-russia","category-turkey","tag-molotov-ribbentrop-pact","tag-south-azerbaijan","tag-stalin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14454","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14454"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14454\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/179175"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}