Fact check: EMS vs Pinarayi on Stalin-Hitler pact. Who’s right?

Opposition leader Pinarayi Vijayan's inadvertent remarks on June 4 in Kerala Assembly reopened a chapter in history that has remained an enduring embarrassment for Communist parties all over the world.

Pinarayi's sole intention on the day was to refute the Congress allegation that the undivided Communist Party of India had slavishly offered to help Britain to weaken India's freedom struggle after the Soviet Union joined the Allied Powers of Britain, France and the United States of America during World War II. 

It was Nilambur's Congress MLA Aryadan Shoukath who lured Pinarayi into the debate. The proof of Communist betrayal Shoukath flashed was a letter purportedly sent by the then CPI general secretary P C Joshi to Sir Reginald Maxwell, the Home Member (Secretary) of the Viceroy's Executive Council in 1942 when the Quit India Movement was on.

Pinarayi rubbished these claims as "gilt-edged lies" spread by journalist Arun Shourie. (Shourie's take down of the CPI's behaviour, with Joshi's letter as its basis, had first appeared in the Illustrated Weekly.) The occasion was the discussion on the motion of thanks to the Governor's address in the Assembly.

Pinarayi said CPM leader Basavapunnaiah had rebutted these charges in the Illustrated Weekly itself. He also said, without needing to, that the Soviet Union had remained neutral during World War II until Germany attacked it in 1942.

This was like throwing a juicy full toss to Chief Minister V D Satheesan. "You said the Soviet Union was neutral and that it was only later, when it was attacked by Germany, that it joined forces with Britain," the CM said, and with dramatic flourish added: "No, my most respected Opposition leader. In 1939 there was a Stalin-Hitler pact. Do you know of that?" 

The non-aggression pact was better known as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact after the foreign ministers of the two countries, Vyacheslav Molotov and Joachim von Ribbentrop.

The CM reminded Pinarayi that Stalin shook hands with Hitler as he was exterminating Jews. "The Communist leader Stalin signed the pact when Hitler was pushing Jews into gas chambers," Satheesan said.

Shoukath's original intention was to show that Communists in India were always motivated by their hatred for the Congress. Now, with Satheesan introducing the Stalin-Hitler pact into the debate, Communists were in danger of being perceived as having historically maintained an illicit relationship with the fascists.

Pinarayi came up with a quick but curious counter. He said the Hitler-Stalin pact was not born out of any political conviction but was a tactical move by a fledgling country (Soviet Union) to buy time to beef up its military. 

"The Soviet Union was then in its infancy. It could not have withstood an attack from Germany. So the pact was made to prevent an immediate attack and then to use the detente to develop the necessary military power to resist a future attack," Pinarayi said.

Pinarayi's response was curious for two reasons. One, the Soviet Union was not in its infancy in 1939. It was established in 1922 after the October Revolution of 1917. And by 1939, after the two five-year plans under Stalin, the USSR had emerged as a major industrial power.

Two, Pinarayi's 'smart move by a young country to strengthen its military' was not the reasoning offered by EMS Namboodirippad, the CPM's foremost ideologue, for the Hitler-Stalin pact. 

"It was when we were fully convinced that there were no leaders more cruel and inhuman than Hitler and Mussolini that we heard of a pact with Stalin and Hitler. People like us were shocked. What do we tell our political opponents? We were in trouble," EMS said in 1969, three decades after the non-aggression treaty.

The pact had pushed not just Indian Communists but global Communism into an existential crisis. Harry Politt, who was then the general secretary of the Communist Party of Great Britain, resigned in protest.

With the benefit of hindsight, EMS defended the pact as a shining example not of the underdog's tactical acumen but of "Stalin's sharp geopolitical understanding".

EMS said that Stalin saw through the Britain-France game plan to instigate Germany and the Soviet Union to launch a war against each other. "While the big powers were conspiring to get Germany and the USSR to destroy each other, the Hitler-Stalin pact was born out of the Soviet Union's strategy to turn Hitler against Britain and France," EMS said.

The non-aggression pact involved a 10-year ceasefire but Germany attacked the USSR in 1941, before the treaty could last even two years. This prompted the Soviet Union to join the Allied forces. "If the USSR had attacked Germany early, the imperialist powers would have only stood by and applauded. But now, the imperialist forces could not have gone to war without the help of the Soviet military," EMS said. 

It is not as if the Soviet Union had remained peaceful when the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact lasted, as both EMS and Pinarayi seemed to suggest. The non-aggression treaty allowed the USSR to annex Estonia, Latvia, Bessarabia and Lithuania, and establish a sphere of influence in Eastern Europe. During this time, Hitler and Stalin also divided Poland between each other.

In this brief period, both the USSR and Germany occupied weaker neighbouring countries without worrying about an attack from the other.