European institutions mark August 23 as Remembrance Day to commemorate the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact between Nazi Germany and the Communist Soviet Union.
The date is officially known as the European Day of Remembrance for Victims of All Totalitarian and Authoritarian Regimes, or Black Ribbon Day. It is not a binding European Union public holiday, but was established politically by the European Parliament to remember crimes committed under totalitarian systems.
Secret Protocol Divided Eastern Europe
On August 23, 1939, Nazi German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop and Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov signed a non-aggression pact in Moscow in the presence of Joseph Stalin. Officially, Berlin and Moscow agreed not to attack each other for ten years, opening the path for invasions, annexations, and mass executions.
The agreement appeared unthinkable at the time because Nazism had built its ideology on anti-communism and Judeo-Bolshevism myths, while Soviet propaganda framed Nazi Germany as its primary threat. Ideological enmity was set aside for territorial expansion.
Adolf Hitler sought to invade Poland without facing Soviet forces in the east, while Stalin aimed to extend Soviet borders westward to secure geopolitical objectives. The two regimes became partners, treating independent countries and populations as spoils to divide.
A secret protocol attached to the pact mapped out German and Soviet spheres of influence without consulting the affected populations. Poland was to be partitioned between both powers. Finland, Estonia, Latvia, and Bessarabia were placed in the Soviet sphere, while Lithuania was initially assigned to Germany before being transferred to Moscow under the German-Soviet Boundary and Friendship Treaty on September 28, 1939.
Invasion and Partition of Poland
Nazi Germany invaded Poland from the west on September 1, 1939, prompting Britain and France to declare war on Germany and starting World War II in Europe. Sixteen days later, while Polish troops were still fighting German forces, the Soviet Red Army invaded Poland from the east.
Trapped between two occupying forces, Poland was partitioned as agreed by Hitler and Stalin. Both occupying powers carried out arrests, executions, deportations, and the systematic elimination of Polish political, military, and intellectual leaders.
In the German occupation zone, Nazi terror initiated racial purity policies that evolved into the Holocaust, resulting in the mass murder of Jews, Poles, Roma, people with disabilities, and other targeted groups.
Katyn Massacre and Soviet Expansion
In the Soviet zone, the secret police agency NKVD, the predecessor to the KGB, launched arrests and mass deportations. In the spring of 1940, the NKVD executed nearly 22,000 Polish officers, police officers, civil servants, and intellectuals in the Katyn Forest massacre under orders approved by Stalin and the Communist Party Politburo.
The Soviet Union denied involvement for decades and blamed German forces. In 1990, Mikhail Gorbachev officially acknowledged NKVD responsibility, and in 2010 the Russian State Duma passed a resolution by 324 votes to 57 confirming state archive documents proved Stalin directly ordered the massacre.
Following the pact, the Soviet Union attacked Finland in November 1939 during the Winter War. Finnish resistance preserved national independence, but Finland was forced to cede territory to Moscow that Russia retains today.
In 1940, the Soviet Union occupied and annexed Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, accompanying the annexations with purges and deportations. Moscow also seized Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina from Romania to form Moldavia, where Russian troops remain deployed in Transnistria.
Operation Barbarossa and Regimes Compared
Between 1939 and 1941, Germany and the Soviet Union maintained economic cooperation, with Moscow delivering raw materials and food in exchange for German industrial and military equipment. That cooperation ended on June 22, 1941, when Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa against the Soviet Union.
The German invasion forced the Soviet Union into the Allied coalition, which had been fighting Nazi Germany for nearly two years. While the Soviet contribution to defeating Nazism involved immense sacrifices, historical analysis notes that these sacrifices do not erase Soviet actions between August 1939 and June 1941.
Scholars emphasize that comparing Nazism and Stalinism highlights distinct mechanisms of terror without equating their underlying ideologies. Nazism focused on racial hierarchy and biological extermination, murdering nearly 6,000,000 Jews in the Holocaust alongside millions of others.
Stalinism operated through state terror, forced collectivization, famines, Gulag camps, and forced deportations of entire ethnic groups, including Crimean Greeks. During the Great Terror of 1937 and 1938, Soviet authorities arrested over 1.5 million people for political reasons and executed hundreds of thousands under Politburo quotas.
Baltic Chain and Soviet Admission
On August 23, 1989, the 50th anniversary of the pact, approximately 2,000,000 people across Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania formed a 600-kilometer human chain connecting Tallinn, Riga, and Vilnius. Known as the Baltic Way, the peaceful protest demanded public disclosure of the secret protocol and independence from Soviet occupation.
The Baltic Way built upon Black Ribbon Day demonstrations organized since 1986 by Eastern European refugees in North America, Europe, and Australia. On December 24, 1989, the Soviet Congress of People's Deputies formally admitted the existence of the secret protocol, declared it legally invalid, and condemned it.
European Resolutions and Historical Debates
Following European Union enlargement into Central and Eastern Europe, member states introduced different historical perspectives into European debates. While Western Europe associated 1945 with liberation and democratic renewal, Central and Eastern European nations experienced Soviet domination and communist dictatorship.
In January 2006, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe adopted Resolution 1481 condemning totalitarian communist crimes. In June 2008, former Czech President Vaclav Havel and future German President Joachim Gauck signed the Prague Declaration on European Conscience and Communism.
The European Parliament endorsed the commemoration date on September 23, 2008, when 409 members signed a declaration. On April 2, 2009, parliamentarians passed a broader resolution on European conscience and totalitarianism by 553 votes to 44, with 33 abstentions, extending coverage to fascist dictatorships in Southern Europe.
In July 2009, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe Parliamentary Assembly passed the Vilnius Declaration by 201 votes to 8, with 4 abstentions, urging the opening of state archives. In 2011, European representatives signed the Warsaw Declaration during the Polish presidency of the EU council.
In September 2019, the European Parliament passed an 80th anniversary resolution by 535 votes to 66, with 52 abstentions, stating that World War II began as a direct result of the pact. While historians note WWII had complex roots including German rearmament, the Munich Agreement, and Western appeasement, they stress that appeasement did not justify Soviet invasions.
Russian Opposition and Divergent Memories
Official opposition to the European commemoration has come primarily from Russia, whose delegation walked out of the 2009 OSCE meeting in Vilnius. The Russian Foreign Ministry denounced the 2019 resolution as politicized revisionism, arguing it equated Nazi aggression with Soviet victory.
Under President Vladimir Putin, World War II victory has been elevated into a core state ideology, framing Russia as the sole victor over Nazism. Moscow continues to reject Soviet responsibility for Katyn despite state archive records and the 2010 Duma vote.
Holocaust scholars and Jewish organizations have also raised concerns that equating totalitarian regimes could risk downplaying the unique nature of the Holocaust or sanitizing local collaborators. In 2009, Social Democrat and European United Left members opposed equal categorization over similar concerns.
European historical memory reflects contrasting national experiences, from the Red Army liberating Auschwitz to imposing decades of rule behind the Iron Curtain and the Berlin Wall. Historians conclude that honoring victims requires recognizing all totalitarian crimes without creating false equivalences or erasing historic facts.
