The Munich Agreement and the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact as a Tool of Russian Revisionist Propaganda

Abstract

Under Vladimir Putin’s regime Russia seeks to whitewash Soviet history and promote an anti-Western narrative in order to legitimize its territorial claims and political demands in Eastern Europe. Drawing on electronic sources such as social media posts, articles from the Russian media, newspaper comments and media statements, the author demonstrates that one of its tools is the exaggerated condemnation of the Munich Agreement of September 1938 and the emphasis on the historical guilt of the Western powers in the Nazi expansion, made to avoid discussion of the Molotov–Ribbentrop pact, signed less than a year later.