Saturday marks two anniversaries. It is the “Day of Remembrance for Victims of Totalitarian Regimes,” and it is also a day to celebrate the “Baltic Way.” These two observances are connected through history, and the Castro regime has a connection to the first.
Eighty six years ago on August 23, 1939 Josef Stalin, the leader of the Soviet Union, the first communist regime, signed a treaty with Adolph Hitler, the leader of Nazi Germany it was named after their respective foreign ministers, V.M. Molotov and Joachim von Ribbentrop, as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Eventually it also became known as the Hitler-Stalin Pact.
It contained secret protocols to invade and conquer Poland, and split up the rest of Central and Eastern Europe into spheres of influence for Nazi Germany, and the Soviet Union.
Nine days later on September 1, 1939 Nazi Germany invaded Poland and World War II started. Sixteen days later the Soviet Union, exercising its secret agreement with the Germans, invaded Poland from the East and met their Nazi allies on September 22, 1939 in a joint military parade in Brest-Litovsk to celebrate their victory.
Stalin present to witness the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact on August 23, 1999
The Nazi-Soviet alliance continued
230,000 Polish soldiers and officers and thousands of military service representatives were taken captive by the Soviets. On March 5, 1940 the order to shoot the prisoners was signed by seven members of the All- Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) authorities: Joseph Stalin, Lavrentiy Beria (proposer), Kliment Voroshilov, Vyacheslav Molotov, Anastas Mikoyan, Mikhail Kalinin and Lazar Kaganovich. Thousands of Polish Army officers and intellectual leaders were taken into the Katyn Forestnear Smolensk in the Soviet Union, shot in the back of the head or in the neck and buried in mass graves.
Months later, the Soviet Union invaded and annexed the Baltic States in June 1940.
How the alliance ended in 1941
This arrangement ended on July 22, 1941 when the Nazis double crossed their Soviet allies and launched Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union. This alliance cost the Soviet Union 22 to 28 million Russian lives in World War Two.
However it also ended with the Soviet Union retaking and absorbing the Baltic states for decades, and Poland firmly under Soviet control as a satellite state. This was a legacy of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact that did not end until fifty years later.
Czechoslovakia, a Soviet satellite since 1948, had its Prague Spring in 1968, a moment when reformers in the government sought socialism with a human face and it was ended on August 21, 1968 with the arrival of Warsaw Pact tanks on Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev’s orders followed by an occupation that crushed the reformist initiative.
Fidel Castro backed Soviet invasion and occupation of Czechoslovakia on August 23, 1968
Fidel Castro backed Brezhnev’s crushing of the Prague Spring on 29th anniversary of Molotov-Ribbentrop
Two days after the Soviet led Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia on August 23, 1968 Fidel Castro publicly supported the invasion and occupation of the central European country. Castro’s support of Soviet imperialism on the 29th anniversary of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact revealed the true nature of the regime in Cuba.
On June 4, 1989 the Solidarity labor movement won in free elections and the Polish people finally regained their sovereignty from Soviet domination through nonviolent means.
Thirty six years ago today two million Latvians, Lithuanians and Estonians joined hands together in a giant human chain stretching 370 miles on August 23, 1989. Fifty years to the day after the treaty that brought them so much grief had been signed. This non-violent act of defiance was a crucial event that led to the liberation of the Baltic States and their restored independence.
The Baltic Way protest on August 23, 1999 brought an end to one legacy of Molotov Ribbentrop
In Washington D.C. yesterday a delegation from the Center for a Free Cuba formed part of a human chain in McPherson Square in observance of the Baltic Way anniversary.
Today, the European Union observes this anniversary in memory of all the victims of totalitarianism and authoritarianism in the world. This includes the victims of communism in Cuba.
Observance of the nonviolent 1989 Baltic Way protest held in Washington DC on August 22 2025.
Sadly, the Castro regime continues to back Russian imperial ventures in Europe, this time in Ukraine, and its own ventures in Venezuela to frustrate the sovereignty of their respective peoples.
Miguel Diaz-Canel & Vladimir Putin meet in 2019. Source: Presidential Press and Information Office
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