Dear Moscow: Regrets Only, Please

The Soviet Union hasn’t quite apologized for its invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, but now it does acknowledge that the whole thing was a mistake. In a statement the other day, it called the intervention “unfounded” and the decision that prompted it “erroneous.” At the same time the Soviets joined Bulgaria, Hungary, East Germany and Poland--the five other Warsaw Pact countries Moscow compelled to take part in the invasion--in a statement that “condemned” the intervention as “illegal.” All this stops well short of unconditional repentance, but it marks a political milestone.

To be sure, Soviet leaders have been criticizing the actions of their predecessors for more than 30 years, ever since Nikita Khrushchev delivered his famous “secret speech” in 1956, denouncing the crimes of the Stalin era to the 20th Communist Party Congress. Khrushchev, after he was deposed, was in turn denounced by Leonid Brezhnev, and Brezhnev’s 20 years in power are now regularly faulted by Mikhail Gorbachev.

In almost every instance, though, acknowledgements of past mistakes have been limited to domestic affairs. Maybe after the statement on Czechoslovakia that will change. Certainly there’s plenty of room for admitting not just the errors of the past but the crimes as well.

The Soviet leadership might want to begin with the aggressions committed 50 years ago against Poland, Finland and the independent Baltic republics of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

The Polish story is the best known. In August, 1939, the Soviets signed a nonaggression pact with Nazi Germany. On Sept. 1, Germany invaded Poland, and 16 days later the Soviet Union sent in its forces--not to fight the Germans but to seize a chunk of eastern Poland for itself. The Soviets took hundreds of thousands of Polish soldiers captive.

In 1943 a grave containing the remains of more than 4,000 executed Polish officers was discovered by German forces. International investigations and, more recently, a panel of Polish experts concluded the Poles died at Soviet hands. Moscow has yet to acknowledge these murders, or to express regret for its grab of Polish territory.

A few months after their invasion of Poland, the Soviets demanded base rights and territory in southeastern Finland--including all the islands in the Gulf of Finland--ostensibly for defensive purposes. The Finns were prepared to make concessions, but not to capitulate. The Soviets responded by invading with 40 divisions, but their forces were soon suffering stunning defeats at the hands of the vastly outnumbered Finns. Ultimately, though, superior strength prevailed. The Finns were made to pay severely for their resistance, losing 25,000 square miles of land, home to a half-million people. There has never been a Soviet apology for this aggression.

The three Baltic states gained their independence from the former Russian empire at the end of World War I. Their sovereign status was recognized by the Soviet government in peace treaties signed in 1920. But in 1939 Moscow compelled the three states to allow Soviet forces to be based on their soil. The following year the three were occupied completely and annexed to the Soviet Union. These acts of aggression, too, have gone unrepented.

Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev has spoken a number of times about the need to fill in the “blank pages” in his country’s history by candidly acknowledging and exploring abuses from the past. In the field of external affairs, telling the truth about the invasions and annexations of a half-century ago would be an admirable place to start.