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The Daily Vertical: The Kremlin Vs. History (Transcript)


Russia's Supreme Court effectively ruled last week that the Soviet Union did not invade Poland in 1939.

And saying that they did -- which is an indisputable historical fact -- constitutes a crime.

The Supreme Court upheld the conviction of Perm-based blogger Vladimir Luzgin for reposting a text on social media which noted that both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union invaded Poland in September 1939.

Luzgin was convicted in July on charges of "rehabilitating Nazism" and "spreading false information about the activities of the Soviet Union during World War II."

WATCH: Today's Daily Vertical

And remarkably -- or, sadly, maybe not so remarkably -- the dean of the history faculty of the Perm Humanitarian-Pedagogical University testified that it was false to claim that the Soviet Union did, indeed, invade Poland.

You. Really. Just. Can't. Make. This. Stuff. Up!

Every serious historian in the world knows that the Soviet Union invaded Poland from the east on September 17, 1939, just weeks after Nazi Germany invaded from the West.

And every serious historian in the world knows that this was the result of the secret protocols of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, in which Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin agreed to partition Poland and divide up Europe.

But in the alternative universe that is Vladimir Putin's Russia, all this never happened.

Which is the latest example of how, for the Kremlin, history isn't history at all.

It's mythology. It's fantasy. And it's scripture.

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