Sylvie Lemasson, Sciences Po Grenoble, CESICE

The famous Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, named after the foreign ministers of the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, was sealed on August 23, 1939. At that time, the two totalitarian regimes decided to respect a mutual neutrality, beneficial to their respective expansions.

From Moscow's point of view, a peaceful relationship with Hitler's regime meant that Western imperialism was the main enemy. As the strong man in the Kremlin, Stalin intended to achieve what Lenin had failed to do. Namely, to consolidate the Communist order outside the USSR, starting with the "near abroad" at the Soviet empire's margins.

And from Berlin's point of view, securing collusion with the USSR freed the Eastern Front from any military threat. Above all, Berlin broke out of its diplomatic isolation by devoting itself to revising the last borders imposed by France, England and the United States under the Treaty of Versailles. For Hitler, the Western powers were responsible for the iniquitous Diktat inflicted on Germany. Governed, moreover, by "big Jewish capital", they became an ideological target of choice to legitimize the reactionary policies of the National Socialist Party.

Dividing Europe into two spheres of influence

The convergence of interests between Moscow and Berlin resulted in the division of Europe into two spheres of influence. The pact's secret protocol granted the entire eastern part of the continent to the USSR, starting with Finland and the Baltic states, while the entire area west of this line went to Germany. Polish territory served as a dividing line between Soviet and Nazi interests. As a result, Poland once again found itself dismembered, having regained its sovereignty in 1918 and, without Western rebuke, pushed back the borders established at the end of the First World War. Georges Clemenceau's France saw only advantages in letting Poland return to the mythical days of the Jagiellonian Kingdom, by seizing Vilnius (Lithuania) and Eastern Galicia (Ukraine). The more Poland strengthened its geographical base, the more it was in a position to contain German and Bolshevik ambitions.

When Hitler took over the whole of Poland in violation of the German-Soviet Pact, he intended to achieve in the East what he had achieved in the West. In other words, a host of territorial entities. And to satisfy its appetite for grandeur, it no longer needs its Soviet ally. Worse for Moscow, Operation Barbarossa in June 1941, which propelled German troops towards the Baltic states and the Ukraine, was destined to fall on Leningrad, Moscow and Stalingrad. The USSR had no choice but to join forces with the Western powers in the fight against Nazism.

For those countries that were subjected to the pendulum swing of Soviet and German troops as they became the continent's "lands of blood", collective memory is identified with the atrocities of the ^twentieth century's two totalitarianisms, Nazism and Stalinism. When, from 1945 onwards, Western Europe rebuilt itself in response to the Second World War, in a spirit of reconciliation with France and the Federal Republic of Germany as its spur, the eastern part of Europe disappeared under a blanket of lead. For their part, the Baltic States once again suffered double punishment. Having been annexed to the USSR in 1944, they fell victim to the deportation of thousands of civilians and the vertical rise of Moscow's power. The Communist nomenklatura fears more than anything the European inclination of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.

While the first political break with Moscow came from Poland in June 1989, it was the Baltic states that delivered the coup de grâce to the USSR. On August 23, 1989, a human chain stretched 700 km from Vilnius to Riga and from Riga to Tallinn, with the aim of breaking away from the Yalta order. In the summer of 1989, what came to be known as the "Singing Revolution" - or the "Baltic Way" - got underway on the day of the commemoration of the dark hours that had led Europe to war. This was followed by Baltic independence in 1990, and the collapse of the Soviet empire in December 1991. The Eastern Bloc imploded in the winter of 1989.

A return to the European family

The integration of the Central and Eastern European countries (CEECs) into the EU in 2004 is therefore not seen by the former People's Democracies as a catch-up process justifying a multitude of conditions, but rather as the normal outcome of a return to the European family. And if, in the minds of these same countries, this union has been delayed, it is due to geopolitical contingencies for which the West must acknowledge its share of responsibility.

Since their accession to the EU, the CEEC have been investing in the field of EU public policy on remembrance, with the aim of giving their heritage its own historical course. Unable to add new figures to the roster of founding fathers from the 1950s, they are working hard to put commemorative events on the Brussels agenda that resonate with European fractures.

As a result, Europe Day, celebrated with music on "May 9" (a reference to the Schuman Declaration of 1950, which led to the creation of the European Coal and Steel Community), has been replaced by Remembrance Day on "August 23" (the date of the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact). Voted by Parliament in 2009, this date commemorates the victims of totalitarian and authoritarian regimes. Spearheaded by Poland, Lithuania and the Czech Republic, the debates heckled a number of Western countries in favor of "November 9", which they felt, while highlighting the fall of the Berlin Wall as a vector of fusion between the East and West of the continent, also embodied a place of remembrance.

On the CEEC side, however, this episode, important though it may be, is merely the consequence of their national commitments, and not the epicenter of a policy of emancipation. By taking precedence over "November 9, 1989", the choice of "August 23, 1939" was intended to help reweave the bonds of a plural memory. Today, it is not certain that this gamble has succeeded, or even that the EU motto "united in diversity" still applies to Community policies.

When it came to appointing the "P4", the four most influential positions within the EU (President of the Commission, President of the Parliament, President of the European Council and High Representative for Foreign Affairs), it might have been wise to select a personality from the CEECs. In other words, to avoid tracing, if only in dotted lines, the political and cultural contours of an "Other Europe", that of the East. For when Europe remembers its history differently, it also thinks differently. And when it thinks differently, it acts differently. The commemoration of the ^80th anniversary of the German-Soviet Pact, whether across Europe or not, is part of the EU's shared values, so hotly debated between "progressives" and "populists".