'Avoiding provoking' is something he missed on by annecting Bessarabia in 1940 !
Wikipedia :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bessarabia
In 1940, after securing the assent of Nazi Germany through the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, the Soviet Union pressured Romania, under threat of war, into withdrawing from Bessarabia, allowing the Red Army to annex the region. The area was formally integrated into the Soviet Union: the core joined parts of the Moldavian ASSR.....
So, the argument of 'not provoking' Hitler in 1941 is nonsense !
You could also say this of Stalin's annexing the Baltic States (Lativa, Lithuania and Estonia) from September 1939. Nevertheless, Stalin prevented overflights of the front line up to July 1941 and even allowed a goods train to pass through the front line hours after the war had broken out. I.e.
Stalin was trying to minimize provocation with Hitler directly while enlarging his own empire on the periphery among four small nations with limited and still-wavering connections to Nazi Germany. So you cannot merely call Stalin's "not provoking" Hitler nonsense, since he took significant steps not to antagonize Hitler, especially when the latter was committed to the Western Front fighting. After all, Stalin did not actively support Hitler. He did not offer the Nazis the assistance of the Russian Air Force - and transport ships and barges to assist a cross-channel invasion force in Operation Sea Lion - when the Nazis began to get into difficulties in the Battle of Britain from August 1940.
Remember that the Soviets thought of the breakaways from the former Russian Empire as part of themselves, and this included the Baltic States and Moldova (Bessarabia). The real provocation was the mere existence of a Communist State and there was nothing Stalin could do to sweeten that pill for Hitler. Stalin did not expect Hitler to invade - as seen by Stalin's shocked silent response - especially as he or Molotov had told Ribbentrop that "if we stand together, Britain (and therefore the USA) cannot touch us."
Putin knows this bit of history too, but in China he has a much more reliable partner now that
the prejudicial affectations of Socialism have been exposed and are collapsing worldwide - even though Bernie Sanders and Jerry haven't quite come to terms with it.
China made the correct alterations to Marxist theory as Chinese philosophy, polytheistic in essence, understands that the world is fundamentally disordered, not, as Western Marxism teaches in absolute contrast,, that
the universe is an integral whole, which latter teaching goes back to the Monotheist prejudice universalized in the West. The fundamental disorder of nature is the reason for the Fuehrerprinzip, whereas
Western democracy denies the need for Fuehrers because it fantasizes that human equality will, democratic in action, somehow bring about peace thru egalitarian democratic activity, embodying some mysterious 'harmonizing principle' supposedly active through the universe to ensure this wonderous outcome. Hence Communism's idealized outcome as to "the withering away of State" as a superfluous organizing principle. I.e. Communism, like Anarchism, is a systematized naivety.
The affectations of socialism are egalitarianism and democracy, the two favorite Western prejudices, the former of Jewish origin (think of the kibbutz where Jews live cheek by jowl, found among less than 2% of Israeli because people don't like living that way), the latter of Greek origin (Athenian democracy trying to export its democratic principles to the Greek islands, notably Corcyra, a.k.a. Corfu, with disastrous results from the resulting civil war and Athens' ultimate fall, along with its democracy).
The real issue underlying the Stalin-Hitler conflict was the complete ideological opposition. Western thinkers try to reduce this by calling both 'totalitarianism' and trying to base their ideologies on one "totalitarian philosophy". But this cannot be done, since the ideological basis of Communism is a Western one, tracing back to the liberty, equality and fraternity of the French Revolution.
Nazi Germany's racism arises from two different sources - one very Western, that of racial hierarchy
which Darwin himself supported more and more in his older age, and one very Eastern, the Hindu Caste System, "the Aryan question", which seemed to show a racial hierarchy able to function well. (This notion arose from Houston Stewart Chamberlain, who wondered why civilization did NOT arise first among Nordic peoples, whom he regarded as superior. His explanation was that the Nordics needed slaves to build civilization so migrated to the Mediterranean and India to find such slaves to rule over and turn into a civilization. Racial mixing, he then claimed, destroyed those civilizations. The notions are nonsensical but when they were put forward in the late 19th century they seemed to make a lot of sense).
In consequence
one cannot find a common philosophical basis for totalitarianism such that Western liberal democracy can be distinguished from it - especially as liberal democracy always depended upon slaves, wage slavery today but indentured slavery (not just Colored slavery) in the 18th and 19th century. Rather, Western democracy is a systematized deceit & hypocrisy, Judaeo-Christianity being the core of its manipulation in practice.
Yours faithfully
Claude
