OCEANIA HAS NEVER BEEN AT WAR WITH EASTASIA: Russia’s Supreme Court rules that the USSR did not invade Poland in 1939.

Read the whole thing. As Daniel Hannan wrote a couple of years ago in the London Telegraph, “To the modern reader, George Orwell’s depiction of how enmity alternates between Eurasia and Eastasia seems far-fetched; but when he published his great novel in 1948, such things were a recent memory. It suited Western Leftists, during and after the War, to argue that Hitler had been uniquely evil, certainly wickeder than Stalin. It was thus necessary to forget the enthusiasm with which the two tyrants had collaborated.”

And it’s necessary now, for Putin to pretend, as the Human Rights in Ukraine Website notes, that the Soviet invasion of Poland “had not been an act of aggression, but a defensive act to ensure the security of the USSR. This is exactly the narrative that the Kremlin has been pushing to try to justify Russia’s invasion and annexation of Crimea.”

(Via Anne Applebaum.)