'A Reel of Cranks': 'they returned what was theirs' — dismantling the argument (21.11.2021)

A street video debate by Vitaliy Dribnytsya (the compilation “A Reel of Cranks”). Only the first conversation (00:12—07:13) is substantive for the article: the opponent defends the Soviet narrative that in September 1939 the USSR merely “returned what was its own” — the lands of Western Ukraine and Belarus. Dribnytsya dismantles it on the opponent’s own ground: territorially the “return” is false (of the Ukrainian lands, only Volhynia had been part of the Russian Empire, whereas Eastern Galicia was Austrian from 1772 to 1918), legally the USSR could not claim “imperial” lands (it was created in 1922, and the Bolsheviks refused to recognize themselves as successors of the empire), and the very principle “conquered, therefore returned what was ours” leads to absurdity (in which case Mongolia too is entitled to “return” Russia to itself). The rest of the video is repetition and abuse with no historical content.