by Ian Grey
In his conduct of foreign policy, Stalin showed great caution, restraint, and realism. He needed time to build up Russia’s industries and military strength. He was constantly provoked in the east and the west, and in ways that must have infuriated him, but he never lost sight of the overriding need to delay the outbreak of war as long as possible. It was for this reason that he placed the greatest emphasis on peace and disarmament in world affairs.
At the same time, he pursued a policy of collective security. Early in the 1930s, Litvinov negotiated nonaggression pacts with Poland and Finland. At the world economic conference held in London in June 1933, he proposed a multilateral treaty of non-aggression which led to the signing of treaties with all of the countries on Russia’s southern and western frontiers. This was timely, for, while diplomatic relations had been restored between Russia and China in 1932, a serious threat to Soviet interests and security had come in the Far East in September 1931, when Japan had invaded Manchuria.
Stalin was determined to avoid war at almost any cost. With memories of the humiliation of Russia in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–5, he must have found it extremely difficult to have to appease the Japanese aggressors. In the negotiations, however, he and his officials acted with “invincible restraint and impenetrable reserve” and, despite Japanese provocations, they “kept their heads and held their hands.”
The danger which he feared most, because war would then be unavoidable, was that the Japanese would invade Outer Mongolia, the people’s republic which served as a buffer state and was virtually a Soviet protectorate. This did not happen. The sale of the Chinese eastern railway to Japan reduced tension along the frontier, but the danger of war remained. Litvinov tried to negotiate a nonaggression pact, but the Japanese rejected his approaches.
Stalin had to recognize now that the immediate threat lay in the east, not in the west. Indeed, at this time the tension between Japan and Russia was acute, and both countries believed war to be inevitable. Soviet troops were hurriedly transferred, and plans were put in hand to develop industries to support the Red Army in the Far East. Stalin continued to observe a policy of strict neutrality, refusing to collaborate with Britain or the United States against Japan or even to take part in the League of Nations commission, set up to investigate the situation in Manchuria. He would do nothing that might serve as a pretext for war.
In 1933, Hitler came to power in Germany and war clouds gathered over Europe. He had repeatedly expressed his hostility toward the Soviet regime and proclaimed his demands for the Ukraine and other Russian territories to meet German needs for expansion. His aggressive policies were disturbing. Throughout the first years of Hitler’s chancellorship, however, Stalin made no public reference to Germany. The Treaty of Rapallo and the two subsequent pacts were still in force, and he was hoping that Germany would continue to observe them. But he watched closely for signs of Hitler’s real intentions.
At the Seventeenth Party Congress in January 1934, he made cautious reference to fascism as “a symptom of capitalist weakness.” He went on to say, “Of course, we are far from being enthusiastic about the fascist regime in Germany. But fascism is not an issue here, if only for the reason that fascism in Italy, for instance, has not prevented the U.S.S.R. from establishing the best relations with that country. Nor is it a question of any alleged change in our attitude toward the Versailles Treaty. . . . We simply do not agree to the world being flung into the abyss of a new war on account of this treaty.”
The Nazi leaders became increasingly aggressive and abusive. Stalin remained cautious, and he did not exclude the possibility of an alignment with Germany against the capitalist West. Bukharin and others did not share the ruthless logic of his view that any alliance was acceptable if it ensured Russia’s security. They would have preferred alliance with the more civilized capitalists rather than with the barbarous Germans, and at the Congress, Bukharin made a savage attack on Hitler and his policies. In the event, however, Stalin’s proposals for a Russo-German alignment, and a few months later, for a joint guarantee of the inviolability of Finland and the Baltic states were rejected by Hitler.
While careful to placate or at least to avoid provoking Nazi Germany, Stalin grew more disturbed by Hitler’s bellicose declarations. The German-Polish nonaggression pact suggested he was fostering Poland’s claims to the Ukraine and perhaps envisaging how the two countries might share the vast steppes between them.
Stalin’s first concern at this time was the security of Russia’s frontiers. The way was clear for a German advance through the northern Baltic, and with Polish compliance, the central route to Russia was open. The treaties signed by the Soviet government in the summer of 1934 with Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Bulgaria gave some security to the southwestern frontier. But Stalin knew that the centuries-old hostility of the Poles toward Russia made them his most dangerous neighbors.
During 1934, he worked on a reorientation of Soviet policy. His plan was to forge strong alliances with the countries of Eastern Europe, but this failed because of German and Polish opposition. It was necessary to cast the net more widely. In September 1934, Soviet Russia joined the League of Nations.
Reporting to the Seventh Congress of Soviets on January 28, 1935, Molotov spoke of the “expediency of collaborating with the League of Nations, although we are not prone to overestimate the importance of such organizations.” He went on to condemn German racial theories and quoted Hitler’s Mein Kampf on the “policy of territorial conquest” directed at Russia. He spoke of the growing strength of the Red Army and of increased Soviet defense expenditure. He conveyed a strong confidence in the might of the Soviet forces. But the Soviet leaders were desperately worried. The pace of German rearmament, supported by a highly developed heavy industry, far outstripped the rate of Soviet expansion.
In 1935, Stalin began seeking alliances with the capitalist West. For years, the United States had stubbornly refused to recognize the Soviet government. Communist doctrine and propaganda about the evils and imminent collapse of capitalism had antagonized American opinion. The United States had enjoyed great prosperity during the 1920s, which was taken as proof of the superiority of capitalism and democracy. Any expression of support or sympathy for Soviet Russia was liable to be condemned as “un-American.”
Confident in its wealth and strength, the United States felt no need for diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union and took a strong moral stand against communism. But trade flourished between the two countries during the 1920s. Americans traveled freely to Russia, and American engineers and technicians contributed to Soviet industrialization.
The economic depression brought a sharp change in the American attitude. Business interests began pressing for recognition of the Soviet government in the hope that it would increase trade. It was, however, the need to counter the growing dominance of Japan in the Pacific that brought the change in U.S. policy in 1933. The Roosevelt administration on coming to power was ready to act, and recognition of the Soviet regime quickly followed. The Soviet press was jubilant in hailing the new treaty with the United States. But relations were at once disrupted by disputes over the repayment of loans made to Kerensky’s government, and over Soviet propaganda. The truculent behavior of William C. Bullitt, the first U.S. ambassador, aggravated the conflicts. However, a trade agreement, signed on July 13, 1935, gave promise of more friendly relations.
In March 1935, Anthony Eden, a junior British minister but already regarded as the coming foreign secretary, visited Moscow. The fact that Sir John Simon, a senior cabinet minister, went to Berlin was not permitted to overcloud the courteous reception extended to Eden. Later, Churchill wrote that Eden “established contacts with Stalin which were to be revived with advantage after some years.” The significance of the visit was that Stalin himself took pains to welcome a junior minister from a country which along with France had always been regarded as Russia’s chief enemy. Two months later, he received Pierre Laval and Edvard Beneš, and the Russo-French
and Russo-Czech alliances were agreed.
Stalin’s new policy alignment was reflected strikingly in Soviet foreign trade. In 1932, Germany had supplied 46.5 percent of Russia’s total imports. By 1935, the figure had dropped to 9 percent. Britain had displaced Germany, and imports from the United States were increasing. Germany extended massive credits in seeking to recover this vital trade. In 1936, the German share of the Soviet market rose to 22.8 percent, but it soon dropped again.
Soviet propaganda now began projecting Russia as the champion of antifascism and peace. Its revolutionary mission was suppressed and denied. The Comintern’s directives to member-parties were drastically revised to support Soviet policy. The Seventh Congress of the International called for “popular fronts” to be formed by Communists with Liberal, Labor, and even Conservative parties to fight against fascism. Litvinov, who was a Jew and detested Nazism, was tireless in promoting the new policy. Stalin himself granted an interview on March 5, 1936, to the American editor Roy Howard, in which he maintained firmly, “to assert that we desire to bring about revolution in other countries by interfering with their way of life is to speak of something that does not exist and which we have never preached.” Such statements and the heavy barrage of Soviet propaganda made an impression on world opinion, but mistrust of the Bolsheviks and their regime remained widespread in the West, and the devious role played by the Soviet government during the Spanish Civil War intensified Western suspicion of Soviet good faith.
The Spanish Civil War presented Stalin with acute difficulties. He was opposed to the fascist regime of General Francisco Franco and, indeed, at this time he was proclaiming Soviet Russia the champion of antifascism. He feared, too, that with a fascist regime on its frontier, France would be less likely to join in an antifascist and anti-German alliance. At the same time, he considered that a republican victory in which the radical left wing was dominant would lead to a revolutionary regime in Spain, and this would alarm the Western powers and damage the prospects of forging Soviet alliances against Germany. He would have preferred to avoid involvement, and he instructed Litvinov to join the committee of nonintervention. But Hitler and Mussolini both gave active support to Franco, and Stalin felt compelled to aid the republicans. Through the French Communist party, he sought to involve France on the side of the republicans. This would, he calculated, have had the effect of creating a combined military front against Germany and Italy. But France and Britain feared above all else that the Spanish war might develop into a world war, and they refused to intervene. Stalin compromised by giving the republicans minimal assistance and by insisting on the purging of the extreme left elements, seeking in this way to allay Western anxieties. His handling of the situation and, in particular, Soviet denials of aiding the republicans in the face of irrefutable evidence had the very effects which by tortuous diplomacy he had sought to avoid.
The Berlin-Rome axis was formed in October 1936 at a time when tension between Moscow and Berlin was mounting. The Nazis were increasingly raucous in their hostility toward Soviet Russia. Painstakingly Stalin continued to avoid the least provocation that might lead to war. He was then anxiously looking to the east. A German-Japanese anti-Comintern pact was signed on November 25, 1936. It appeared to be a simple defense agreement. He suspected, however, that the two governments had agreed on a secret plan to coordinate action against Russia and China. His suspicion was proved correct when one of his agents procured copies of their secret correspondence. Clashes with Japanese troops on the Manchurian frontier increased his fears. Further troops were hurried to the region. A new security treaty was signed with the Mongolian Republic, and in the following year, a nonaggression pact was agreed with China. But the pressure on Russia mounted relentlessly.
In March 1938, Hitler seized Austria. A crisis over the Sudeten Germans in Czechoslovakia followed. The belligerence of the Nazi leaders and the threats of violence repeated by German propaganda unnerved the British and French prime ministers. They held anxious consultations with Hitler, and both governments agreed to bring pressure to bear on Czechoslovakia to surrender the borderlands in the interests of peace.
Stalin was not readily unnerved. He responded at once with proposals that Britain, France, and Soviet Russia should present a united front against Germany and prepare with the Czechoslovak High Command a combined military plan. All three powers should invoke the League of Nations and prepare to enforce the provisions of the charter in the event of German aggression. Litvinov also confirmed that the Soviet Union would stand by the terms of the mutual assistance pact of 1935 if France, too, would honor its obligations under the pact. The Soviet plan would have averted or at least delayed war for a considerable time, which Stalin was playing for desperately. But France was anxious to back out of its treaty obligations, and, notwithstanding strong opposition among many Conservative members of Parliament, the British government showed reluctance to support France if it were involved in defending Czechoslovakia. The Soviet government was not consulted or included in the Munich conference which, meeting on September 28–30, 1938, surrendered Czechoslovakia into the hands of Germany.
The Western powers failed completely to respond to the Soviet proposals for a grand alliance under the aegis of the League. Churchill observed: “The Soviet offer was in effect ignored. They were not brought into the scale against Hitler and were treated with an indifference - not to say disdain - which left a mark on Stalin’s mind. Events took their course as if Soviet Russia did not exist. For this, we afterwards paid dearly.”
Mistrust of Soviet intentions and good faith had mounted afresh in the West. Communist propaganda had stirred new suspicions. At the time of the economic recession in the late 1930s, the Soviet press loudly predicted left-wing victory in Spain and the collapse of the capitalist system. It is, indeed, surprising that Stalin permitted propaganda of this kind at a time when he was urgently pursuing alliances with the Western powers. More serious in its impact on influential Western opinion was the savage purge of the Red Army which, in the opinion of many, “destroyed the confidence of Western Europe in the strength of his army and the strength of his government.” It completely reversed the generally favorable impression of the British and French generals who had observed Red Army maneuvers in 1936. But while Stalin could easily have restrained or changed the content of Soviet propaganda, he would have regarded any change in his decision to purge the armed forces as being out of the question. He remained firmly convinced that the armed forces had to be pruned and cleansed of all unreliable elements in preparation for the coming war.
Stalin was angered and humiliated by the disdainful attitude of the Western powers, but he made no public comment at the time. He was too deeply concerned about Russia’s almost complete isolation, and he would say nothing that might exacerbate the position. He had no doubt about the motives of Britain and France in agreeing to the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia by Germany. Clearly, they had promised Hitler a free hand in the east in return for peace in the west. As he remarked later: “One might think that the districts of Czechoslovakia were yielded to Germany as the prize for her undertaking to launch war on the Soviet Union.” But he was surprised by the conduct of France in failing to honor its treaty obligation to Czechoslovakia. Russia had not been guilty of bad faith; it had undertaken to stand by France in the event of war. Britain was not committed in alliance with Russia or Czechoslovakia and so could not be charged with bad faith, only with having played an ignoble role in the sacrifice of a small nation.
Stalin could not understand how two great powers, Britain and France, had allowed themselves to be so defeated in diplomacy by Hitler, except in return for guarantees of peace in the west. He overestimated the morale and military preparedness of the two countries while underestimating the general fear and suspicion felt toward Soviet Russia. He had to accept that they were enemies, and in any case, that they were too infirm of purpose and degenerate to make reliable allies.
To the Russians, Neville Chamberlain, th
e British prime minister, was the archvillain. They held him in contempt and blamed him for the collapse of the Soviet policy of collective security. They were convinced he was encouraging Germany to march eastward, leaving Britain and France to enjoy peace while fascism and communism destroyed each other.
Ivan Maisky, Soviet ambassador in Britain from 1932 to 1943, described Chamberlain as “undoubtedly the most sinister figure on the political horizon of Britain at that time” and as “a man of narrow views and small capabilities.” Maxim Litvinov held similar opinions of him. But they were both well disposed toward Britain and knew there were influential groups of men who shared their opinion of Chamberlain. Their reports no doubt held Stalin from closing his mind finally to the possibility of alliance with Britain.
The winter of 1938–39 was a time of deepening anxiety. Stalin knew war was drawing nearer, and Russia’s armed forces were still in no state to withstand a German attack. Russia would again be “beaten for her backwardness.” Brooding over diplomatic tactics to avert war, he kept every possibility in mind. The problem was where to turn for allies. The United States kept aloof, avoiding commitment of any kind. Britain and France had rebuffed his approaches. Germany, Italy, and Japan behaved with increasing arrogance and bellicosity. The Poles were fawning on Hitler and had sent Colonel Józef Beck, their foreign minister, to Berlin, evidently to negotiate some anti-Soviet deal. It was probably about this time that Stalin decided to open the door to an alliance with Hitler. It was a calculated gamble, but he could see no alternatives.
Early in March 1939, the Eighteenth Party Congress met in Moscow after an interval of four years. The general secretary’s review of domestic and foreign affairs was of special importance. Stalin delivered the report on March 10 in a statesmanlike performance. He spoke of the coming economic depression and the danger that it would provoke world war. Germany, Italy, and Japan were the “aggressive countries,” which would seek to escape from a slump by going to war. He emphasized the economic factors in diplomacy and spoke of the economic and the potential military supremacy of Britain and the United States. He took for granted that the United States would be involved in the war; it was a bold assumption at this time, when U.S. policy was strongly against foreign commitments of any kind. He castigated Western appeasement. “The war is being waged by the aggressor states, who in every way infringe the interests of the non-aggressive states, primarily England, France, and the U.S.A., while the latter draw back and retreat, making concession after concession to the aggressors.” The appeasing nations were activated by fear of revolution and a spirit of neutrality, but also by the policy of allowing Russia and Germany to “weaken and exhaust one another; and then when they had become weak enough, they would appear on the scene with fresh strength and dictate conditions to the enfeebled belligerents. That would be cheap and easy.” But then he stressed that, although the West was seeking to push Russia into war with Germany, no “visible grounds” existed for war between them. He poured scorn on the so-called friends of Germany who were urging it to attack Russia, and who were ignored by responsible German leaders.