WITH the advent of Nazism to power in Germany the world situation was entirely altered. Two of the three outstandingly ‘aggressive’ Powers, Germany and Japan, were on Russia’s frontiers challenging Bolshevism and calling for its extermination. However subsequent events might prove the sound and fury to be a form of shadow boxing, masking their preparations to spring at the Western Powers, the Bolsheviks could not afford to ignore the challenge lest there come a sudden switch in the fundamental programmes of the Nazis and the Japanese.
Both these Powers had outlined their programmes of conquest. Hitler had provided the Nazis with Mein Kampf. Tanaka had provided the Japanese with his famous memorandum for the systematic conquest of the East. Both had expressed their determination one day to carve up the territory of Soviet Russia and destroy Bolshevism root and branch. The third aggressor Power, which was soon to form part of the ‘Triangle’ of aggression, was also fulminating against the Bolsheviks, although its leader Mussolini had been one of the first to make a trading agreement with Russia and to establish ‘normal’ diplomatic relations. But Italy was not so near to Russia as the other Powers of Fascism and could do nothing alone.
The Bolsheviks promptly countered the campaigns of the ‘aggressor’ Powers. They denounced Nazism and Fascism as the greatest danger to civilization and developed their policy of making non-aggression pacts with single states into a general policy of collective resistance of all states likely to be the victims of aggression. Litvinov announced that ‘peace was indivisible’ and despite all the Bolshevik leaders had said in condemnation of the League of Nations, Soviet Russia became a member of the League.
This may appear to be a contradiction, and indeed is a contradiction if we are only concerned with a consistency which has no relation to changing circumstances. The Bolsheviks have no time or energy to waste on that kind of consistency. It was inconsistent of Lenin to offer to fight with the Allies against the Germans in 1918 if we judge that offer by all the denunciatory speeches he had made against Allied Imperialism. But it was consistent with his fight to preserve the Russian Revolution against the Germans when the armies of the latter were marching towards Petrograd. The entrance of Russia into the League was regarded by the Bolsheviks as consistent with the same purpose. They knew that the states identified with the League of Nations were to be the victims of the aggressor Powers equally with Soviet Russia. Hence their drive forward with their campaign for pacts of non-aggression and their efforts to make the League of Nations the centre of that general collective security which it was supposed to be.
Simultaneously the Bolsheviks initiated through the Communist International a world-wide campaign for a ‘People’s Front against Fascism and for the preservation of Peace’. They also took up the cause of ‘Political Democracy’ which hitherto they had denounced as a sham and a fraud. In the light of the new danger of Fascist aggression they regarded the fight to preserve the existence of working class organizations, the rights of the people to vote, and the limited freedoms of the people within ‘capitalist democracy’ as rallying grounds for the mobilization of masses against ‘the principal danger’ to civilization. They no longer called on the workers to oppose armament programmes in ‘Democratic countries’. They worked on the principle of mobilizing the sum total of the social forces opposed to the aggressor Powers, against these Powers. At the same time, with an eye to the future, the Bolsheviks used the situation to strengthen the Communist parties and create a deeper class feeling among the workers.
The differences in the world of capitalism, however, did not arrange themselves into the simple form of ‘Democratic States versus Fascist States’. Such a simple alignment would have made it easy to apply the principle of ‘collective security’. Each State played its own hand and its attachment to such principles as ‘non-aggression’ and ‘Democracy’ varied according to the imminence and magnitude of the danger threatening territorial and economic interests. This was made perfectly clear in the attitude of the Powers to the invasion of China by Japan. That the latter was, and is, waging a war of conquest there never was any doubt. Although China was a member of the League of Nations and her integrity was the subject of a special agreement among the Great Powers, China has been compelled, apart from the limited assistance rendered by Russia, to wage a single-handed struggle since 1931.
It would be difficult to find in the history of diplomacy such a record of rebuffs to a Great Power as were bestowed on the efforts of the Soviet Government to secure ‘Collective security against the aggressors’ from 1934 to 1939. The Soviet Union became a member of the League of Nations in September, 1934. In 1935 it signed with France a Pact of Mutual Assistance against Aggression and made the pact subordinate to the League. Notwithstanding this, Britain refused to join with them, while most of the press of Britain denounced the Pact. In 1935 the British Government violated its commitments to the Covenant of the League and made a separate naval pact with Germany. The Anglo-German Naval Treaty was a rebuff to all the Powers in the League which, only two months before, had condemned the introduction of conscription into Germany. Hardly had this episode occurred than it was followed by the unsavoury experience of Italy’s war on Abyssinia in which the League Powers could not bring themselves to the point of exercising the only sanction that could be effective against Italy, that of the oil embargo. In this situation the Soviet Government made it clear that it was prepared to fulfil any decision taken by the League to assist Abyssinia. Then came the tragedy of Spain in which Hitler and Mussolini played the leading roles. The Democracies refused to intervene. Soviet Russia alone sent material aid. A non-intervention committee was formed. The Fascist Powers intervened on the side of Franco while remaining members of the committee. Soviet Russia intervened on the side of the Democratic Government while also remaining a member of the committee, to the annoyance of the British and French Governments. Of non-intervention Stalin said: ‘Formally speaking, the policy of non-intervention might be defined as follows: Let each country defend itself as best it can. That is not our affair. We shall trade both with aggressors and their victims. But actually speaking the policy of non-intervention means conniving at aggression, giving free rein to war, and consequently transforming the war into a world war.’
When Hitler’s army marched into Austria the Soviet Government proposed on the 17th March, 1938, that the non-aggressor Powers should meet in conference in order to secure ‘a firm and unambiguous stand in regard to the problem of collective “salvation of the peace” by the Great Powers’. This was rejected by the British and French Governments as ‘inopportune’.
When the drama moved onward to Czecho-Slovakia, Soviet Russia declared on the 11th May and on 25th August, 1938, that she would carry out to the letter her pledges to France and Czecho-Slovakia. She met with no response. As the crisis grew, again, on 2nd and 11th September, she proposed at Geneva, a joint démarche of the U.S.S.R., Britain, and France, in favour of the Czechs and the use of Article 11 of the Covenant of the League of Nations. Again there was no reply.
When Czecho-Slovakia had been swallowed by Nazi Germany it almost appeared as if the Democratic Powers were prepared to change their attitude to the proposals of the Soviet Union and at last move in the direction of ‘Collective Security against Aggression’. On 18th March, 1939, the British Ambassador in Moscow asked the Soviet Government as to its attitude to Hitler’s threat to Rumania. The Soviet Government replied by proposing a conference of Britain, France, the U.S.S.R., Poland, Turkey, and Rumania to devise ways and means of resisting further aggression. The British Government said the proposal was premature and suggested a joint declaration against aggression by Great Britain, France, the U.S.S.R., and Poland, and immediate consultations in the event of aggression. Although the Soviet Government regarded this as procrastination and unsatisfactory they agreed to the proposal, and added that the Prime Ministers and Foreign Secretaries of the respective Governments should be signatories to the declaration in order to give it the maximum of authority. This effort died at birth because the Polish Government refused to sign any document to which the signatures of the leaders of the Soviet Government were attached.
Still the Soviet Government tried to come to an agreement with the Democratic Powers. On 15th April the British Ambassador asked the Soviet Government to make a unilateral guarantee of Poland and Rumania. The Bolsheviks answered on 17th April with a proposal for a triple pact of Britain, France, and the U.S.S.R. against aggression anywhere. This proposal included mutual assistance between the three Powers, a military convention to enforce the pact and a guarantee of all the Border States from the Baltic to the Black Sea. There was no reply until 9th May, when the British Government, ignoring the proposed triple pact, put forward what the Bolsheviks considered to be a one-sided agreement with regard to the Border States, without any indication of what military assistance would be received by the Soviet Government from Britain and France should the fulfilment of the obligations lead to war. The Soviet Government repeated its proposals. On 27th May the British and French Governments agreed to discuss such a pact.
In the meantime the German and Italian Governments had not been inactive with regard to the Soviet Union. Early in 1938 Germany took the initiative to secure a new trade agreement with Russia. Hitler offered a new credit of 200,000,000 marks. The negotiations broke down. At the end of 1938 the German government again proposed negotiations and a similar credit and some concessions with regard to terms. These negotiations were not kept secret. Molotov, who had succeeded Litvinov as Foreign Secretary after the conquest of Czecho-Slovakia by Germany, reviewed the negotiations before the Supreme Soviet on 31st May, 1939. Giving further details he said: ‘At the beginning of 1939 the People’s Commissariat of Foreign Trade was informed that a special German representative, Herr Schnurre, was leaving for Moscow for the purpose of these negotiations. Subsequently the negotiations were entrusted to Herr Schulenburg, the German Ambassador in Moscow, instead of Herr Schnure, but they were discontinued on account of disagreement. To judge by certain signs it is not precluded that the negotiations may be resumed. I may add that a trade agreement for the year 1939 of advantage to both countries was recently concluded with Italy. . . .’
The significance of these negotiations and the obvious warning contained in the statement of Molotov must have been clear to the British and French Governments. But they simply did not believe that Hitler’s policy was fundamentally directed first against the British and French Empires, both of which the Nazis regarded as decadent and literally waiting to be dismembered.
However that may be, the Bolsheviks understood quite thoroughly the meaning of the manœuvres of the aggressor Powers. They knew that Germany was not anxious to face a war on two fronts and were convinced that if Britain and France would make a military pact with them it would at least postpone the development of the war in Europe. Hence their repeated efforts to secure such an alliance.
After this warning note by Molotov the British Government sent what Mr. Lloyd George called ‘a Foreign Office clerk’ to negotiate with the Bolsheviks, but little progress was made. On 29th June the Bolsheviks through Zdanov, a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, made a sensational political demonstration. Zdanov wrote an article in Pravda, the leading Communist paper, in which he expressed the view that the British and the French were not really desirous of making a pact of mutual assistance and offering genuine resistance to Fascist aggression. He accused them of wanting to make a one-sided pact which would merely bind the U.S.S.R. to help them and would give no promise of mutual aid—‘a pact which no self-respecting country could sign.’
Although it was presented as the personal view of Zdanov, the British and French Governments knew that such an article could not have appeared without the consent of the other Bolshevik leaders. The Bolsheviks persisted in their efforts and on 23rd July suggested the dispatch of a military mission. The British and French Governments accepted the proposal. Their mission did not get away until 5th August although the crisis over Danzig was becoming intense. The mission went the longest route it could choose. It had no powers of decision. It waited for instructions. The British Government recalled the ‘Foreign Office Clerk’. Finally Poland refused to tolerate any pact that involved the assistance of the Red Army on Polish soil and the Polish Government declared that Poland was ready and able to meet a German attack without Soviet aid!
Thus the period of the struggle for collective security against aggression came to an end. But according to Mr. D. N. Pritt, K.C., M.P., not until after the Soviet Government had notified the British Foreign Office that unless within two days they came to terms the Soviet Government would come to terms with Germany.
Of all the efforts of the Democratic Governments in this period to achieve a four Power bloc of Britain, France, Germany, and Italy against the Soviet Union it is not within my province to deal in this book. Nor have I attempted to give every detail of the tortuous negotiations and manœuvres of diplomacy. I have only given sufficient essential data to reveal the essence of Soviet Foreign policy. These facts show how, in the peculiar circumstances characterizing the history of international relations since the rise of Hitler to power in Germany to the fateful month of August, 1939, the Bolsheviks have applied the principles I have outlined in an earlier chapter.
It will be observed that during these years there were no revolutionary upheaveals of the working class. There was, therefore, no return of the Bolsheviks to the insurrectionary appeals which characterized the first period of the history of Soviet Russia. The most striking feature of this period is the fact that capitalist democracy was wiped out in Germany and in a number of countries the people had to fight with arms in hand to defend that democracy. Their struggle ended in defeat. Austria fell. Czecho-Slovakia was overwhelmed. Spanish democracy was conquered. The new struggle for world power initiated by Fascism steadily rolled to the frontiers of the Great Powers and crushed the small nations as it rolled.
In these circumstances the Bolsheviks considered their principal tasks to be: to lengthen the ‘breathing space’ for Soviet Russia; to intensify the development of her socialist economy and industrial might; to speed up every effort to increase her military power; to secure a combination of military powers which would by its overwhelming strength at least delay the conflagration in Europe; to launch a world-wide campaign for the defence of popular democratic rights and working-class conditions in all countries of capitalist democracy.
They permitted nothing to stand in the way of their programme in internal affairs. They eliminated and crushed every element of what they considered to be their own ‘fifth column’ in all departments. Their efforts to secure ‘collective security’ against the aggressors were frustrated by the great Democratic Powers, who were obsessed by their dislike of the Socialist Soviet system and inhibited by their complete failure to comprehend the demoniac nature of Fascism and its challenge to their imperial and political interests. The efforts to secure the unity of political democracy by the formation of People’s Governments or democratic coalitions were defeated by the deep-rooted prejudices of the organized Labour Movement in all countries. Of the causes of this prejudice I cannot deal here. I can only state the fact. These latter campaigns were launched through the Communist International and the Russian Trade Unions and not through the Soviet Foreign Office. But they were an integral part of Bolshevik policy.
This period or phase of Soviet Foreign policy in all respects ended when the Bolsheviks were convinced by the actions of the British and French Governments that they were in danger of having war thrust upon them which they would have to face single handed, and which could be quickly transformed into a general war against the Socialist State. This may not be the opinion of many socialists and democrats but it was, and is, the opinion of the Bolsheviks. Their counter manœuvre began when they came to terms with Nazi Germany and signed the Soviet-Nazi Pact on 26th August, 1939. Thus began the fourth phase of Soviet Foreign policy in the unfolding world war.
Next: 6. ‘Strict Neutrality’