The Stalin-Hitler Pact

Written by Ben PeckMonday, 24 August 2009

In the early hours of August 24 seventy years ago Germany
andSoviet Russia signed a "non-aggression pact", which divided the
states of Northern and Eastern Europe into German and Soviet
"spheres of influence", effectively slicing Poland into two halves.
Ben Peck looks back at what happened and explains why such an
incredible event could take place and the price that was paid.
The Stalin-Hitler pact has gone down in history as a mark of the absolute
cynicism of the bureaucracy. It was a treacherous agreement that involved the
occupation and division of Poland, half to Stalinist Russia and half to Hitlers
Germany. Such a move was described by the Stalinists as defensive. The Pact
did not prevent war between Germany and Russia, but certainly helped Hitler
in his war aims. It caused confusion and demoralisation amongst honest
communists around the world, who for years had been denouncing Hitler as
the foremost enemy of the labour movement and a threat to world peace.
Soviet Foreign Minister
Molotov signs the pact. German foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop and Josef Stalin stand behind him.Unlike Stalin, who
sought all kinds of diplomatic deals with the imperialist powers in accordance
with the theory of socialism in one country, and cynically sacrificed the
revolution in the west, for Lenin and the Bolsheviks the guiding principle was
the promotion of the world socialist revolution. This was a principle based on
very concrete considerations. For a backward country like Russia, encircled by
the imperialist powers, the spreading of the revolution internationally was the
key to its survival and development toward world socialism.
When out of necessity Lenin and Trotsky signed the Brest-Litovsk peace
treatyin 1918 it meant a strengthening of German imperialism, allowing them
to take the Ukraine. The idea of a workers state dealing with capitalist nations
is not precluded by socialists each case must be weighed and considered as
to how it advances the cause of the workers on an international scale. The
Brest-Litovsk treaty of 1918 was forced upon the Soviet republic by Germany
as its very survival was at stake. However Lenin and Trotsky saw such
diplomatic manoeuvres as secondary to the only real saviour the spreading
of the revolution itself, starting with Germany.
The signing of the Stalin-Hitler pact must be seen in a different light. It
marked a further break with the traditions of Bolshevism and the foreign
policy of Lenin and Trotsky. As Trotsky said at the time, it was an extra gauge
with which to measure the degree of degeneration of the bureaucracy, and its
contempt for the international working class, including the Comintern.
Clearly, the rise of Fascism in Germany had had a devastating impact on the
working class internationally. The mightiest and best organised labour
movement in the world had allowed Fascism to triumph, as Hitler boasted,
without breaking a window. The reason for this catastrophe was the insane
actions of the Stalinist Communist Parties.
By 1927 Trotsky and the Left opposition were being expelled from the
Communist parties and its supporters were being hounded by the Stalinists. In
face of the menace of Fascism, they raised the need for a United Front in
Germany of socialist and communists. The Stalinists in Russia, having leant
on the Right to defeat the Left Opposition, now proceeded to crush Bukharin
and the enriched peasantry he represented. This was reflected by the ultra-left
turn in the Communist International in 1928. This meant denouncing every
group that was not the Communist Party as a variant of Fascism: social-
fascists, liberal-fascists, and worst of all, the Trotsky-fascists. Such
nonsense simply demoralised the workers and played into the hands of
Hitler's gangs.
The utter bankruptcy of the leaders of the German CP was revealed when
Hitler was made Chancellor. They dismissed it with the declaration: first
Hitler, then our turn! The Nazis divided and paralysed the German
working class, which finally led not only to the arrest and persecution of the
Jews, but also the liquidation of communist and socialist parties and all
independent workers organisations. After this disaster, which did not even
cause a ripple in the Communist Parties, Trotsky realised that the Communist
International was finished and could no longer be a tool that could be used to
further the cause of the international working class. A new international was
needed.
German
foreign minister Ribbentrop and Stalin at the signing of the Pact. Photo by Deutsches Bundesarchiv.At this point it is
questionable whether the Stalinist bureaucracy was actively seeking to
sabotage the workers' movement as they later did in Spain in 1936, where it
was clearly acting as a conscious and self-interested caste out to preserve its
own position. The Spanish Stalinists acted on a line dictated from Moscow
that demanded the sabotage of the revolution and the concentration of all
effort on the civil war. The Stalinists were clear: At present nothing matters
except winning the war; without victory in the war all else is meaningless.
Therefore this is not the moment to talk of pressing forward with the
revolution At this stage we are not fighting for the dictatorship of the
proletariat, we are fighting for parliamentary democracy. Whoever tries to
turn the civil war into a socialist revolution is playing into the hands of the
fascists and is in effect, if not in intention, a traitor.
This policy stemmed from their new policy of Popular Frontism, adopted in
1935 which represented a 180 degree turn. Rather than the United Front of
worker organisations, the new Popular Front policy sought the unity of
communists with socialists, liberals and progressive, anti-fascist
capitalists. From mad ultra-leftism they swung to desperate opportunism.
They abandoned all principles in order to ingratiate themselves with every
progressive anti-fascist possible. It therefore meant the abandonment of any
independent action of the working class - the only way to defeat Fascism.
At the level of international diplomacy Stalin sought to prove to the capitalist
democracies that he was a reliable ally by selling out the Spanish revolution. In
1936 Stalin publicly announced that the USSR never had any such intentions
of promoting world revolution, and that any such misconception was the
result of a 'tragicomic' misunderstanding.
At this point the persecution of all opposition and political dissent inside the
USSR reached fever pitch. The Purge Trials of 1936-38 drew a river of blood
between the regimes of Lenin and Stalin. From August 1936 the world-wide
Stalinist press was publishing on a daily basis resolutions from workers
meetings speaking of the defendants as Trotskyist terrorists conducting
their activities in league with the Gestapo!
Of the members of the Central Committee who met at the 17th Congress of the
Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1934, the overwhelming majority had
been shot or disappeared by 1938. The Purges extended far and wide. Those
shot included Bukharin, Kamenev and Zinoviev, members of the Politburo
under Lenin. The Red Army was purged with leading military figures
murdered such as Tukhachevsky, a military genius and hero of the Civil War.
In total 90% of generals, 80% of colonels, and 35,000 officers were liquidated
by Stalin. The Red Army was decapitated. This fact was well noted by Hitler,
particularly after the Sovietsdisastrous campaign in Finland in 1939, which
played a part in his calculation to attack Russia in 1941.
Last page of the Additional Secret ProtocolLenin was fond of quoting the Prussian military
theorist Clausewitz when he said that war is the continuation of politics by
other means. The one-sided Civil War conducted against those genuine
communists who remained in the Soviet Union marked the full emergence of a
conscious and self-aware bureaucracy. The possible success of the Spanish
revolution would have rejuvenated the aspirations of the Russian workers and
undermined the stranglehold of the bureaucracy. It was no coincidence that
the Moscow Trials took place at this time. If Stalin had not moved to suppress
the Russian workers in blood, he would have been removed.
War was coming. The western democracies were not keen on a deal with
Stalin. Stalin, the pragmatist, therefore sought a deal with Hitler. This was the
solution, or so he thought. After the British handed Hitler Czechoslovakia on a
plate, Stalin urgently needed an agreement with Hitler whatever the cost.
Within a week, the Stalin-Hitler Pact was signed. Even the pliable leaderships
of the Comintern were taken by surprise. In Britain, the general secretary of
the CP, Harry Pollitt, did not jump fast enough and within a few days had
fallen into disgrace and was removed on Moscows orders.
The pact provided the Nazis with raw materials which funded the Nazi war
machine in Europe, later to be turned against the USSR itself. By 1940 Russia
supplied Germany with 900,000 tons of mineral oil, 100 tons of scrap iron,
500,000 tons of iron ore along with large amounts of other minerals. Soviet
diplomats grovelled before the Fhrer in order to ingratiate themselves. In his
cynical fashion, Stalin expelled each ambassador from the territories of the
USSR as their countries were occupied by the Nazis armies.
In June 1941, to Stalin's complete surprise, Hitler invaded Russia, meeting
little resistance on the way. Despite the obvious signs and clear warnings, the
USSR was totally unprepared and suffered heavy losses. Stalin, on hearing the
news, disappeared for more than a week, declaring All that Lenin built is
lost.
Eventually regaining his nerve, resistance was organised. The Nazi attack on
the USSR delighted the imperialists who hoped that the fight on the Eastern
front would mutually exhaust both sides, after which they could move in and
mop up. But they had miscalculated. They had not counted on the planned
economy, which, despite the waste and mismanagement of the bureaucracy,
managed to increase production and shoulder the burden of the war during its
darkest days. The superiority of the plan, combined with the Russian masses
hatred of Hitlerism, provided the Soviet Union with the invincible fire-power
needed to defeat the Nazi armies, eventually throwing them back to Berlin.
The Second World War reduced itself in essence to a struggle between the
USSR and Germany, with the Allies as bystanders. In 1943, Stalin wound up
the Communist International as a sop to the imperialists, but they turned deaf
ears to Russia's pleas for a Second Front. By 1945, the Red Army had shattered
the Nazi war machine and defeated Hitler. This strengthened Stalinism for a
whole period.
However, as Trotsky had warned, inherent within the ruling bureaucracy was
a desire to restore capitalism in order to pass on their privileges to their
offspring. It took 50 years for this prognosis to play out. In 1991, the Soviet
Union collapsed and the leading bureaucrats, such as Yeltsin, embraced
capitalism. The Stalinists, despite all the sacrifices of the Russian masses, had
become the grave-diggers of the Russian Revolution.