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This essay seeks to give a critical account of the USSRs international relations in the period
between the two World Wars. The essay covers such concepts of the foreign policy as
proletarian internationalism, peaceful coexistence, balance of power and collective security,
and international agreements determined by them: The Genoa Conference, Rapallo Treaty,
Manchuria crises, Munich pact and MolotovRibbentrop Pact. The emphasis is made on the
international relations being governed by the perspective of the future war.

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Critically assess the international relations of the USSR during the inter-war

period.

The foreign policy of the Soviet state, while maintaining continuity in implementation

of the geopolitical goals innate to the politics of the Russian Empire, differed in its character

and methods. During the interwar years the Soviets were to pursue both proletarian

internationalism and peaceful coexistence policies, formulated by Vladimir Lenin.

The first policy of the proletarian internationalism, suggested mutual help between

the workers of the whole world in their difficult struggle for the overthrow of capitalism

(Lenin, 1922). It was based on Bolsheviks believe in the upcoming socialist revolution on

the global scale. In order to develop the policy the Comintern was established in 1919 in

Moscow. It consisted of about 70 communist and socialist parties in Europe and Asia. From

the day it was established Soviet Russia used the Comintern to meddle in the internal affairs

of other states, straining international relations.

Second - policy of the peaceful coexistence with the capitalistic system - was defined

by the Soviets ambition to mark their positions on the international stage and brake out of the

political and economical isolation, while securing their borders. This meant acknowledging

the possibility of peaceful cooperation, and developing economic relations with the West. As

Stalin pointed out:

The peaceful coexistence of capitalism and communism is quite

possible provided there is a mutual desire to co-operate, readiness to

carry out undertaken commitments, and observance of the principle of

equality and non-interference in the internal affairs of other states.

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(Stalin, 1952.)

The contradiction of these two policies showed in inconsistency of the international

behavior of the young Soviet state.

The western policy towards the Soviet Union was not any less inconsistent. On one

hand the ruling classes of capitalist Europe remained implacably hostile to the USSR and all

it stood for (Saull, 2007) and therefore striving to stifle a new political entity by means of

political isolation and economic suffocation. On the other hand, the world leading powers

were aimed to compensate for the financial losses that accrued to countries after the October

revolution. This conditioned a gradual change from non-recognition of the USSR to the

desire for the establishment of political relations in order to open Russia, to facilitate the

intrusion of foreign capital and goods.

The USSR managed to put an end to the political isolation in 1924 with first London,

shortely followed by France and Italy, establishing dimplomatic relations with Moscow. This

was greately conditioned by the economic crisis having broken out in the 1920s -1930s that

urged the European bourgeoisie to take steps toward the resumption of trade relations with

Russia, that was doing impressively well, demonstrating zero unemployment while engaged

in massive ultra-rapid industrialization under its new Five-Year Plans ( Hobsbawm, 1996).

Inter-capitalist divisions, the legacy of the war, protracted since the Versailles only

escalated the situation, which the Soviet Union took the full advantage of. Indeed:

continued divisions gave the USSR some political space, which

allowed it to consolidate communist power and also develop limited links

with neighbours, thus securing the USSRs external borders and

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contributing to the internal consolidation of Bolshevik rule through

economic relations

(Saull, 2007)

It was these divisions that handicapped the negotiations of The Genoa Conference.

The opening session of the Genoa Conference was held on 10 April 1922. The

Entente powers invited the Soviet Union to take part in the Conference in order to regulate

two unresolved questions regarding economical claims against Russia: repayment of war and

pre-war debts to foreign investors; restitution of nationalised property formerly owned by

foreigners. In the course of the conference there occurred a visible division between western

powers. The negotiations ran into the sand due to mutual unwillingness to compromise.

France unsurprisingly took a very firm position on the debts question, while Britain was not

ready to openly go against it. De facto the conference was scuttled by the uncompromising

attitude of the French delegation.

The blame for the Genoa failure, however, should not be shifted utterly on the western

participants. Some historians tend to emphases Bolsheviks strategy masterminded by Lenin,

Litvinov and Chicherin. Their intention was to split the coalition of creditors by dividing

among themselves the bourgeois countries in order to attain the best possible economic

agreements (Jacobson, 1994). According to Lenin the goal of international politics of the

proletarian state during the period of coexisting with capitalist countries was every

encouragement and taking advantage of dissent and hatred among the capitalists to make

placing of the final nail in the coffin of the imperialism easier. "The fundamental rule" of

Soviet foreign policy - "until the final victory of socialism on the world scale " - should

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be "the use of enmity between the capitalist countries, pitting them against each other."

Lenin expressed the hope that the "beasts of capitalism" , who won the World War will fight

each other till there is nothing left but tails (Lenin, 1960-70).

Meanwhile, USSR not only prevented European countries from imposing upon

Soviet Russia a settlement based on capitalist principles but also developed its closest

diplomatic relations with one of them and signed an separate agreement on debts and

recognition the Rapallo treaty, signed between Russia and Germany in May 1923.

(Jacobson, 1994), (Saull, 2007). This inter alia implied mutual hands-off attitude regarding

each others domestic and foreign affairs.

Until the Nazi party was elected to power in Germany in 1933 the international

relations of the USSR pursued, by and large, the policy of Rapallo (Deutscher, 1967). In

the following 1923, 1924 Russia was reaping the fruits of Rapallo, widening the breaches

in the cordon sanitaire; Britain, Italy, Austria, Greece, Norway, Sweden, Deutschland,

France, China, Mexico resumed diplomatic relations with Russia. The SovietJapanese Basic

Convention - an agreement establishing diplomatic relations between Soviet Russia and

Japan - became the last drop of the rain of recognitions.

In the spirit of Rapallo in 1926 the pact of neutrality was signed and then prolonged in

1933. Economic and military technological cooperation between the two countries

expanded significantly starting the mid-1920s. These included import of German goods to

Russia and German military technicians carrying out experiments on Russian territory,

something they were forbidden to do in Germany by the Versailles treaty. The reason for the

cooperation was pursuing the strategy of collective security, the Russian-German relation

acting as a counterbalance of power of Entente, and so preventing Germany from coalescing

with the west against Russia (Deutscher, 1967). That peace was - as Jean Giraudoux pet it -

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an interval between two wars was an axiom to Stalin and his both domestic and foreign

polices were first and foremost governed by the overriding necessity to get the country in

condition for the inevitable war.

Stalin, from an interview with Roy Howard (1936): "There is, in my opinion, two

centres of the danger of war. The first is located in the Far East, Japan... The second area of

focus is Germany. It is hard to say which one is of most threatening, but both exist and

operate ... At the moment the most active is the Far East flashpoint. Perhaps, however, the

flashpoint of the military danger is to move to Europe. "

At the end of 1931 Japan occupied Manchuria, with its 30 million Chinese

population. Soviet-Japanese border, before only sea border, was now extended on the

continent - a land area from Vladivostok to Chita. Almost immediately there was placed a

powerful Japanese military base. As soon as in 1932, many analysts expected a clash between

Japan and the Soviet Union to be inevitable.

In November 1933 the U.S. established, at last, diplomatic relations with the Soviet

Union, and in September 1934 with the help from Britain and France the USSR joined the

League of Nations.

In 1935 the Japanese forced the USSR to give the CEL up to the puppet state of

Manchukuo. In the late '30s Japan directly and immediately attacked the USSR.

Large-scale military conflicts, actual military operations took place in several areas,

the Russian troops meeting the assaults each time. In the future, the question was just that: the

threat of Japan occupying Vladivostok from the north. Khalkhin-Gol was an extremely

important geopolitical and military-strategic point of the Baikal area: a strong position that

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would allow the Japanese to cut off the Soviet Far East. The militarized Japanese

government stood vehemently against the USSR.

In November 1936, was signed the "Anti-Comintern Pact" - an agreement between

Japan and Germany against the USSR. A year later the agreement was joined by Italy. "Anti-

Comintern Pact" meant that for the three aliens saw the Soviet Union as their main common

opponent.

USSR at that time had a cooperation agreement with France (May 2, 1935) and the

exact same agreement with Czechoslovakia. All the future efforts of Soviet diplomacy to

create a system of "collective security" in Europe were in vain.

With Nazi party having seized the power, USSR's politics underwent changes. In

foreign policy there was a visible distinction from the laissez faire view on international

conflicts. In June 1933 USSR announced the termination of cooperation with Germany. By

the end of the year national-socialist regime in Germany reached its final shape, but it was

not before the VII Comintern congress took place, when the radical change,

considered arguably by many to be controversial, was made public and fascism was

officially named the number one enemy (Deutscher, 1967).

Later the same year the USSR loudly denounced Italian for unprovoked aggression in

Ethiopia; in 1936 USSR supported The Republican government of Spain in their fight against

General Franco. The Civil War ended with the victory of Franco's rebels. The latter received

political and military support from Germany and Italy, while France, Britain and USA

remained neutral, carrying out the appeasement policy. This abetment of the aggressor

culminated in the signing of the Munich Agreement in September, 1938 according to which

Britain and France agreed to give Germany control of the Czechoslovakia's Sudetenland.

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Munich moment1

Signed on September 30, 1938, the Munich pact effectively opened the gates to a German

expansion to the east and united the entire Europe under Reich. Later, Winston Churchill said:

England has been offered a choice between war and shame. She has chosen shame and will

get war.

The balance of forces in Eastern Europe changed to Russias grave disadvantage

(Deutscher, 1967). This called for yet another change in Soviet foreign policy. The USSR

abandoned the strategy of collective security, which was treacherously betrayed by France

and Britain. More, in December 1938 Germany and France signed a nonaggression pact. In

such conditions Soviet administration had to consider securing their western borders. So, Soviet

administration went into rapprochement with German, entente with the main enemy (Cutler,

1987).

In the beginning of the 1939 the last attempt at establishing collective security system

ended in deadlock.

On August 14, 1939, German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop contacted the

Soviets about his willingness to come to an agreement. On the 23 August 1939 German

-Soviet pact of nonaggression was signed.

Over the years Molotov - Ribbentrop pact has been often attributed with the qualities

of opportunism and hypocrisy. Such demonization can be seen as a reflection of the

frustration over the biggest failure of British and French diplomacy that changed schedule

and configuration of the World War Two. The Soviet administration and Stalin were guilty of

short-sightedness and gross miscalculation but were driven by the national interests (Saull,
1
- from the magazine The Times, Great Britain
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2007). The pact was in fact very much according the the overriding goal of the USSRs

foreign policy in the inter-war period and that was to get ready for the war.

Word count: 1,930

Bibliography

1. Isaac Deutscher, Stalin: a political biography (London, Oxford University Press,

1967)

2. Richard Saull, The Cold War and After (London, Pluto Press, 2007)

3. Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Extremes (New York, Vintage Books, 1996)

4. Jon Jacobson, When the Soviet Union entered world politics (University of California
Press, 1994)

5. V. Falin and dr. N. Narochnitskaya, Score of the Second World War. Who and when
started the war (Moscow, Veche ,2009)

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6. V. Lenin, Collected works, 1870-1924 (London : Lawrence & Wishart, 1960-70.)

7. Robert M. Cutler, "The Soviet Union and World Order," in Global Peace and
Security: Trends and Challenges, ed. Wolfram F. Hanrieder (Boulder, Colo.:
Westview Press, 1987).

8. The Times http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/public/sitesearch.do?

querystring=munich+moment&p=tto&pf=all&bl=on 14/12/2011

9. Interview Between J. Stalin and Roy Howard, Red Star Press Ltd. (London,
1978)
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1936/03/01.htm 14/12/2011

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