COLLECTIVE SECURITY


Throughout the thirties Soviet leaders continued to view their country as being surrounded by capitalist enemies whose aggressive plans represented a constant threat to Soviet security. Until 1934 they considered France and England to be the main centers of anti-soviet intrigues. Thus when the Chinese seized the Manchurian Chinese Eastern Railway in 1929, the Soviet Union blamed Britain and France for having tried to provoke a Sino-Soviet conflict and involve the USSR in a Far Eastern war. But Soviet military intervention quickly put an end to this particular Manchurian crisis and forced the Chinese to accept restoration of joint Russo-Chinese administration of the Chinese Eastern railway.

In eastern Europe during the early thirties, the Soviet Union still saw such countries as Poland, Rumania, and Finland as ''vassal states" which ''French and English imperialists" used in their preparations for an attack on the Soviet Union. After Hitler's rise to power and during the period of ''collective security'' of the mid-thirties, the Soviet attitude toward France, England, and the eastern European countries changed considerably, but distrust of possible English and French anti-Soviet "intrigues'' never disappeared completely.

The years 1928-1934 represented a period of transition in the history of Soviet diplomacy. The soviet Union was still loosely linked to Germany through the treaty of nonaggression and neutrality these two countries had signed in 1926, and limited military cooperation between the soviet and German armies continued until the fall of 1933. soviet diplomats avoided placing too much reliance on friendship with Germany and made every effort to widen the range of their contacts with other countries by signing new nonaggression agreements and by participating in European disarmament discussions.

In 1927 and 1928 the Soviet delegation chief at the Preparatory commission for disarmament, Maxim Litvinov, who became commissar for Foreign Affairs in 1930, first attracted general European attention to himself with his brilliant advocacy of sweeping Soviet proposals for total disarmament. Litvinov's further participation in European disarmament conferences during the late twenties and early thirties made him a familiar and even respected figure in Western European circles. At the same time, the soviet Union improved its diplomatic relations with a number of countries.

Particularly gratifying for Soviet leaders was the rather belated decision of the United States in 1933 to establish diplomatic relations with the soviet onion. And the earlier nonaggression pacts with Turkey, Afghanistan, Lithuania, Persia, and Germany were supplemented by new ones with Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Poland, France and Italy.

The Japanese occupation of Manchuria in 1931-1932 and proclamation of a new Manchurian puppet regime on February 18, 1932, seriously threatened Soviet security and interests in the Far East. Soviet diplomats initially tried to avoid involvement in the Manchurian conflict by following a conciliatory policy toward Japan. Thus they refused to cooperate with the League of Nations' futile efforts to investigate the Manchurian situation and to halt Japanese aggression--efforts that only resulted in Japan's announcement early in 1933 that she would withdraw from the League. In 1933 the Soviet Union decided to sell the Chinese Eastern railway to the Japanese-controlled Manchurian government. A final agreement was reached by the end of 1934, and the railway was sold at a fraction of what it had cost the tsarist government.

Appeasement of Japan did not, however, eliminate further Soviet-Japanese friction, and Soviet concern about continued Japanese expansion in the direction of soviet-controlled Outer Mongolia must have been among the factors that influenced Soviet leaders to seek a rapprochement with England, France, and the League of Nations.

Soviet leaders also did not immediately realize how dangerous Hitler actually was. Since the Sixth Congress of the Comintern in 1928 international communism had emphasized the importance of ''iron-party discipline'' and of the central direction (i.e., from Moscow) of all Comintern activities.

Denouncing the alleged ''social fascism'' of the Social Democrats, Comintern leaders then categorically refused to cooperate with the latter in a common struggle against Hitler, apparently assuming that the collapse of parliamentary regimes in Western Europe would only hasten the transformation of '.the present economic crisis into a revolutionary one..' Only after Hitler had become German Chancellor, outlawed the Communist party, and thrown German Communists into concentration camps following the Reichstag fire in late February 1933 did Soviet leaders in Moscow gradually begin to realize--and only after many months of hesitation--that the time had come to consider a basic reorientation of their foreign policy in Europe.

By early 1934 Soviet leaders unmistakably inclined to a new European policy based on cooperation with France and her allies in eastern Europe. Previously, they had considered French support of the Little Entente (Czechoslovakia, Rumania, and Yugoslavia) and treaties of alliance with Poland and Czechoslovakia to represent a serious threat to soviet security in eastern Europe; but the rapid consolidation of fascism and of Hitler's power in Germany soon alarmed them sufficiently to adopt a more positive attitude toward French efforts to organize an Eastern Locarno and to guarantee the territorial status of the League of Nations in September 1934 and signed mutual assistance pacts with France and Czechoslovakia in May 1935. Neither of these pacts, however, was supplemented with a military convention, and the treaty with Czechoslovakia obliged the Soviet Union to come to the assistance of the Czechs only if the French, who were already bound by an earlier treaty of mutual assistance with Czechoslovakia, would also act.

From the very outset the alliance arrangements of France and Czechoslovakia with the Soviet Union did not promise to be very effective ones. After the principal architect of the Franco-Soviet rapprochement, French Foreign Minister Louis Barthou, had been assassinated in October 1934, his successor, Pierre Laval, clearly displayed the distrust many Frenchmen felt toward the Soviet Union by responding evasively to Soviet suggestions that a Franco-Soviet military convention was highly desirable. Laval's behavior could only raise doubts in the minds of Soviet diplomats concerning the value of their alliance with France, doubts that were certainly reinforced by the internal instability and uncertain political leadership that prevented France from acting firmly and resolutely when Hitler, in violation of the Versailles Treaty, reintroduced conscription in Germany in 1935 and, in the following year, reoccupied the Rhine land.

Furthermore, France's declining prestige in Europe had far-reaching repercussions in eastern Europe, where former French allies, namely Poland, Rumania, and Yugoslavia, tended more and more to base their foreign policy on some form of understanding with Germany or Italy, the two powers that had formed the Berlin-Rome Axis in October 1936. French internal weakness and instability and the disintegration of the French status-quo system of agreements and alliances in eastern Europe obviously made it extremely risky for the Soviet Union to seek security in its alliance with the French Third Republic.

But Frenchmen had equally legitimate reasons to distrust their Soviet allies. Although Litvinov repeatedly proclaimed the indivisibility of peace and the need for collective security, French diplomats must have always had lingering doubts about the strength of the Soviet Union's resolve to build a powerful alliance system against Nazi Germany. As early as 1935 and again in 1936, 1937 and 1938 Stalin hinted to Hitler through Soviet trade, military, and diplomatic representatives that he hoped to improve relations between their two countries. In 1936 and 1937 reports concerning the conversations of influential Soviet military and civilian figures with their German counterparts reached France and greatly troubled French advocates of friendship with the Soviet Union--especially Leon Blum, the head of the Popular Front government then in power in France.

Further suspicions concerning the sincerity of the Communists' professed determination to combat the menace of German Nazism were aroused by the opportunism they displayed in the course of their participation in the Popular Front movement. French Communists abandoned their hostility toward other socialist parties about the same time the Soviet Union decided to join the League of Nations; and after the Seventh Congress of the Comintern of July 1935 they worked for the establishment of a ''united front'. with reformist socialist and even non-socialist parties willing to join the Communists in their ''struggle against Fascism.''

However, once a Popular Front government came into existence in France in 1936, the Communists failed to cooperate with that government in working to unite France politically and to make her strong militarily so that she could resist possible German aggression. Instead, they all too often engaged in irresponsible radical politics that contributed to the further weakening of France as a great power, thereby creating the impression that their participation in the Popular Front was above all a tactical maneuver and an attempt to broaden their base of popular support in preparation for a Communist revolution in France.

Similarly, in Spain soviet assistance to the Loyalists was extremely limited compared to the sizable air and ground forces with which Germany and Italy participated in the Spanish Civil War on the side of Franco. The planes, tanks, and political and military advisers sent by the soviet Union to Spain as well as the Foreign Communists fighting in the International Brigade undeniably did help save Madrid and the Spanish Popular Front government during 1936-1937; but the Soviet Union cautiously avoided direct confrontations with the Germans and the Italians in Spain. At the same time, the terror that Soviet NKVD agents directed against Spanish Trotskiites and anarchists could only confuse those who saw in fascism the principal enemy. And many Soviet citizens who had been infected by the anti-fascist fervor of the Spanish Popular Front were either executed or perished in Stalinist concentration camps after they had been recalled or returned to the Soviet Union.

Even if the Soviet Union had been wholly committed to the struggle against fascism, it never was entirely clear whether or not the soviet army actually was in a position to come to the assistance of France and Czechoslovakia in the event of a European war. The Soviet Union had no common border with Germany and Czechoslovakia, and neither the Rumanians nor the Poles, who feared both Communist social revolution and the possible revival of traditional Russian imperialism at their expense, were willing to permit the transit of Soviet troops across their territories.

Furthermore, the disastrous effect that the 1937 purge of the Red Army had on the caliber of Soviet military leadership was well known in informed European military circles. Given the apparent ineffectiveness of the Red Army at that moment as a fighting force, French military leaders were understandably reluctant to attach too much importance to possible Soviet military assistance for France. Unprepared for war and internally divided, France was therefore drawn into closer cooperation with England, a nation that was equally unprepared for war but one that seemed to have a reservoir of moral strength and was preferable as an ally to terror-ridden Communist Russia.

The Austro-German and German-Czech crises of 1938 further widened the gap separating France from the Soviet Union. shortly after the annexation of Austria by Germany in March 1938, Foreign Commissar Litvinov urged the Western powers to take ''a firm and unambiguous stand'' and to check the further development of aggression.'' France and England, however, did not respond to Litvinov's appeal in the name of collective security. The French distrusted Hitler but did not have the courage to oppose him unless they were supported by the British. At that moment this meant to resistance to Hitler, for British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, a rather limited Birmingham businessman, then pursued a policy of appeasement toward Hitler on the assumption that the German Führer would cooperate in the maintenance of peace once certain German grievances had been rectified and the causes for war removed.

Actually, Hitler was more interested in German economic self-sufficiency and military and political domination in Europe than he was in peace. The French and British decision to yield Austria and the Sudetenland to Germany seriously weakened Czechoslovakia as a Soviet ally and as an obstacle in the way of further German eastward expansion in the proximity of or at the expense of the Soviet Union. Whatever remaining faith Soviet diplomats had in the Franco-Soviet security system must have disappeared in September 1938, when Britain and France helped to isolate the Soviet Union in Europe by agreeing to exclude its representatives from the famous Munich Conference that gave European sanction to Germany's annexation of the Sudetenland.

Meanwhile, the consolidation of the Japanese position in Manchuria and sustained Japanese pressure on China also obliged Soviet leaders to concern themselves with the defense of vital Soviet interests in the Far East. To meet the challenge of Japan in this area, they resorted essentially to two tactics:


Chiang Kaishek did not willingly enter into a united front with the Chinese Communists. Indeed, for a number of years he had given first priority to fighting domestic Chinese Communists rather than Japanese enemies. Only after he had been briefly held in captivity in 1936 by troops sympathetic to the Communists did he finally agree to participate in a united front against the Japanese.

The Japanese responded to Chiang's new policy by moving their troops southward, thus involving themselves in an undeclared war that was to last approximately eight years. The Sino-Japanese conflict clearly was in the interest of the Soviet Union because it diverted Japanese attention away from Outer Mongolia and the soviet Far East. Accordingly, the Soviet Union contributed to the stiffening of Chinese resistance to the Japanese by sending Chiang Kaishek arms and military advisers via Sinkiang. At the same time, the Soviet Far Eastern army demonstrated its fighting qualities in a series of battles that took place between 1937 and 1939.

The first clash of 1937 was a minor one and concerned only two small islands in the Amur River some 70 miles south of Blagoveshchensk. However, in the second encounter the Soviet Union used heavy artillery, hundreds of tanks and plans, and thousands of troops in a bloody but limited engagement with units of the Japanese army in order to assure Soviet possession of the strategic Changkufeng hill near the point where the Korean, Manchurian, and Soviet borders meet. The third clash, which soon assumed the proportions of a small war, began in mid-January 1939 when the Japanese crossed the Outer Mongolian frontier near Nomonhan and penetrated as far as the Khalkhin-Gol River.

It only ended in August after Corps Commander G. K. Zhukov, the future World War II hero, had brought up some 18,000 additional soldiers to the Khalkhin-Gol and deployed with great tactical skill more than 650 tanks and armored cars and 500 aircraft against the Japanese. The latter learned in defeat that Stalin's Great Purge had weakened but not destroyed the Red Army. In Europe, however, military and political leaders scarcely noticed the events on the Khalkhin-Gol.

The Soviet Union's diplomatic isolation in Europe ended in March 1939 after Hitler had marched his troops into Bohemia and Moravia and completed the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia, with Slovakia becoming a separate state and Ruthenia going to Hungary. British disenchantment after Hitler's ''breach of faith'' and concern about the balance of power in Central Europe produced a sudden shift in British policy, namely, the abandonment of appeasement toward Nazi Germany. This was a godsend for the Soviet Union, because an Anglo-French guarantee of Polish independence freed Soviet leaders from the nightmare of having to stand alone in the face of a possible German-Polish attack.

Send comments and questions to Professor Gerhard Rempel, Western New England College.