Stalin полностью

Much of Stalin’s holiday back-and-forth with Moscow, from Gagra and Sochi, in September 1934 concerned his customary pressure on the harvest collection but also foreign affairs.⁴ Over the summer, Czechoslovakia, Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania had conveyed their readiness to sign on to the Franco-Soviet proposal for a broad Eastern Pact, but Estonia and Latvia made their membership conditional on Germany’s and Poland’s. So did Britain, which also made its support for a parallel Franco-Soviet alliance conditional on Germany’s inclusion in that.⁵ On September 11, 1934, Hitler definitively rejected any Eastern Pact. Poland’s rejection would soon follow. Stalin was urged to grasp the French option without Germany, embracing an antifascist coalition.⁶ Negotiations for the large state credit from the German government, initiated at Berlin’s request, had bogged down. But Stalin reassured Kuibyshev (September 14), in a telegram, which, as usual, became a politburo decree, that “the Germans will not walk away from us, because they need a [trade] agreement with us more than we need one from them.”⁷ Nonetheless, on September 18, the Soviet Union formally joined the League of Nations, after intensive diplomacy to line up other countries’ votes.⁸ Many Communist party and Youth League members cringed at joining the Versailles imperialist order.⁹ Stalin himself had once denounced the League as “an anti-working-class comedy.”¹⁰

Soviet newspapers explained that some imperialist powers, although ill-disposed toward socialism, did not want to see an anti-Soviet military intervention, for fear it would spark a world war directed at themselves.¹¹ Joining the League was also a prerequisite to alliance with France or a broader regional security structure. Nonetheless, at Stalin’s urging, the politburo resolved (September 23), “Do not hurry with the initiative of an [Eastern] Pact without Germany and Poland.” France slowed for its own reasons.¹² It was courting Mussolini in a common front to guarantee Austria’s sovereignty against Nazi pressure, part of which involved France’s help in normalizing Italo-Yugoslav relations. On October 9, Yugoslavia’s King Alexander I landed on a state visit at the Marseilles harbor, where he was promptly assassinated. French foreign minister Louis Barthou was killed in the police cross fire. The assassin, beaten to death on the spot, was Macedonian and a member of the Croatian terrorist ring, the Ustaše, led by Ante Pavelić and protected by Mussolini.¹³ Soviet intelligence suspected the Nazi secret police of aiming to destabilize Yugoslavia and to liquidate a bulwark of friendly Franco-Soviet relations. Stalin wrote to Kaganovich and Molotov, “In my opinion, the murder of Barthou and Alexander is the work of the hand of German-Polish intelligence.”¹⁴

Inside the Comintern, Dimitrov, supported by Manuilsky, Kuusinen, Thorez, and Wilhelm Pieck, continued pushing for a shift to a popular front, while Pyatnitsky, Knorin, Kun, and others held to the anti–Social Democrat line. Dimitrov implored Stalin for assistance in changing the structure and personnel of the Comintern’s “leading organs.” Eventually Stalin got around to sending a handwritten note. “As you can see, I am late in replying, and I apologize for that,” he wrote. “Here on holiday, I do not sit in one place, but move from one location to another. . . . I entirely agree with you regarding the review of the methods of work of the Comintern organs, their reorganization and the changes in their composition. I have already mentioned this to you during our meeting at the Central Committee. . . . I hope to see you soon and to discuss all in detail. I have no doubt that the politburo will support you. Greetings!”¹⁵ The planned 7th Comintern Congress was postponed yet again.¹⁶