Stalin полностью

Also on April 14, 1939, TASS sent a secret internal report, which reached Stalin, containing a Russian translation of an article in the New York World-Telegram by its editor, Roy Howard, who had achieved renown by attaining the interview with Stalin some years back. Howard’s latest article, dispatched from Paris—beyond Soviet censors—called the Soviet Union a false “shop-window country” with ubiquitous surveillance, propaganda that covered over everything with lies, thousands of internally deported or executed political prisoners, and, as a result, a military and industry in disarray. Howard wrote that Communism had failed to find an alternative to capitalism’s stimulation, and that the standard of living remained below that of Italy. He called the Soviet system—in passages underlined by Stalin—“oriental military despotism, the iron hand, and mercilessness” and concluded, in a paragraph crossed out by Stalin, that “at the present time, despite the gigantic army and air force, in the opinion of foreign military observers, including French and British officials, the USSR has lost hope as a factor in the pending combination of forces against fascism.”²²⁵

The Soviets, in this context, upped the British ante; Litvinov (April 15) sent Stalin and Molotov a draft proposal for a formal alliance with Britain and France. Stalin edited the text, transforming it into a specific eight-point plan for an unequivocal anti-Nazi Triple Alliance.²²⁶ Litvinov was received in the Little Corner on April 16, and the next day he conveyed the final text to the British, summoning Seeds from the theater in the middle of a play; the day after that, Litvinov passed it to the French. Scholars who continue to deny that Stalin ever wanted a military alliance with the West have to explain why he offered one, in written form. British officials, internally, judged the Soviet proposal “extremely inconvenient” and hurriedly worked to douse French interest in it; the French contemplated an independent policy vis-à-vis Moscow, but only briefly.²²⁷

Also on April 17, the newly appointed Soviet ambassador in Berlin, Aleksei Merekalov, called on Ernst von Weizsäcker, state secretary at the German foreign ministry, to complain about violations of Soviet trade contracts with the Škoda Works since the Germans had taken it over. Merekalov, a former deputy commissar for trade (who spoke no German), observed that fulfillment of the contracts would indicate whether the German government was willing to “cultivate and expand economic relations with Russia.” Weizsäcker shot back that, given reports of a possible British-French-Soviet military alliance, the atmosphere for delivering war matériel to Russia was not favorable. This prompted Merekalov to inquire about current events in Europe and Soviet-German relations. Weizsäcker, sticking to his brief, stated that Germany desired “mutually satisfactory commercial relations with Russia,” to which Merekalov replied, “Russian policy has always moved in a straight line.” The envoy further pointed out that ideological differences had scarcely affected Soviet-Italian relations and did not have to “prove a stumbling block” with Berlin, especially since the USSR had refrained from exploiting the tensions between Germany and the West. Merekalov concluded that normalizing bilateral relations was possible, the refrain of Soviet trade and diplomatic officials going on six years.²²⁸

Škoda was selling the Soviets antiaircraft guns, howitzers, and naval weapons, in exchange for iron and manganese ores, nickel, tungsten, copper, tin, and foodstuffs. Stalin viewed fulfillment of the orders as important in themselves, and as a revealing test of German intentions, which remained unclear. Hitler, during a long, rambling audience granted to Grigore Gafencu, the Romanian foreign minister, in the Chancellery (April 19, 1939), raved about the British, Danzig, and being forced into war. “In the end, victor or vanquished, we shall all be buried in the same ruins,” he was said to have told Gafencu. “And the only one who will profit is that man in Moscow.”²²⁹