Stalin полностью

They also detailed Hitler’s plans. On May 17, 1939, Proskurov sent Stalin a six-page memorandum, “The Future Plans of Aggression by Fascist Germany,” comprising clandestine notes from a briefing fifteen days earlier at the German embassy in Warsaw by Dr. Peter Kleist, the key person for Eastern Europe in Ribbentrop’s foreign ministry. “Hitler,” Kleist was said to have remarked, based on a conversation between the Führer and Ribbentrop, “has decided to bring Poland to her knees.” According to Kleist’s account, as reported by a Soviet agent in the Warsaw embassy, German destruction of Poland’s army was expected to take a mere eight to fourteen days. Furthermore, any conflict between Germany and Poland was expected to be localized; Britain and France, notwithstanding their public “guarantees” of Poland’s territorial integrity, were expected to do essentially nothing if Poland’s demise proceeded rapidly. “The whole project arouses in Germany only one fear: the possible reaction of the Soviet Union,” Kleist was said to have stated. “In the event of a conflict, we hope, no matter the circumstances, to attain the USSR’s neutrality.” Poland might yet prove Stalin’s opportunity: the despot wrote on his copy of the secret report, “Talk to Proskurov. Who is the ‘source.’”³¹³

Proskurov was summoned to the Little Corner on May 19, along with Molotov and the Soviet military attaché to Poland. Stalin evidently heard firsthand of Hitler’s intention to instigate a pretext for an attack on Poland in the coming summer, then pivot westward against France and Britain, after which it would be the turn of the Soviet Union.³¹⁴ So it looked as though a war in the west would come first? The last major war had lasted four years. In such a scenario, Stalin perhaps could wait to see who emerged the likely winner, and reap the gains without the costs—provided, of course, that Britain did not manage to strike another deal with Hitler.

Also on May 19, Beria had executed a confidential task: Radek had his head fatally smashed on the floor of the Verkhne-Uralsk prison, where he was serving a ten-year term. Rumors were loosed that Radek had been killed in a fight with a fellow inmate. In fact, the murder was instigated by a specially dispatched NKVD team—so much for the promise Stalin had made to not execute Radek, in exchange for testimony that Radek had duly delivered against Trotsky and Trotskyites.³¹⁵ (Sokolnikov, another defendant in the January 1937 Trotskyite trial who had been spared death in exchange for his testimony, would also be murdered in prison, in Tobolsk on May 21.) The ironies, as ever, were rich: Radek had once been one of Stalin’s top advisers on German affairs.

Molotov, too, executed his own confidential task at this time. Stalin, having tried to force the issue with an offer of alliance to Britain and France, now sought to force the issue with Hitler: on May 20, the reliably blunt Molotov summoned Schulenburg and informed him that “economic negotiations with Germany have recently been started more than once but have not led to anything. . . . We have the impression that instead of economic negotiations, the German government is conducting some kind of game.” Schulenburg tried to counter Molotov’s charges, but the Hammer then struck an even bigger blow: resumption of talks for an economic agreement would now require “a political basis.” It was a Soviet invitation, delivered as an ultimatum.³¹⁶

STALEMATE

Soviet economic relations with Britain and France remained dogged by the bitterness over tsarist and Provisional Government debts, but even if the debt issues had somehow been resolved, neither Britain nor France promised nearly as much economically to the Soviets as did Germany.³¹⁷ Some sort of a political deal with Nazi Germany also presented the best chance to avoid and perhaps profit from what Stalin saw as the inevitable intracapitalist war.³¹⁸ At the same time, however, an iron-clad British-French-Soviet military alliance encircling Germany did hold appeal: it could, at a minimum, prevent an aggression by either of France’s formal allies, Poland and Romania.³¹⁹ More than that, it could potentially deter Hitler. And even if it failed to prevent him from attacking, a Western alliance, because of geography, promised to shift any fighting from Soviet onto Polish, Romanian, and French soil.