Stalin полностью

Soviet-German “talks” were not formal and not always direct. On June 14, as the German foreign ministry learned the next day, Astakhov told the Bulgarian envoy in Berlin, Parvan Draganov, that “if Germany would declare that she would not attack the Soviet Union or that she would conclude a nonaggression pact with her, the Soviet Union would probably refrain from concluding a pact with England. However, the Soviet Union did not know what Germany really wanted.”²⁶ Schulenburg had left Moscow for consultations in Berlin. On June 21, Köstring, also in Berlin for consultations, had an audience with Hitler.²⁷ Back in Moscow, on June 28, Schulenburg informed the Soviet foreign ministry that Germany sought “not just normalization but improvement in its relations with the USSR,” a stance he said had been conveyed to him by Ribbentrop and approved by Hitler.²⁸ Around this time, Ribbentrop’s Italian counterpart and confidant, Ciano, evidently “leaked” to the Soviet chargé in Rome the possibility of a German-Soviet nonaggression pact, economic agreement, joint guarantee of the Baltic states, and mediation in the relations with Japan.²⁹ But on June 30, Ribbentrop, on Hitler’s orders, suddenly directed that the haphazard political contacts be broken off and that any resumption of talks for a trade agreement be delayed.³⁰

NO ANSWERS

Soviet-Western talks were formal and direct, but fraught as well. Besides Polish acquiescence in possible Red Army transit, a second major sticking point proved to be Soviet insistence on “guarantees” for the Baltic states’ territorial integrity, to prevent Germany from using them as springboards for an attack. But the Western powers—citing the circumstance that these countries themselves were not asking for such guarantees—balked. As the Soviet ambassador would report from Paris, the Western powers viewed such a guarantee as offering Moscow “a free hand in the Baltics.”³¹ Stalin, for his part, viewed the Balts’ professed “strict neutrality” as a pretense.³² Top political figures in authoritarian Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, as well as in democratic Finland, were publicly cozying up to the Nazis. On June 7, 1939, Estonia and Latvia had signed nonaggression pacts with Germany in Berlin; this was soon followed by visits to Estonia by chief of staff Lieutenant General Franz Halder, commander of German land forces, and Admiral Canaris, head of the Abwehr. Molotov demanded that Estonia reverse course and place itself under Soviet protection. But Estonia considered a Soviet “guarantee” of its territorial integrity the worst of both worlds: it would anger Nazi Germany and invite Soviet occupation.³³

On June 10, Molotov, through Maisky in London, communicated an unambiguous Soviet demand for British assent in preventing the three Baltic states from being used in an aggression against the USSR. Pravda (June 13) publicly dismissed possible objections.³⁴ On June 15, one month into the negotiations with the Western powers, Molotov, in a telegram to the Soviet envoys in London and Paris, wrote that the British and the French “do not want a serious agreement based on the principle of reciprocity and equality of conditions.”³⁵ Some British officials internally urged that London accede to Soviet security demands for “guarantees” for the Baltics, even while conceding that Stalin might then have a pretext to seize them. But Chamberlain—who had handed Hitler Czechoslovakia—refused.

Stalin was stupefied. The British imperialists had seized one quarter of the earth, across oceans, and yet they kept invoking “principle” in a refusal to allow him to protect himself in connection with microscopic territories, contiguous with the Soviet homeland, that until recently had belonged to Russia and that represented a threat? Around this time, at a Grand Kremlin Palace reception, the dancer Igor Moiseyev, whose folk ensemble had become among the most popular acts, was talking to Voroshilov. Stalin cherished their number “Moscow-Region Lyrical,” from the dance cycle Pictures from the Past, and, as the defense commissar asked what Moiseyev planned to stage next, Stalin approached. Apprised of the conversation, he said, “All the same, they will never stage what Stalin needs.” Moiseyev: “Iosif Vissarionovich, do you have a bad opinion of us?” Stalin: “Not at all, but what Stalin needs (he spoke of himself in the third person) you will not stage. . . . For example, will you stage the rout of England and France?” Silence ensued. Faces froze. Stalin moved on.³⁶