Stalin полностью

124. Soviet foreign trade, despite the dislocation in the capitalist world from 1929, had initially expanded more rapidly than envisioned in the Five-Year Plan, but even though the USSR had exported more than twice as much grain in 1930 as in 1927–28, it had earned only about the same revenues because of lower prices. Revenues in 1931 were worse. Catastrophic livestock losses, moreover, destroyed the animal-products export plan, and even mechanization of agriculture brought costs (tractors consumed fuel, reducing petroleum-product exports). Sel’skoe khoziaistvo SSSR, 222; Vneshniaia torgovlia SSSR za 20 let, 1918–1937 gg., 35. Grain exports officially rose to about 4.8 million tons in 1930 and 5.06 million tons in 1931, accounting for just under one-fifth of total exports (others included timber, oil, flax, animal products, even medicinal herbs). Dohan, “Economic Origins of Soviet Autarky,” 612–3. One gold ruble in foreign trade equaled $0.52 until early 1933.

125. Dmytro Manuilsky, at a Comintern enlarged plenum in March 1931, stated: “Can the perspective of the people’s revolution in Germany be viewed outside of the whole complicated international tangle and especially outside the question of the USSR?” A German revolution might provoke British and French intervention, forcing the Soviet Union to send in the Red Army, or allow “the imperialists” to annihilate the German Communists. Manuilsky, Communist Parties, 99; Carr, Twilight of the Comintern, 32–3, 37. The German trade delegation was in Moscow from Feb. 26 to March 11, 1931. Hilger and Meyer, Incompatible Allies, 239–42; von Dirksen, Moscow, Tokyo, London, 89–96. Stalin had received an analysis of the credit disposition toward the USSR of German banks on Nov. 19, 1930. The OGPU worried about the opposition inside the newly created Bank of International Settlements (1930) in Basel to German bank cooperation with the USSR. Khaustov et al., Glazami razvedki, 322–3 (TsA FSB, f. 2, op. 9, d. 861, l. 14–5), 328–9 (l. 7–8: May 7, 1931).

126. The agreement had been signed on April 14, 1931. Dyck, Weimar Germany, 223–4; Haslam, Soviet Foreign Policy, 55; Izvestiia, March 10, April 21 and 24, 1931; DVP SSSR, XIV: 116–9 (Krestinsky to Khinchuk in Berlin: March 10, 1931), 172 (Tass communiqué, March 10), 246–8 (Russian text of the agreement). On June 24, the two sides agreed on a protocol extending the April 1926 Treaty of Berlin, a treaty of neutrality and nonaggression, with a two-year moratorium for either side to denounce it, but the German side did not ratify it. It had been set to expire on June 29. DVP SSSR, XIV: 395–6. Dyck, Weimar Germany, 229–36.

127. By 1932, Germany would account for nearly half of Soviet imports. Dyck, Weimer Germany, 216; Ericson, Feeding the German Eagle, 14. The USSR had already gone from eleventh to fourth place in German exports between 1930 and 1931. DVP SSSR, XIV: 118, 247, 749–50.

128. The pound was devalued by some 30 percent after Britain withdrew from the gold standard, and because much of Soviet debt was payable in sterling Moscow might have gotten debt relief, but just about all Soviet gold payments in the years 1931–34 went to Germany, and the Soviets had to purchase marks (with gold) at the official parity rate of the reichsmark (the German government refused to devalue the mark). The Soviets covered their debt to Britain with commodity exports, whose prices were falling, so that the Soviets failed to achieve the full windfall in paying off debt that was denominated in devalued sterling. In 1933, when the United States would leave the gold standard and the dollar would be devalued, the Soviets would reap about 300 million gold rubles’ worth of debt relief. Dohan, “Soviet Foreign Trade,” 607–10. The exchange rate for sterling, which had been 9.46 rubles to £1, fell to 6.58–6.42 rubles by late 1931. Aizenberg, Valiutnaia Sistema SSSR, 104.

129. Germany, Greece, and Hungary would default in 1932. Reinhart and Rogoff, This Time Is Different, 96 (table 6.4). The real value of the ruble would drop by perhaps 60 percent during the Five-Year Plan. Mozokhin, VChK-OGPU, 213.