144. Kvashonkin, Sovetskoe rukovodstvo, 161–3 (RGASPI, f. 74, op. 2, d. 38, l. 48–51). See also Stone, Hammer and Rifle, 185 (citing l. 52–3). Japan’s military was effectively dictating the country’s foreign policy with an aggressive strategy that asserted a need to “protect” investments in China from China’s protracted civil war and from perceived Soviet encroachment, while actually forcing into being a self-sufficient empire in Asia. Paine, Wars for Asia.
145. Soviet anxiety about appearing either belligerent or too weak was evident in a speech by Molotov on Dec. 22, 1931, at the central executive committee (repeating Stalin’s words of June 1930): “We need no one else’s land, but not one inch of our land will we cede to anyone else.” Molotov, “O vypolnenie pervoi pitaitletki: doklad na vtoroi sessii IsIK SSSR o narodno-khoziaistvennom plane na 1932 god,” Pravda, Dec. 25, 1931, reprinted in DVP SSSR, XIV: 725–8, and in Molotov, V bor’be za sotsializm (1935), 236–76 (at 262–3); Sochineniia, XII: 269. Molotov’s speech might have been the regime’s first public statement on Japan’s action in Manchuria. Haslam, Soviet Foreign Policy, 79, 81; Thorne, Limits of Foreign Policy, 133.
146. Ken, Moskva i pakt. The Soviets interpreted France’s diplomatic efforts to manage its predicament vis-à-vis Germany as directed against the USSR. Kun, Kommunisticheskii internatsional v dokumentakh, 966–72; Eudin and Slusser, Soviet Foreign Policy, I: 324–31. In the eyes of Paris, a nonaggression pact with Moscow promised to loosen Soviet-German ties and secure genuine Soviet neutrality in the event of any Franco-German conflict, but after initialing a draft agreement the French had backed off signing it, preferring instead to try to get Germany to freeze frontiers and forswear rearming in exchange for aid. (The Weimar Republic chancellor would decline.) After the Nazi party electoral success in Sept. 1930 and a German government announcement (March 1931) of a pending customs union with Austria, Paris conveyed to Moscow a willingness for exploratory talks on both a nonaggression pact and credits for trade, but mutual suspicion continued to undermine efforts. DVP SSSR, XIV: 452–6 (Dovgalevsky to Moscow, Aug. 8, 1931), 573–581 (V. L. Mezhlauk to Moscow: Oct. 16, 1931); Coulondre, De Staline à Hitler, 12; Herriot, Jadis, II: 312–3; Scott, Alliance against Hitler, 24–5; Wheeler-Bennett, Documents on International Affairs, 1931, 3–6; Scott, Alliance against Hitler, 8–9; Steiner, Lights that Failed, 553; Carley, “Five Kopecks,” at 36. France would turn out to be the only country in the world that increased its imports from the USSR in 1931–32. Williams, Trading with the Bolsheviks, 142. In 1932, the Nazis would win 230 seats, the most by any party during the entire Weimar period. That same year, 90 percent of German reparation payments would be canceled.
147. Kvashonkin, Sovetskoe rukovodstvo, 163n6 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 11, l. 64); Dokumenty i materialy po istorii sovetskikh-pol’skikh otnoshenii, V: 502–5 (AVP RF, f. 05, op. 11, d. 5, l. 157–62: Nov. 14, 1931); Izvestiia, Nov. 22, 1931; Lechik, “‘Vo frantsuzsko-pol’sko-rossiiskom treugol’nike,” 120–3; Haslam, Soviet Foreign Policy, 98.
