“We have been connected with Germany by close economic and political relations for ten years. We were the only great country which would have nothing to do with the Versailles Treaty and its consequences. We renounced the rights and advantages which this treaty reserved for us. Germany assumed first place in our foreign trade. Both Germany and ourselves have derived extraordinary advantages from the political and economic relation established between us. (President Kalinin, of the Executive Committee: “Especially Germany!”) On the basis of these relations, Germany was able to speak more boldly and confidently to her victors of yesterday.”
This hint, emphasized by President Kalinin’s exclamation, was designed to remind Hitler of Soviet Russia’s help in enabling him to challenge the Versailles victors. Litvinov then made the following formal declaration:
“With Germany, as with other states, we want to have the best relations. The Soviet Union and Germany will gain nothing but benefit from such relations. We, on our side, have no desire for expansion, either in the west or the east or in any other direction. We would like to hear Germany say the same thing to us.”
Hitler did not say it. But that did not deter Stalin. It encouraged him to a more strenuous courtship of the Nazi regime.
On January 26, 1934, Stalin himself, addressing the Seventeenth Communist Party Congress continued the drive for an appeasement of Hitler. Hitler had then been in power exactly one year. He had rebuffed all of Moscow’s political advances, although he had entered into a trade deal on favorable credit terms with Soviet Russia. Stalin interpreted this as a sign of political good will. He referred to those Nazi elements which favored a return to “the policy of the ex-Kaiser of Germany, who at one time occupied the Ukraine, undertook a march against Leningrad, and transformed the Baltic countries into an encampment for this march.” There had been a change, he said, in German policy, which he attributed not to the theories of National Socialism, but to a desire to avenge Versailles. He denied that Soviet Russia had changed its policy toward Berlin because of “the establishment of a Fascist regime in Germany,” and stretched out his hand to Hitler with these words:
“Of course we are far from enthusiastic about the Fascist regime in Germany. But Fascism is not the issue here, if only for the reason that Fascism, in Italy for example, did not prevent the Soviet Union from establishing good relations with that country.”
Stalin’s outstretched hand was ignored in Berlin. Hitler had other ideas on the subject. But Stalin would not be discouraged. He only decided upon a change of method. Viewing the Nazi agitation for an anti-Soviet bloc as a maneuver on the part of Hitler, he resolved to respond to it with a counter-maneuver. Henceforth, the Soviet government would appear as an upholder of the Versailles system, would join the League of Nations, would even associate with the anti-German bloc. The threat involved in such a course, Stalin thought, would bring Hitler to his senses.
Stalin picked a brilliant journalist to pave the way for this somersault. It must be remembered that an entire Soviet generation had been brought up in the belief that the Versailles Treaty was the most pernicious instrument ever drawn up, and that its authors were a band of pirates. It was no simple task to dress up the Soviet government in the costume of a defender of Versailles. There was only one man in the Soviet Union who could do this publicity stunt adequately both for domestic and foreign consumption. That was Karl Radek, the man who subsequently played such a tragic role in the great trial of January, 1937. Stalin picked Radek to prepare Russian and world opinion for his change of tactics.
I saw a great deal of Radek in those days—the early spring of 1934—at the headquarters of the Central Committee of the Communist Party. The Inner Circle in Moscow was then buzzing with talk about Radek’s assignment to prepare a series of articles forming a build-up toward the coming turnabout in Kremlin policy.
The articles were to appear in both Pravda and Izvestia, the leading Communist and Soviet organs. They would be reprinted throughout the world and carefully studied in all European chancelleries. Radek’s task was to whitewash the Versailles peace, to herald a new era of friendship with Paris, to persuade Soviet sympathizers abroad that such a stand was harmonious with communism, and at the same time to leave the door open for an agreement with Germany.
I knew, because of my frequent calls at Radek’s office, that he was in daily consultation with Stalin. Sometimes he would dash over to Stalin’s office several times a day. Every phrase he wrote was subject to Stalin’s personal supervision. The articles were in every sense a joint labor of Radek and Stalin.
While these articles were in preparation, Commissar Litvinov was keeping on with efforts toward an agreement with Hitler. In April, he proposed to Germany a joint undertaking to preserve and guarantee the independence and inviolability of the Baltic states. Berlin rejected the proposal.
The Radek article was hailed widely as foreshadowing a Soviet turn toward France and the Little Entente, and away from Germany. “German Fascism and Japanese imperialism,” wrote Radek, “are in a struggle for a redivision of the world—a struggle directed against the Soviet Union, against France, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Rumania and the Baltic states; against China and the United States of America. And British imperialism would like to direct this struggle exclusively against the Soviet Union.”
At this time I had quite a conversation with Radek. He knew that I was familiar with his assignment. I made some remark about our “new policy” and spoke of the impression it was creating in uninformed circles.
Radek let loose a flood of talk: “Only fools can imagine we would ever break with Germany. What I am writing here is one thing—the realities are something else. No one can give us what Germany has given us. For us to break with Germany is simply impossible.”
Radek continued to discourse along lines only too familiar to me. He spoke of our relations with the German army, which was very much in the saddle even under Hitler, of our relations with big business in Germany—and was not Hitler under the thumb of the industrialists? Surely Hitler would not go against the general staff, which favored cooperation with Russia. Surely Hitler would not cross swords with German business circles, who were doing a large trade with us. These two forces were the pillars of German-Soviet relations.
He denounced as idiots those who thought that Soviet Russia should turn against Germany because of the Nazi persecution of Communists and Socialists. True, the Communist Party of Germany was smashed. Its leader, Thaelmann, was in prison. Thousands of its members were in concentration camps. But that was one thing. It was something else when one considered the vital interests of Soviet Russia. Those interests demanded a continuation of the policy of collaboration with the German Reich.
As for the articles he was writing, what did they have to do with the facts? It was all a matter of big politics. It was a necessary maneuver. Stalin had no idea of breaking with Germany. On the contrary, he was seeking to draw Berlin closer to Moscow.
All of this was elementary to those of us who were on the inside of the Kremlin policy. None of us dreamed, in the spring of 1934, that a rupture with Germany was possible. We all regarded the Radek articles as Stalinist strategy.
Litvinov went off on a tour of the European capitals, ostensibly in the interests of the so-called Eastern Locarno pact which was to insure, by mutual agreement of all the governments concerned, the existing boundaries of the nations in Eastern Europe. He visited Geneva. His visit filled the world with rumors of a coming Franco-Russian rapprochement, crowning the work begun by Radek’s articles. At the same time, Stalin continued doggedly to assert at the Politbureau: “And nevertheless, we must get together with the Germans.”
On June 13, 1934, Litvinov stopped in Berlin to confer with Baron Konstantin von Neurath, then Hitler’s Foreign Minister. Litvinov invited Germany to join in his proposed Eastern European pact. Von Neurath firmly declined the invitation, and bluntly pointed out that such an arrangement would perpetuate the Versailles system. When Litvinov intimated that Moscow might strengthen its treaties with other nations by military alliances, Von Neurath replied that Germany was willing to risk such an encirclement.
The following day, on June fourteenth, Hitler met