Очерки истории Франции XX–XXI веков. Статьи Н. Н. Наумовой и ее учеников

On 30 August 1944, Pravda published a message from Stalin to de Gaulle, president of the Gouvernement Provisoire de la République Française (GPRF): ‘On the occasion of the liberation of Paris, capital of France, we address to you… in the name of the peoples of the Soviet Union and of myself, friendly congratulations to the French people and our wishes for the most speedy liberation of France from the German yoke.’[329]The warmth of Stalin’s greeting was returned on 2 December, as de Gaulle’s arrived in Moscow in the company of his Foreign Minister Georges Bidault: ‘I am happy and flattered’, said the General, ‘to be in the capital of the Soviet Union and to offer the homage of France, ally of the Soviet Union, with a view to victory and a beneficial peace for the whole of humanity.’[330]De Gaulle’s stay, which lasted over a week, saw an impressive round of cultural events and diplomatic receptions, but above all substantive talks with Stalin, Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov, and other Soviet leaders.

That de Gaulle wanted a treaty of alliance was clear from his first contacts with Stalin and Molotov. ‘France’, he told the Russians, ‘understands that for the problem of the German danger to be settled it is not enough to resolve frontier issues. To prevent a new attack from Hitler an alliance of anti-German powers will be needed.’ When the Soviet leaders observed that a Franco-Soviet mutual assistance pact had been signed with the Laval government in 1935, de Gaulle remarked with some bitterness that he was not Laval, and expressed a strong wish to conclude an improved pact ‘which would include additional points’.[331]At his first formal talks with Stalin, he added that ‘The French know what Soviet Russia has done for them, and that Soviet Russia played the chief role in their liberation… The origin of France’s recent misfortunes lay in the fact that France did not have Russia at her side and lacked an effective treaty.’[332]

For de Gaulle, the attractions of a treaty with Moscow were both symbolic and practical. It would mark France’s return to great-power status, able to deal on equal terms with the Soviet Union, and thus by implication the British and Americans. It revived the Franco-Russian alliance of 1893, which had always been directed against Germany: the heart of the new treaty was a commitment to fight together to the final defeat of Germany and to prevent any resurgence of the German threat. Both de Gaulle and Bidault also hoped for Soviet help in pressing France’s aims for Germany, above all the detachment of the Rhineland from the rest of the country, the internationalisation of the Ruhr, and the economic linkage of the Saar to France. For the Soviets, an alliance offered three possible benefits. France’s commitment to fight on until final victory would hinder any realisation of Stalin’s nightmare – a separate Anglo-American peace with Germany. A treaty would reinforce the position, within France, of a leader who had shown both independence from Washington and London and a willingness, however circumstantial, to govern with Communists. And it would, Stalin hoped, further his Eastern European plans if de Gaulle could be persuaded to support the displacement of Germany’s Eastern border to the Oder-Neisse line, and the claims of the Soviet-backed National Liberation Committee (the ‘Lublin Committee’) to rule Poland rather than the Polish government in exile in London.

The Moscow talks of December 1944 form one of the great set-pieces of de Gaulle’s War Memoirs.[333]The account centres on de Gaulle’s own refusal to bow to pressure from the Soviets, especially on the Polish issue. His willingness to break off negotiations won him Stalin’s respect, and an alliance that did not compromise France’s honour by selling out Poland – a country where, in 1920, he had acted as a military advisor to a government at war with the newborn Soviet Union. Other authors are more sceptical. Werth, for example, claims on his reading of Soviet archives that de Gaulle had asked for an invitation to Moscow – rather than, as de Gaulle argues, responding to pressing offers from the Soviet ambassador to the GPRF, Alexander Bogomolov – and has Stalin embarrassing the General with probing questions on France’s economic and military recovery, which had hardly begun.[334]Even Lacouture, a more sympa thetic biographer, takes some of the gloss off de Gaulle’s account.[335]