Russia at war 1941-1945

"exotic" flavour, and was the work of an illiterate old Asiatic. Even so, many members of the Congress must, on the quiet, have thought it frivolous and inappropriate to splash this kind of thing over the front page of Pravda on so solemn and serious an occasion. For Stalin's foreign policy statement was awaited with both eagerness and a touch of anxiety.

It should be remembered that Europe was already full of danger signals and that the

Congress opened, and that Stalin's report was delivered, five days before the German march into Prague.

Stalin divided the capitalist powers into "aggressive" powers and "non-aggressive"

powers, but suspected the latter of wanting "others to pull the chestnuts out of the fire for them", suggesting that they might not be averse to seeing the Soviet Union involved in a war with the "aggressors". He dealt in some detail with the economic crisis in the capitalist world, a crisis which had begun in 1929, and which, since then, had only been partly overcome by the armaments race. Stalin said that the grabbing of Manchuria and Northern China by Japan and the Italian invasion of Abyssinia already pointed to the acute struggle among the Powers. With the new economic crisis (since 1937), this

imperialist conflict could not but grow in intensity. It was no longer a case of competition for markets, trade war or dumping. These weapons were no longer considered sufficient.

What Russia was now facing was a redistribution of the world, of spheres of influence and colonies by means of war.

The "have-nots" were now attacking the "haves". Japan now claimed to have been tied hand-and-foot by the Nine-Power Treaty; this had prevented her from enlarging her

territory at China's expense, while Britain and France possessed vast colonial territories; Italy had recalled that she also had been cheated of her share after the first imperialist war, whereas Germany was now demanding a return of her colonies and an extension of

her territory in Europe. In this way a bloc had been formed among the three aggressive powers, and now the question had arisen of a new share-out of the world by military

means.

The new imperialist war, Stalin said, had already begun. Since Italy's capture of

Abyssinia, both she and Germany had organised their military intervention in Spain. In 1937, after grabbing Manchuria, Japan had invaded Northern and Central China, and had driven its foreign competitors out of these new occupied zones; in 1938 Germany had

grabbed first Austria and then the Sudetenland, while Japan had occupied Canton, and, more recently still, Hainan.

After the first imperialist war, Stalin recalled, the victorious powers had created a new international régime of peace; this was based on the Nine-Power Treaty in the Far East and on the Treaty of Versailles and other agreements in Europe. The League of Nations was expected to regulate international relations on a basis of collective security... To give themselves a completely free hand, the three aggressor states had left the League. To cover up their treaty violations, the three aggressor states had proceeded to work on public opinion with the help of devices like the Anti-Comintern Pact. "It was a clumsy game, because it seems a bit absurd to look for Comintern breeding-grounds in the

deserts of Mongolia, the mountains of Abyssinia or in the wilds of Spanish Morocco."

All these conquests were made by the aggressor states, quite regardless of the interests of the non-aggressor states. "This new imperialist war has not yet become a general world war. It is being conducted by the aggressor states against the interest of the non-aggressor states, but these, believe it or not, are not only retreating, but to some extent conniving in this aggression."

It was not, Stalin said, that the non-aggressive, democratic countries were weak; both economically and militarily these countries, taken together, were stronger than the Fascist countries; why then were they behaving in this odd way? It might, of course, be argued that they were afraid of the revolution that would follow a new war; but this was by no means the chief reason for their behaviour:

The real reason is this: the majority of the non-aggressive states, and in the first place Britain and France, have given up the policy of collective security, and have changed over, instead, to a policy of non-intervention, to a position of "neutrality".

On the face of it, this non-intervention policy may be described as follows: "Let every country defend itself against aggressors any way it can or likes; it's got