Russia at war 1941-1945

Soviet relations with Vichy France were broken off, and, barely a week after the German invasion, Pétain authorised the formation of a French Anti-Bolshevik Legion; a number of Swedish volunteers also joined the Finnish Army, while a Blue Brigade was formed in Spain for operations in Russia, particularly at Leningrad. Turkey, Iran and Afghanistan hastened to assure Russia of their neutrality, though in the case of Iran these assurances were not accepted. Later in the year the Soviet Government demanded that Afghanistan expel numerous Axis agents from its territory—a demand with which the Afghan

Government nominally complied, except that Signor Pietro Quaroni, the Italian

Ambassador at Kabul, continued to remain at the centre of Axis activity in Afghanistan—

until in 1943, after the fall of Mussolini, he was appointed Italian Minister to Moscow!

Much was made in Moscow of the German war on "Slavdom"; on August 10 and 11 the first All-Slav meeting was held. It called on all the Slav peoples to wage a holy war against Germany, and the appeal was signed by "representatives of the peoples of Russia, Belorussia, the Ukraine, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and Bulgaria".

Already on July 18 a mutual-aid agreement had been signed in London between Maisky,

representing the USSR and Jan Masaryk, representing the Czechoslovak Government in

exile. The agreement provided for an exchange of ministers and the formation of

Czechoslovak military units under the command of a Czechoslovak officer approved by

the Russians; these units would be under the supreme command of the USSR.

Dorothy Thompson relates that the only person in London she met in July 1941 who

believed the Russians would not be crushed by the Germans was President Benes.

[Sherwood, op. cit., p. 320.]

Russia's diplomatic relations with "independent" Slovakia had, of course, automatically lapsed, and were not mentioned.

The question of whether and on what terms diplomatic relations with Poland were to be restored presented a much trickier problem.

On the face of it, the Maisky-Sikorski agreement of July 30, 1941 was little different from the Soviet-Czechoslovak agreement twelve days before; in reality it touched on

some extremely awkward matters.

It must have been a little embarrassing for the Russians to agree to the first paragraph declaring all Soviet-German territorial agreements made in 1939 to be null and void; there was also the problem of Polish citizens in the Soviet Union, which had to be faced somehow. In order to resolve this awkward question a protocol was attached to the main agreement in which the Soviet Government granted an amnesty to "all Polish citizens now imprisoned in the Soviet Union, either as prisoners-of-war or for any other valid reasons".

Apart from that—as in the case of the Soviet-Czechoslovak Agreement—it provided for

an exchange of Ambassadors and for mutual aid in the common war against Nazi

Germany.

This agreement, which had been preceded by some acrimonious discussions on the future borders of Poland, was, in the event, to mark the beginning of another most unhappy

phase in Polish-Russian relations. On the surface and for the moment, however, Soviet-Polish co-operation was developing normally and on August 14 a military agreement was signed in Moscow between the Soviet Supreme Command, represented by General

Vassilevsky and by the Polish Supreme Command, represented by General Bogusz-

Szyszko; within its terms General Sikorski appointed General Anders Commander-in-

Chief of the Polish armed forces on Soviet territory, and it was announced that he "has begun to form the Polish Army". General Anders had been only just released from a Soviet jail.

On September 4, Mr Kot arrived in Moscow as the first Polish Ambassador, and in

December General Sikorski came to Russia, and had some long—and highly awkward—

conversations with Stalin. But this will be dealt with later.

Apart from Poland and Czechoslovakia, relations were also restored during the first

months of the war with Yugoslavia, Norway, Belgium and Greece. There was also an

important exchange of notes between Maisky and de Gaulle on September 27, 1941. The

Soviet Government recognised de Gaulle as the leader of the Free French, proposed to de Gaulle all possible aid in his struggle against Germany, and expressed its determination to fight for the "complete restoration of the independence and greatness of France". De Gaulle replied in the same vein.

It is hardly surprising that the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour should have come as a great relief to the Russians at a time when the Red Army had just launched their

December counter-offensive on the Moscow sector of the front. It was, of course,