signature to your self-inclusion in the USSR.’11 The three governments were militarily helpless. Resistance would lead to national disaster.
Compliance, of course, would also bring disaster since Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania would undoubtedly undergo the same treatment as eastern Poland. In fact the bully-boy methods did not immediately result in signed requests for incorporation in the USSR. The Red Army therefore moved in force to secure Stalin’s aims, and NKVD units — some of which had been operating in Poland — were close behind. A facade of constitutionalism was maintained. Politburo member Andrei Zhdanov, closely liaising with his master Stalin, was sent to the Baltic region to carry out his orders behind the scenes. Police arrests took place under the cover of a news black-out. Executions and deportations ensued as the Soviet-dominated media announced fresh elections. Only candidates belonging to the communists, or at least supporting them, were allowed to stand. Parliaments assembled in Tallinn, Riga and Vilnius in July and declared total agreement with Moscow’s wishes. All petitioned, as Stalin had demanded, for incorporation in the USSR. For form’s sake Stalin declined to admit the three on the same day. Lithuania entered the USSR on 3 August, Latvia two days later and Estonia a day after that.
Stalin was playing the geopolitical game for all it was worth. Communist political prospects in Europe had vanished. For Stalin, an inveterate opportunist, this was no problem. While not ceasing to believe in the superiority of communism over capitalism, he waited for the next chance to promote his kind of dictatorship abroad. Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia were not the only places he had in his sights as lying within the zone of the USSR’s special interest. Stalin and his representatives persistently specified Romania and Bulgaria in this way. Nor did he fail to argue that Turkey fell within the Soviet zone of hegemony. And Stalin, while delivering abundant quotas of grain and oil to a Germany at war with France and the United Kingdom, demanded German technology in exchange. Berlin had to sanction the sale of Messerschmitt fighters, a Panzer-III tank and the cruiser
What changed Stalin’s attitude was nothing that happened in eastern Europe or the Far East. France’s collapse in summer 1940 transformed everything. Soviet military planning had been based on the assumption that Hitler would encounter more effective resistance from the French armed forces than had been met in Poland. Geopolitics in Europe were turned upside down. Few observers gave the United Kingdom much chance of survival in the following months. For Stalin, the implications were dire. The Wehrmacht looked as if it was close to completing its tasks in the West. It would no longer face a two-front war if it turned its power against the USSR. Stalin’s relations with Hitler immediately reflected the consequences of France’s collapse. Truculent since August 1939, he began to appease. War with Germany had to be averted at any cost.14
Appeasement was practised without any express declaration of a change in stance. But Stalin’s statements behind the scenes, recently made available, reveal his worries. At the October Revolution anniversary dinner in the Kremlin on 7 November 1940 he indicated his shock at the military developments. He did not limit himself to the French debacle. The Soviet–Japanese War had indicated weaknesses in the country’s air force if not in its tanks. The Winter War with Finland had gone much worse for the USSR, revealing gross defects in organisation and planning. Then Germany had overwhelmed France in the summer campaign and driven the British back over the Channel. Stalin was blunt: ‘We’re not ready for war of the kind being fought between Germany and England.’15 Molotov was to recall him concluding around that time that ‘we would be able to confront the Germans on an equal basis only by 1943’.16 The diplomatic ramifications were enormous. Hitler had to be reassured that Soviet military intentions were entirely peaceful. His requests for raw materials had to be met even if German technology was not immediately available in exchange: late delivery, once complained about, was now forgivable.
As the diplomatic world darkened in the first half of 1941, Stalin revised several of his political judgements. Already he had added to the Russian national ingredients in Marxism–Leninism. Steadily, as he looked out on the countries of Europe under the Nazi jackboot, he reached the conclusion that the Comintern’s usefulness had come to an end. If communism was going to appeal to broad popular opinion, it had to be regarded as a movement showing sensitivity to local national feelings. Perhaps Stalin also urgently wanted to reassure Hitler that Soviet expansionism was a defunct aspiration. He mentioned this to Dimitrov in April 1941; communist parties, he asserted,17
should be made absolutely autonomous and not sections of the Comintern. They must be transformed into national communist parties with diverse denominations: workers’ party, Marxist party, etc. The name is not important. What is important is that they put down roots in their people and concentrate on their own specific tasks… The International was created in Marx’s time in the expectation of an approaching international revolution. The Comintern was created in Lenin’s time at an analogous moment. Today,
Dimitrov had virtually been told that his job was obsolete.
This did not mean that Stalin had given up faith in the ultimate worldwide success of communism; but what Dimitrov was hearing, in an indirect way, was a judgement that the military situation in Europe had become so complex and dangerous that it was no longer to the USSR’s advantage to maintain a co-ordinated communist movement under the direction of the Comintern. Stalin had not abandoned hope of controlling the activity of other communist parties. Instead he had made the provisional judgement that his policy of appeasing Germany would be enhanced if he put distance between his government and the Comintern. Only the outbreak of war with Germany delayed Stalin’s dissolution of the Comintern.
Yet Stalin, while seeking to appease Hitler, wanted to keep up the morale of his own Red Army. On 5 May 1941 he addressed the ceremony for graduates of military academies in Moscow. His words, unreported in the press at the time, were combative. Instead of the reassuring words he issued to the media about Germany, he declared:18
War with Germany is inevitable. If com[rade] Molotov can manage to postpone the war for two or three months through the M[inistry] of F[oreign] Affairs, that will be our good fortune, but you yourselves must go off and take measures to raise the combat readiness of our forces.
Stalin urged the Soviet armed forces to prepare for war.19 He explained:20
Until now we have conducted a peaceful, defensive policy and we’ve also educated our army in this spirit. True, we’ve earned something for our labours by conducting a peaceful policy. But now the situation must be changed. We have a strong and well-armed army.
Stalin continued:
A good defence signifies the need to attack. Attack is the best form of defence… We must now conduct a peaceful, defensive policy with attack. Yes, defence with attack. We must now re-teach our army and our commanders. Educate them in the spirit of attack.
Was this — as some have suggested — the index of an intention to attack Germany within the near future? Undeniably he had no scruples about stabbing friends and allies in the back. Hitler felt and acted the same way, and Nazi propaganda about
Yet none of this proves that Stalin genuinely contemplated his own offensive in the immediate future. A
