North America beyond encouraging closer commercial links between the USSR and the USA. About South America, Africa and the rest of Asia he had little to say. The Politburo continued to avoid risky revolutionary initiatives. Armaments production was kept as a high priority. Discussions were held in Moscow to elaborate a foreign policy adequate to deal with German expansionism.
The Politburo, shocked by Hitler’s success in Germany, took steps to increase Soviet security. One such improvement was achieved that same year when the USA announced its decision to give diplomatic recognition to the USSR. This suited the interests of American business abroad. Having spent years enhancing Soviet influence in Europe, Stalin had acquired a window on to the New World.7
Meanwhile the Red Army was reinforced in the Far East in case Tokyo should try to use its Manchurian quasi-colony as the base for an invasion of the USSR. Stalin had not forgotten about the Japanese incursions into eastern Siberia before the Bolsheviks won the Civil War in Russia. As regards Germany, there was greater room for manoeuvre. People’s Commissar of External Affairs Maxim Litvinov argued that rapprochement with all Europe’s anti-fascist parties and the formation of popular fronts were essential for Soviet interests. This had the support of Georgi Dimitrov, who had been released from a German prison in February 1934 and given political asylum in the USSR. Dimitrov objected to the official characterisation of the leaders and members of other socialist parties as ‘social-fascists’.8 Although the ideas originated with Litvinov and Dimitrov, sanction had to come from the Politburo and in particular from Stalin. France was recognised as the country in Europe which needed to be pulled into the Soviet embrace. Like the USSR, France felt threatened by Hitler’s foreign policy; it was reasonable for Stalin to assume that a reconciliation between the USSR and France would suit both governments.
Stalin also accepted advice from Litvinov to adopt a policy of ‘collective security’. At the Seventeenth Party Congress in January 1934 he expressed satisfaction at the improvement in diplomatic relations with France and Poland. Although he denied this implied a reversal of the USSR’s antagonism to the Treaty of Versailles, he objected to the stated anti-Soviet pretensions of Nazi leaders and offered no olive branch to Germany. His hopes at that time lay with the USA (and even in Japan, which he thought could be induced into co-operating with the USSR). ‘We stand’, said Stalin,
for peace and for the cause of peace. But we’re not afraid of threats and we’re ready to respond blow for blow to warmongers. Anyone wanting peace and seeking businesslike links with us will always have our support. But those who are trying to attack our country will receive crushing retaliation to teach them in future not to push their pigs’ snouts into our Soviet garden patch.
That’s what our foreign policy is about.9
But he omitted to say how these aims could be achieved. What was clear was that Soviet leaders were seeking a way out of their isolation.
The formation of popular fronts would involve communist support for anti-fascist coalition governments. At last the threat from Nazi Germany was recognised as being of a unique order. Dimitrov argued that the Comintern had to be reorganised to deal with this. In October he argued that the Comintern was over-centralised. Communist parties abroad, he wrote to Stalin, should be given the latitude to react autonomously to national conditions.10 This did not mean that the foreign communist parties would have a choice about whether to set up popular fronts. They were peremptorily told to set them up.11 Dimitrov was writing about secondary matters; he wanted the parties to handle day-to-day affairs without constantly referring them upwards. He was hoping for pies in the sky. While calling for independence for these parties, he did not break the chains of their continued subjection.
Stalin approved these ideas of Dimitrov without much modification. Dimitrov was proving a fertile source of ideas for allowing the USSR and Europe’s communist parties to adapt to fast-changing political and military realities. Stalin failed to come up with novel ideas of his own. Nevertheless such changes as were made to foreign policy had to have his personal permission; and while giving Dimitrov his head in the Comintern, he and Litvinov had other fish to fry. Stalin did not limit the USSR’s initiatives in international relations to contacts with left-of-centre parties. He also wanted reconciliation with the French government of Gaston Doumergue. Steadily the Soviet leadership was edging its way to a policy founded on treaties of ‘collective security’. With this in mind, Stalin permitted his diplomats to apply for and secure the USSR’s entry into the League of Nations in September 1934. Not only France but also Czechoslovakia and Romania were the object of Soviet overtures.12 Stalin was aided by the general fear of a Germany resurgent under Hitler. The existence of the Third Reich scared these states, and all of them were considering surmounting their fundamental distaste for dealing with the USSR. The Red Army’s potential as an anti-Nazi force in eastern and central Europe made negotiations with the Kremlin more attractive than at any time since the October Revolution.
There was much disagreement among observers about Stalin’s purposes. To some it seemed that he was steadily moving towards a more traditional Russian agenda in foreign policy. The particular treaties and alliances did not matter for them: such things always changed in each generation. But the idea was gaining currency that Stalin had abandoned the internationalist objective of Leninism and wished for the USSR’s recognition as a great power with no interest in the overturning of the world political and economic system. Others accepted this as true but qualified the judgement. To them it seemed obvious that both the geopolitical position of the Soviet Union and Stalin’s personal preference dictated an inclination towards rapprochement with Germany at the expense of good relations with the United Kingdom and France. Yet such an analysis was challenged by those who felt that Stalin lacked the mental preparation to be anything else than reactive as a global statesman.
They underestimated his thoughtful adaptiveness and the extent of his break with Marxism–Leninism. Equally clearly he was eager to avoid the mistakes made under Lenin’s leadership. He told guests at a dinner party attended by Georgi Dimitrov that Lenin had been wrong to call for a European civil war during the Great War.13 He also set about studying the history of international relations, and much scholarly research on this was published at his instigation in Moscow in the 1930s. While thrusting this information into the frame of his worldview, he retained a readiness to keep Soviet foreign policy flexible. Lenin had come to power with this attitude. Stalin had been impressed and sought to emulate him. Just as Lenin had confronted and survived the deadly diplomatic trial of strength with Germany in 1917–18, Stalin was determined to prove his mettle in the contests of the 1930s. As the threats in Europe and Asia grew, he wanted to be intellectually prepared. Without such knowledge, he knew, he could be caught out of his depth; and he had no desire to put himself as an innocent into the arms of the People’s Commissariat of External Affairs or of the Communist International.
Civil war had broken out in Spain in July 1936 when the fascist general Francisco Franco revolted against the Republican coalition government of Diego Barrio (who derived authority from a popular front). Franco appealed for assistance from Germany and Italy. Both complied, and Hitler’s Luftwaffe was given experience in bombing towns and villages. Meanwhile France and the United Kingdom, while sympathising with the elected government, maintained a position of neutrality. The Spanish government rallied all the forces it could on the political left. Spain’s communists in particular stood by it.
In Moscow the time had come for a decision on whether or not to intervene as Hitler and Mussolini had already done. Deployment of Red military units was not feasible at such a distance. But the revolutionary tradition impelled Stalin to look favourably on the request from Madrid for help. So too did the awareness that if no resistance to German assertiveness were shown, Europe as a whole would be exposed to the expansionist aims of the Third Reich. Failure to act would be taken as a sign that the policy of the popular front had no substance. Finance and munitions were dispatched by boat to Spain from Leningrad. Simultaneously the Communist International sent the Italian Communist Party leader Palmiro Togliatti under the alias Ercoli to direct the activities of the Spanish communists. Togliatti and his fellow political and military emissaries found a chaotic scene. At Stalin’s command they sought to turn the Spanish Communist Party into the leading force on the left without actually entering the government coalition. The policy of the popular front was maintained and Moscow frowned on all talk of a communist seizure of power. Dimitrov came into his own by leading the implementation of the general line agreed in the Kremlin: he knew it was not safe to ignore his master’s voice.14
As the Republic’s armed forces were pushed on to the retreat by Franco, the Spanish government pressed for the communists to enter the coalition. Stalin had to be phoned for consent and then Dimitrov sent the tactical instructions to communist leader Jose Diaz. Eventually the socialist party chief Largo Caballero emerged as head of government. By March 1937 Stalin had become distinctly edgy about being drawn into a military struggle of internal significance without being able to control the consequences, and reports about the effectiveness of the coalition and
