1930s Soviet foreign policy

In the crucial setting the Depression sets up for us in understanding the context of the 1930s, the world is in disarray, especially notable in the West, from 1930 to 1933. The resultant destruction of world trade and the loss of jobs leading to a slump in the quality of living brought about the “fertile ground” for extremist political agitation from both Right and Left. Although the instability somewhat allowed for some much needed respite to the Soviet Union in its bid after an economic revolution, the augmenting international tensions intensified by the prospect of the Depression engendering a new war necessitated the Soviet Union’s bracing of an ulterior objective. This was none other than the fact that to “insulate fortress Russia” from the threats of outside powers in the event of a predicted war, according to Haslam in his writing in “The Bases of Foreign Policy under Stalin”, which is immensely useful in aiding the understanding that one has to seek for the matter in discussion. Such a threat was what stimulated the Soviet leadership to embark on the five-year plan of industrial construction in 1929. The five-year plan was essentially anchored on Stalin’s conception of the country’s needs, his overriding aim being to make the Soviet Union “impregnable to assault from abroad”. The note-worthy speech Stalin made in February 1931 succinctly captures the overarching aim that will govern the foreign policy in all dimensions, including the ideological one. Stalin leaves a clear message in it the promise of the plan that would in the long term fortify Soviet power in order to deter the rest of the world from even pondering on an attack on the Soviet Union, thus obliged to leave it alone, even in the case of a war between multiple outside powers, a notion which turned out to be much of Stalin’s liking in the course of the period concerned, if chances allowed, as it had been a vital element in Soviet foreign policy since its earliest days under Lenin, to exploit, wherever possible, the tensions and antagonisms which beset relations amongst the capitalist Powers.

The ideological ground for the comparison of the progress throughout the decade would be thus set in the early 1930s aims that Stalin embraced, given the changed economic and political environment, thus the need to delve into this period further. One can observe, through Stalin’s fears of potential Western aggression toward the Soviet Union, aggravated by the crisis in Anglo-Soviet relations in 1927, a defensive Soviet Union desperate to ensure its own security. When these exaggerated fears placed too much burden on the Soviet Union’s inadequate defences, “the Soviets responded with a combination of firmness and diplomacy”. While the Soviet Union retaliated against the French move at trade restrictions, the commissar of foreign affairs, Maksim M. Litvinov, also advocated the traditional offering of the non-aggression pact in novel form: economic non-aggression in 18 May 1931. This demonstrated to the Western public the more cooperative and less harsh image of the Soviet Union. The five-year plan also had a notable effect of raising the regime’s prestige in the “eye of friend and foe alike” (Haslam, as quoted in footnote). At this juncture, one can notice how Stalin orchestrated his foreign policy in a way as to complement it to his strenuous domestic policies. To heighten the urgency of his demands for modernization, Stalin portrayed the Western powers, especially France, as warmongers eager to launch an attack on the Soviet Union. The diplomatic isolation adopted by the Soviet Union in the early 1930s thus seemed ideologically justified by the Great Depression; world capitalism appeared fated for a downfall. To assist the triumph of Communism, Stalin resolved to weaken the moderate social democrats of Europe who were the communists’ rivals for working-class support. Conversely, the Comintern ordered the Communist Party of Germany to aid the anti-Soviet National Socialist German Workers’ Party (the Nazi Party) in its attempt at gaining power in the hopes that a Nazi regime would exacerbate social tensions within Germany and thereby produce the conditions that would lead to a communist revolution. Here, we can see the shared responsibility that Stalin takes on in bringing Hitler to power in 1933 and its tragic consequences for the Soviet Union itself and of course to the rest of the world. Hence, in light of the early 1930s before the rise of Hitler, the foreign policy pursued by the Soviet Union can be deemed to be ideologically consistent. Even in the case where the Soviet Union initiated the economic non-aggression pact with the Western capitalist powers, it was done so under a certain mask and veil since Soviet leaders deceitfully continued to let their capitalist adversaries misinterpret the new Soviet economic move as a return to capitalism, resulting in the dwindled hostility displayed by the Western powers as a result. In addition, in the issue of the threat posed by Japan in the Manchurian Crisis of 1931, the underlying philosophy in Litvinov’s foreign policy is illustrated in the fact that the Soviets not only chose to conceal the ongoing war preparations (for the war in the Far East) from the public but also decided to attend the world disarmament conference when it opened in February 1932. It cannot be stressed more, therefore, that this was a period when ideological foundations and more fundamentally the cardinal foreign policy aims were closely followed by.

The year 1933, when Hitler rose to power in Germany, brought about what Haslam calls a “dramatic volte-face” in the direction of Soviet foreign policy, ushering in the most pro-Western era Moscow has ever experienced. This is also dubbed the Litvinov age of Soviet diplomacy. Once again, in this observation of 1933 to 1937 Soviet pursuit of its foreign policy, it was the fundamental aim of Soviet security and safety that Stalin was after, as far as appearances were concerned. This is because from the turn of the events, it might seem as though the Soviet Union was abandoning its ideological motive of Communist dominion when it cooperated diplomatically with the Western capitalist powers. However, it has to be reinforced that the new German Government threatened the peace of Europe and thereby the security of the Soviet Union. Peace was not just a necessary condition for Stalin’s industrialisation plans but mainly for the very purpose of not plunging the Soviet Union into a war.

Where dual track policy, or a two pronged approach, is concerned, it is the underlying strategic aims that were more fundamental than the ideological ones, since the primary driving factor when it came to Stalin’s decision making was the fear of an outside invasion of the Soviet Union. It was more the maintenance of the status quo and protection of the incumbent territory that Stalin was interested if we follow his line of foreign policy moves, rather than an aim to spread Communism as far as the 1930s were concerned. This is because the Soviet Union, in its economic weakness and vulnerability in the face of a precedent worldwide economic combustion and foreseeable threats in the scale of another major war, simply was not allowed the mental and strategic space for an expansionist scheme. Yes, it can be argued that such a Communist-domination notion never actually left Stalin’s objectives and lurked in the background through which some ideological influences were seen in the foreign policy directives (SUCH AS?), but pivotal would be to realise that because it was centrally the immediate or perceived threats directed at the Soviet Union that brought about the key foreign policy moves by either Litvinov or Molotov, thus justifying the argument that by observing the consistencies of the underlying strategic aims one can also deduce that such were also ideologically consistent, although it is more the former than the latter dimension that steered the Soviet camp’s foreign policy directions.