Equally inconclusive were the various news items printed—about military preparations in Poland, Britain, and so on.
Yet there was a great deal of uneasiness in the country; this may be gauged from the publication, on August 27, of an interview with Voroshilov in which he explained why the talks with Britain and France had broken down.
The talks, he said, had stopped because of serious disagreements. The Soviet
Military Mission took the view that since the Soviet Union had no common frontier with the aggressor (sic), she could help Great Britain, France and Poland only if her troops could cross Polish territory in order to make contact with the aggressor
forces. The Poles said that they neither needed nor wanted Soviet help. Asked if
there was any truth in the Daily Herald report that, in case of war, the Soviet Union would occupy parts of Poland and also help the Poles with planes, munitions, etc., Voroshilov said No, adding: "We did not break off the talks with Britain and France because we had signed a non-aggression pact with Germany; on the
contrary, we signed this pact because, apart from anything else, the military talks with Britain and France had reached a complete deadlock."
The whole suggestion was that the Soviet Union was prepared to go to war with Nazi
Germany, but that she could not do so in view of the attitude of Britain, France and especially Poland.
During the next few days the news continued to be highly confusing—more about Polish
"defence measures", British "military preparations", about an appeal by the Slovak Premier, Mgr Tiso, asking Germany, on behalf of the Slovak population, to send troops to Slovakia, about German ships leaving American ports, and so on. On August 30 there
were only short news items about "General Mobilisation in Poland", and about Ambassador Nevile Henderson's meeting with Hitler and Ribbentrop.
It was not till August 31—i.e. one day before the German invasion of Poland—that
Molotov made a statement on the Soviet-German Pact before the Supreme Soviet. If,
only four days before, Voroshilov spoke of the breakdown of the talks with Britain and France more in sorrow than in anger, Molotov started that day on his series of anti-French and anti-British speeches, with lasting co-existence with Nazi Germany as their keynote.
Since the 3rd Session of the Supreme Soviet, he said, the international situation had shown no turn for the better, either in Europe or in the Far East. The talks with Britain and France had gone on since April, i.e. for four months, and they had led to nothing.
Poland had made any agreement impossible, and, in her negative attitude, Poland had been supported by Britain. He then ridiculed the British and French military missions who had come to Moscow without any powers or credentials; the whole thing "wasn't serious". Then came his monumental defence of the Soviet-German Pact:
We all know that since the Nazis came to power, relations between the Soviet Union and Germany have been strained. But we need not dwell on these differences; they
are sufficiently familiar to you anyway, Comrades Deputies.
But, as Comrade Stalin said on March 10, "we are in favour of business relations with all nations"; and it seems that, in Germany, they understood Comrade Stalin's statement correctly, and drew the right conclusions.
August 23 must be regarded as a date of great historic importance. It is a turning point in the history of Europe, and not only Europe.
Only recently the German Nazis conducted a foreign policy which was essentially
hostile to the Soviet Union. Yes, until recently, in the realm of foreign policy, the Soviet Union and Germany were enemies. The situation has now changed, and we
have stopped being enemies. The political art in foreign affairs is... to reduce the number of enemies of one's country, and to turn yesterday's enemies into good
neighbours.
History has shown that enmity and war between Russia and Germany have never
led to any good. These two countries suffered more from the last World War than
any other.
Molotov obviously expected a new war in Europe to break out at any moment; but this
did not seem to worry him unduly: "Even if a military collision cannot be avoided in Europe, the scale of such a war will be limited. Only the partisans of a general war in Europe can be dissatisfied with this."
The Soviet-German agreement has been violently attacked in the Anglo-French and
American press, and especially in some "socialist" papers... Particularly violent in their denunciations of the agreement are some of the French and British socialist leaders... These people are determined that the Soviet Union should fight against Germany on the side of Britain and France. One may well wonder whether these
warmongers haven't gone off their heads. [Laughter.]
Under the Soviet-German Agreement, the Soviet Union is not obliged to fight either on the British or the German side. The USSR is pursuing her own policy, which is
determined by the interests of the peoples of the USSR, and by nobody else. [Loud
cheers.]
If these gentlemen have such an irresistible desire to go to war, well then—let them go to war by themselves, without the Soviet Union. [Laughter and cheers.] We'll see what kind of warriors they will make. [Loud laughter and cheers.]
Molotov had set the tone of the "debate".
Soon afterwards Shcherbakov rose to speak: "Two great nations," he said, "have solemnly declared their good-neighbourly relations... And now the Western socialists are furious. For they would like the Soviet Union and Germany to attack one another."
What Molotov had said about the British and French, Shcherbakov continued, showed
that, in their negotiations with the Soviet Union their attitude, especially that of the British, was insincere. There was no real desire to form a mutual assistance front. He then proposed that, in view of the "perfect clarity" of Molotov's statement, there should be no debate, that the policy of the Soviet government be approved and the Soviet-German
agreement ratified.
Needless to say, neither Molotov nor Shcherbakov had any grounds for fearing a debate; but there is no reason to suppose that it would have been marked by any high degree of enthusiasm.
A few hours later the Germans invaded Poland. Nothing was said in Moscow at that stage of the role that the Soviet Union was going to play in the destruction of that country, except for a slightly mysterious TASS statement on August 30 denying that Soviet troops were being transferred to the Far East:
On the contrary, TASS is authorised to state that, owing to the strained situation in the West, the garrisons on the Western frontier of the USSR are being reinforced.
Needless to say, Molotov's and Ribbentrop's Secret Protocol was not published. This, as we know, provided that "in the event of territorial and political transformations" the northern frontier of Lithuania would be the frontier of the Soviet-German "spheres of interest" in the Baltic States, and, roughly, the Narew-Vistula-San line the provisional demarcation line. The Soviet Union and Germany would subsequently decide whether to
maintain an independent Polish state, and if so, within what frontiers.
Before long, as we shall see, the occupation by the Red Army of Eastern Poland was to be represented as "the liberation of Western Belorussia and the Western Ukraine" and as a means of saving these areas from the Nazis.
The present-day Soviet assessment of the Soviet-German Pact is that it was a measure that had been forced on Russia which simply had no alternative.
[For example ex-Ambassador Maisky's criticism of British foreign policy in 1939 in his memoirs.]
It is one of the very few points on which Khrushchev has never attacked or criticised Stalin, but has, on the contrary, fully justified his action.
Chapter III THE PARTITION OF POLAND
The coverage in the Soviet press of the German invasion of Poland was almost
unbelievably thin. It looked as though there were a desire to make people think and talk about it as little as possible. An attempt was made to give the impression that this was a small local war, of no particular consequence to the Soviet Union, where life, thanks to the wisdom of Comrade Stalin, was going on normally and peacefully.
Much space was given in the press to a great popular fête at the Dynamo Stadium in
Moscow on the eve of the German invasion of Poland, to another fête at Sokolniki a few days later, and to the International Youth Days which were celebrated in Moscow,
Leningrad and Kiev at the end of the first week of the war (though the question which nations were represented at these Youth Days was left remarkably vague—and no
wonder!).
In reporting the war itself, the Soviet press tried at first to sound as neutral and objective as possible. Both the German and the Polish communiqués were published; but
controversial matters like the "Operation Himmler" at Gleiwitz—where Germans, dressed in Polish uniform, attacked a German wireless station—were carefully avoided.
[In the Soviet post-war History of the war, on the other hand, the greatest prominence is given to this far-reaching Nazi provocation against Poland.]