POLICY OF RUSSIA

Waikato Times, Volume 127, Issue 21188, 10 August 1940, Page 11 (Supplement)

POLICY OF RUSSIA

WHAT IS STALIN’S AIM ? :: ATTITUDE TO DEMOCRACIES

(Spencer Williams, in English paper)

W HY. DID STALIN play his dangerous comedy ? Why did he allow the Anglo-French negotiations to drag on, and why did he suddenly turn around and conclude a pact with the arch-enemy of Bolshevism, Germany ? The answer was clearer to us, watching at Moscow, than to the outside world where the myths of Russian military might and economic strength had encouraged many people to believe that Stalin was panting to send the Red Army to “save Democracy” if Britain and France would only be reasonable. Stalin knew that because of Russia’s internal situation he must avoid, at all costs, becoming involved in a full-fledged war. He did not believe any force existed to prevent the Germans from crashing headlong through Poland, and if he openly allied himself with the Democratic front he knew the Germans would not stop at the Soviet frontier, with the coveted Ukranian granary beyond. German military men in their cups at Moscow boasted after the Red Army’s Polish invasion that they could have “rolled up the Red Army in Poland like a red carpet,” and the Russians’ respect for the Teutonic war machine was more than ample to make them anticipate such a result. It was not only uncertainty of the Red Army’s strength under new and inexperienced leaders that Dictated Caution to a Dictator whose caution ever has been exceeded only by his craftiness. Russia’s entire economic life had been falling increasingly out of gear for four years. The effects of the great purge, which wiped out all Westernised intelligence in Soviet Russia, are proving cumulative. Industry, trade, distribution and transport have not only not recovered the ground lost through the loss of qualified leadership, but have even retrogressed further in some cases. Above all is the dull apathy of the masses, which the propaganda machine is now helpless to shake. _ The Russians would enter a general European war in the condition of a people who have been through 20 years of war. The Allied blockade cannot for some years hope to lower the German living standard to the Russian level. Food scarcity increased throughout last year, and the inadequacy of the 1939 crops following on the near disaster from the 1938 drought indicates no improvement before next autumn. Consumers’ and manufactured goods have virtually disappeared in Russia. Workers are being disciplined and speeded up, while their pay rates are being cut. The chronically disgruntled peasants’ temper has not been made any better than the workers’ by restrictions in their individually-owned garden plots, and even the favoured bureaucratic stratum feels the pinch of rising prices and deficits of goods. The Allies, refusing to sanction Stalin’s plans to extend his hegemony over the Baltic States and Finland, had nothing to offer him except obligations leading to a war he could not risk. The German Pact fulfilled his immediate need to be able to maintain a nominally neutral position in a European war. It promised him more than he had wanted —rapproachement with the Third Reich, which would open the gates to a return to German technique and equipment urgently required by flagging Soviet industry. If no general war resulted Stalin figured he would still gain by this pact by achieving this goal, which he had set when he Aryanised his Berlin Embassy in 1938. The Soviet Press in August, 1939, made it clear that Sfcalin expected Britain to Engineer Another Munich at the expense of Poland. Stalin intended to make his own deal with Hitler first. The actual development of a general war forced Stalin to act in Poland with an audacity born of fear. Foreign circles at Moscow were inclined to believe the sincerity of German hints of concern over the extent

of the Red Army’s penetration in Poland. Mobilisation at Moscow had a panicky character from the start, which discredited the idea of a prearranged schedule with the Germans. The strain on civilian resources was immediately obvious. For days there was hardly a motor vehicle except buses seen on the streets of Moscow. Chauffeurs and mechanics were called up almost to a man. People emptied the savings banks of money and the shops of food in a twinkling. The Soviet note to all foreign missions at Moscow reflected the Kremlin’s apprehension that its invasion of Poland might lead the Allies to declare war, but the Onward Rush of the German Juggernaut toward the Soviet frontier made the risk unavoidable. The British tendency to condone Russia’s aggression in Poland as cheating Hitler was interpreted as another sign of British weakness and emboldened Stalin in making his decision to invade Finland. The ease with which the Red Army played the role of jackal to the German wolf also misled him later when he assayed the prospects for a quick victory in Finland. . The illusions which persist in democratic countries regarding Russia’s aims made Stalin’s task easy in. the Baltic States, and his success was assured until the Finns surprised him by offering resistance (quixotically, to the Oriental minds in the Kremlin). Allied circles fell heavily for the smokescreen assiduously blown up by Soviet diplomats, cunningly assisted by the Germans’ manoeuvres hinting at German alarm over Soviet hegemony in the Baltic, behind which Stalin sought to padlock his front door against the possibility one day of the British Navy’s brushing aside the Nazi fleet and the feeble Soviet naval defences to sail within bombing range of Leningrad. , . English circles, which explain away Stalin s insistence on a giant pincers from Dago in Estonia to Hangoe in Finland to keep the “Imperialist incendiaries of war” —stock phrase for Britain and France—out of the Finnish Gulf, as being disingenuously aimed at Hitler, do not attempt to interpret similarly the Soviet seizure of Finland’s northernmost peninsula, Rybachi, guarding the entrance to Murmansk, or Soviet pressure on Turkey to allow sowing of mines just inside the Black Sea as projects to bar the German fleet. Stalin has an uneasy feeling that he may be called to account for General Smorodinoff’s insolent laughter on the railway platform when the Anglo-French mission left Moscow last August. He hastened to padlock his-gateways, and with the German police dog in his front yard to snap at all comers, he boldly played at home the game of Twisting the Lion’s Tail. The British Empire always had been the pet hate in the Bolshevik creed, for it stood squarely athwart the paths both of world revolution and the new Russian imperialism. Soviet organs sing their familiar hymn of hate against England with more gusto than they ever succeeded in putting into their democratic front lullabies. Except for a declaration of war and the involvement of men at arms, the Soviet Union has been as much at war with Britain and France since September as Germany. There is nothing Stalin is in a position to do to injure the Allied cause which he has not willingly done. The propaganda which streams from the Soviet Press anu radio today might have been produced word for word in Herr Goebbels’ mill. The marionettes of Moscow and in the Communist parties abroad have been put to the task of faithfully promoting Hitler’s peace drive. The Allied blockade is denounced and Germany is enabled to circumvent it by receiving large-scale shipments through Russia. ... , . General Smorodinoff probably laughs again when he hears how his master is getting away with it. But Stalin stumbled in following a policy of avoiding involvement in a bigger war when he invaded Finland. The results are already reflected in a more cautious Soviet policy toward the Allies.